This article analyzes community organizations' appropriation of an image-building campaign orchestrated through philanthropy. Following the 1992 Los Angeles riots, a group of mostly corporate funders allocated grants so that poor youth in Chicago would have constructive alternatives to violence that summer. A separate group of community organizations sought to hold funders accountable to claims about how this effort was an act of social responsibility on behalf of poor youth. In advocating for a more comprehensive philanthropic response to urban poverty than the funders had proposed, these community organizations strategically legitimized funders' identity claims. That is, they validated funders' impression of themselves as good citizens on the condition that considering support for systemic poverty reform was necessary in order for funders to sustain this image. Regardless of whether strategic legitimation enlarges the amount of money corporations give away, it plays a central role in their achieving a socially responsible identity.
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