Philanthropy and the Testing of Democracy in America
Ford Foundation Building, photo by ajay_suresh, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
This post is the first in a series on the interplay between philanthropy and the health of democracy in America that I’ll share here at The Art of Association over the next year. In this installment, I introduce the trends, questions, and hypotheses I will explore in subsequent posts. Four considerations are prompting me to undertake this extended reflection.
First, it has been a year since I ended my term at the Hewlett Foundation, where I served as the founding director of U.S. democracy grant making from 2013-2022. As I wrapped up my term at Hewlett, I offered a valedictory perspective on the work I led and what I learned at that commendable institution. Since then, I have maintained an interest, and now have more distance, to step back and assess the evolution of the broader field in which I worked during a tumultuous era.
Second, that tumult, marked by polarization, declining trust, and political upheavals of the sort we have not seen since the Civil War, is not going away anytime soon. Indeed, as we enter another presidential election cycle, Donald Trump is once again roiling the pot, as only he can. Despite his failed attempt to overturn the last election and his various legal problems—or perhaps because of them—he is the leading candidate for his party’s nomination. Whether and how philanthropy can help our faltering constitutional democracy cope with its problems, of which Donald Trump is as much a symptom as a cause, remains a pressing question.
Third, as the political contest heats up, we will hear renewed calls for philanthropic funders to get off the sidelines and do more to shore up U.S. democracy. However, I am struck by how much more they have already been doing toward this end. As the chart below indicates, annual philanthropic funding for U.S. democracy hit an inflection point in 2016, and it tripled over the past decade. In 2020, it hit $2.5 billion. That is a lot of money!
Source: Candid, www.democracy.candid.org [1]
In the wake of this surge in funding, however, we need to ask: how is it going? Where is the funding having the most positive impact? Where could things be improved? Where if at all might it be exacerbating problems? What adjustments would be helpful–both in what philanthropy is funding to strengthen democracy, and in how philanthropy is funding it?
Fourth, we live in an era marked by populism on the right and left alike. It thus behooves us to revisit and clarify the role(s) philanthropy and its practitioners should play in this field. Many recent critiques of philanthropy have thrown a harsh spotlight on the elite influence it embodies in a democratic society. How do these criticisms bear on funders and grantees working on democracy itself? There is, at the very least, a paradox to wrestle with in the presumption that philanthropy can and should come to the rescue of democracy in America.
I should acknowledge at the outset that the definition of philanthropy I will be using here is a traditional one, structured by the constraints of the tax code. It precludes electioneering, i.e., efforts to support or oppose particular candidates, parties, or ballot measures. Likewise, it rules out earmarking funds for lobbying.
Assertive and politically activated funders increasingly observe the letter while dismissing the spirit of the law in these areas. This is often the case with living donors making contributions in both philanthropy and politics. They naturally are inclined to view these two spheres as part of an integrated portfolio of donations meant to realize the same ends. Commentators on the left and the right spur them on, arguing that, given the moment and the stakes, the time for clear lines demarcating philanthropy from politics has passed.
I see things differently. To preview the case I will elaborate in this series (or, perhaps better put, the hypothesis I will test and refine), we need to enhance rather than blur these lines. Philanthropists consistently overestimate their ability to improve democracy in America in the short term, within the political confines of an electoral cycle, congress, or administration. Conversely, funders underestimate their ability to do so over longer time horizons in the fertile expanse of our civic culture. And they overlook the extent to which politicized philanthropy serves–inadvertently but nonetheless inexorably–to accelerate the hyper-partisan tribalism that is the source of so many of our problems.
Finally, there is an undeniable if largely unacknowledged opportunity cost that accrues when philanthropy focuses primarily on influencing politics and policy making. It beggars investments in the ideas, leaders, organizations, and civic infrastructure that only pay off over the longer term, and that we need to sustain a pluralistic democracy. Philanthropy is uniquely positioned to underwrite these investments. If it does not, who will?
But I am getting ahead of myself. Please stay tuned!
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[1] Candid provides the most comprehensive database on foundation funding for the U.S. democracy field. It is directionally though not precisely accurate. Insofar as some grant level data remains outstanding, it provides a conservative estimate for the size of the field. Note it takes roughly two years to gather all relevant data; 2020 is thus the most recent year for which we have close to a complete data set.
