Should Progressive Funders Be Paying Closer Attention to the Fate of the Democratic Party?
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Back in February, I wrote critically about an oddball take by Substack writer Matthew Yglesias, who declared in a now-deleted tweet that, “One of the most underrated aspects of contemporary politics is the extent to which ‘activists on the left’ and ‘major funders’ are the same people.”
The implication is far-fetched — that leading donors and funders are a bunch of radical leftists masquerading as successful businesspeople and polite, wealthy institutions.
Still, Yglesias did gesture toward a real conundrum for progressive philanthropy, and he hasn’t been the only one to do so. Over the past half-year or so, we’ve seen a bunch of centrist commentary from the likes of Jonathan Chait, Thomas B. Edsall and others, who’ve all made variations on the argument that no-holds-barred progressivism has become politically toxic and that left-leaning nonprofits are partially to blame. Purveyors of this critique often fault funders, on the assumption that those holding the pursestrings set all the policy and make all the decisions.
We take issue with that stance, which assigns philanthropy more agency than it’s due, and misunderstands the relationship between most funders and the activist community (it also extends an invitation to right-wing conspiracists). There is, however, a case to be made that on an issue-by-issue basis, progressive giving is out of touch with much of the American body politic. It may even be out of touch with many of the broad groups progressive funders tend to prioritize.
A moderate majority
Among working class people and people of color, some recent polling (further examples below) shows issues like returning to economic normalcy after COVID, fixing government dysfunction, fighting crime and tamping down inflation outpacing progressive priorities like justice reform, immigration rights, voting rights and racial justice advocacy. Much has been made of more voters of color embracing the GOP in both the 2020 and 2021 elections.
That’s not to say this is the case for all lower-income people, or all people of color, many of whom are working harder than ever to advance progressive priorities that often deeply impact their communities. But on the whole, it’s true that many working class people and people of color do hew more moderate than progressive.
This moderate majority is on full display in demographic surveys like Pew Research Center’s most recent political typology. The typology sorts the American public into nine ideological categories, from the “progressive left” all the way to “faith and flag conservatives.” In Pew’s accounting, dyed-in-the-wool progressives account for only 6% of the American public, with far larger portions of the left-of-center population adopting more moderate views.
Notably, while white people make up the large majority of the four categories furthest to the right, most Black, Hispanic and Asian people (to use Pew’s terms) are more evenly distributed from the center-right through the left. In fact, the only left-of-center category that is majority white (68%) is the most progressive category, which is also the smallest. In other words, Pew’s numbers suggest an overwhelmingly white conservative bloc, and a large, quite diverse group of Americans that are some mix of center-left, devoted Democrats, and establishment liberals.
Much of mainstream philanthropy, especially institutional philanthropy, is situated pretty squarely in that larger group too, which is a big part of the reason we’ve never really bought into all of the “woke philanthropy” panic. For the most part, this is a pretty moderate bunch. But there are certainly some prominent funders one might place in that furthest “progressive left” category.
The fact that those funders’ goals don’t reflect those of the majority isn’t necessarily a problem — for them or for the sector. Philanthropy has no stated obligation to represent the will of any majority, nor to cater to the election-year expediencies of one party or another. It can fund vanguard activism if it wants.
That seems to be the position of one of the nation’s quintessential progressive foundations. “We make no calculations about how our grantees give credibility or not to the Democratic Party,” said Ford Foundation President Darren Walker in Edsall’s piece this January. “That is of no concern to the Ford Foundation, or to me personally.”
But even if the fate of the Democratic Party plays no role in the grantmaking decisions of Ford or its peers, the uncomfortable fact remains that when you’re funding in politically charged territory, who’s in office does impact whether progress is made on issues you care about.
That may be why a whole bunch of other left-leaning donors (I won’t name names, but we write about them often enough) deploy their 501(c)(3) dollars in a way that likely does keep one eye on Democrats’ election chances, even if they won’t say it. Contrary to popular perception — over-cautious legal counsel being mostly to blame for that — plenty of leeway exists for philanthropy to push policy. Getting anything done increasingly requires pulling all levers, both within and outside the c3 spectrum. That’s a reality donors are embracing on both sides of the aisle.
The elephant (or donkey) in the room
The fate of President Biden’s Build Back Better framework is a prime example of why one could argue that progressive funders should be paying more attention to Democrats’ election chances. With Biden fresh in office a year ago, many funders enthused about the prospects for broader federal spending. They were rightly excited about what the government’s trillions could do to address the problems they care about, as opposed to philanthropic funders’ mere billions.
But Biden’s ambitious agenda ran aground when it came up against the Democrats’ very tenuous hold on Washington (a problem of little concern, apparently, to the Ford Foundation). Progressive funders’ hopes for a new New Deal in 2021 were dashed. And now it’s becoming next to impossible to avoid doom-and-gloom prognostications about a Democratic wipeout in this year’s midterms, and, even more disturbingly, in 2024.
Nevertheless, many progressive funders continue to prioritize vanguard causes that don’t really align with what large blocs of traditionally Democratic voters care about the most, forgoing opportunities to push policies that might be more popular.
Take Latino voters, whose historical tendency to favor Democrats has eroded in many places over the past several elections. During and following the Trump years, we’ve seen progressive funders give to numerous Latino advocacy organizations for whom issues like immigrant rights and anti-discrimination are top priorities. That makes a lot of sense given the five-alarm fire that the Trump administration represented on these issues.
But a recent Axios-Ispos poll, for instance, found that Latinos rated five major issues as “more worrying” than immigration issues: inflation or supply chain breakdowns, crime or gun violence, climate change, foreign conflicts, and COVID. “Racial injustice and discrimination” came in seventh place. The poll also found that Latinos now rate Republicans “better on the economy” — their top issue — than Democrats.
Similarly, Black Americans, another crucial part of the Democratic base, poll more moderate, on average, than some justice reform funders might like to admit. For instance, 58% of Black respondents in a 2021 Data for Progress poll said that violent crime in the U.S. has increased lately, and while most agreed that “you can’t be too careful” when dealing with police officers, a full 65% of Black respondents also said that regular police patrols in their neighborhoods would make them feel “more safe,” while only 26% said “less safe.”
Of course, these are broad brushstrokes. Latinos, Black people, AAPI people, working-class people — pretty much any part of the Democrats’ traditional base — are diverse groups that hold a wide variety of views and prioritize a wide variety of issues. And that’s precisely the point. Making necessary progress on any number of issues requires a Democratic majority, and that requires at least some overtures to pluralism.
Instead, there seems to be a disconnect in which many progressive funders continue to paint Trumpism and far-right Republican politics in apocalyptic terms, and yet fund in a way that doesn’t align with and may even alienate key Democratic-leaning constituencies as elections loom.
Philanthropy for progress
What gives? Why the disconnect, and why are so few people in liberal philanthropy talking about it? There’s no easy answer, but one part of the equation is that even as progressivism faces headwinds among the wider electorate, it’s been doing very well in the philanthrosphere.
Some may disagree, but I’d argue that over the past few years, philanthropic policies that progressives have pushed for decades — like general operating support for grassroots advocacy groups, and theories of change that directly confront systemic racism — have moved from the fringes to the mainstream. They may not be universal or even dominant, but they loom a lot larger than they did, say, a decade ago.
While that’s partly due to the influence of mega-donors like MacKenzie Scott, cultural shifts within philanthropy are also a part of it. Traditional power dynamics are being reexamined, white male leaders are questioning their privilege (some of them, anyway), and funders are considering bottom-up approaches to grantmaking. Liberal funders aren’t being quite as stingy or picky about how they support movement grantees.
These attempts to shift power are admirable and long overdue. But one consequence, as former Democracy Alliance President Gara LaMarche put it for HistPhil earlier this year, is that “it’s not foundations pulling their grantees left, but in a sense being pulled left, or being associated with certain left stances, by the work of some of their grantees.” I’d also argue that rank-and-file staff at left-leaning philanthropies, many of whom come from a movement background and lean more progressive than their boards and bosses, have also helped pull their organizations toward the vanguard.
How progressive philanthropy should proceed now is a difficult question. In many ways this is the age-old debate between radicalism and incrementalism. Should left-leaning funders hew to public opinion in an effort to prop up the one major political party that isn’t actively opposing everything they stand for? Or should they keep funding the vanguard and trade short-term political pain for the hope of long-term transformation?
There’s no easy answer. However, all of this does speak to the need for something we’ve called on for years now — for philanthropy to be more candidly aware of and engaged with the political world it’s swimming in. As much as funders would like to remain above the fray, the change they seek exists in the muddy waters where high ideals and politics intersect.
