Why Philanthropy Has Made Little Progress on Gun Violence — and a Few Reasons for Hope

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Thinking back to a piece I wrote on gun violence prevention philanthropy last spring after the two grisly mass shootings in Atlanta and Boulder, it’s saddening but unsurprising that another two horrific gun massacres have taken place within a short timespan this month — not to mention the tens of thousands of annual gun deaths that don’t make national headlines.

Gun violence is a problem that should be preventable, especially on this scale. But it’s also a cause where philanthropy has struggled to make significant headway, due in part to relatively limited investment, but also as a result of hard political and legal barriers that have made widespread progress extremely difficult.

The shooting deaths of 10 Black people in a Buffalo, New York, supermarket, and now 19 children and two of their teachers in a Uvalde, Texas, elementary school, are unspeakable tragedies. They are also part of a wider spike in gun homicide across the U.S., which has increased over the past several years. According to tallies from the Gun Violence Archive, total U.S. gun violence deaths rose to over 45,000 in 2021, and the total number of mass shootings rose from 610 in 2020 to 692 last year.

In the face of a clear crisis, philanthropy has stepped up in several ways. But as we’ve pointed out before, gun violence prevention — and violence prevention more generally — has never been philanthropy’s strong suit, nor has the carnage prompted the kind of funder attention you might expect.

The main reason for that is simple: continuing political deadlock holding back the strong federal measures that could take a real bite out of the problem. But other factors come into play, too, and as a result, philanthropy has been pretty anemic on gun violence prevention despite the ongoing work of several funding stalwarts.

Looking at the issue as a whole, the prognosis remains grim. The good news is that philanthropy’s approach to gun violence is evolving, and there has been an uptick in activity as the funding ecosystem shifts from a punitive mindset to a prevention and public health mindset. This has led to some promising strategies on the ground, in research and in the halls of power.

A steep hill to climb

As a sector that generally shuns politics, often to a far greater extent than the law requires it to, philanthropy isn’t in a great position to confront the extreme pro-gun positions that have become ubiquitous across the political right. And even the biggest donor publicly committed to the gun control fight, Mike Bloomberg, doesn’t have a whole lot to show for all that political spending through Everytown for Gun Safety.

In an alternate timeline in which philanthropy spent decades going all-in on democracy and inclusive civic engagement, or cultivated relevant ideological stances the same way conservative funders did with their own agenda, maybe fringe views on guns wouldn’t have so thoroughly conquered the GOP. Overall U.S. public sentiment, after all, remains tilted in favor of federal gun reforms. But in reality, philanthropy is playing catch-up on democracy, as well as on violence prevention, and political deadlock is the rule of the day. As we’ve pointed out in regard to any number of issues philanthropy cares about, funders will not find the progress they seek without addressing attacks on democracy and our failing democratic institutions.

But besides the exhausting stalemate in Washington, there are a few other factors holding philanthropy back on gun violence prevention.

One persistent problem has been the extreme scarcity of research and data on the issue. That’s no accident. The Dickey Amendment, a 1996 federal budget amendment championed by the National Rifle Association, essentially barred the CDC from funding research that might “advocate or promote” gun control. While the provision was overturned in 2018, over two decades of next to no federal funding for gun violence research had a chilling effect on related philanthropy, setting nonprofit gun control advocates back.

In the absence of many meaningful federal laws, there’s also the challenge posed by the patchwork of local jurisdictions that handle gun regulations. For philanthropy, one consequence is that impact often only extends as far as city, county or state lines. Jurisdictional limitations even play a role in federal initiatives like the Biden administration’s Community Violence Intervention Collaborative, backed by a who’s who of violence prevention funders. It’s a promising effort, but it’s also focused on a set of 16 mostly big-city jurisdictions. Note that Buffalo and Uvalde aren’t on that list.

Traditionally, many funders have also approached violence prevention in a siloed way, considering gun violence in isolation from, say, domestic violence, when in fact, there’s a lot of overlap. And finally, even as many funders acknowledge a need to pivot from punishment to prevention, it remains difficult to make a case for violence prevention in the neat, quantitative terms philanthropy prefers.

Prevention and public health

Fortunately, there are steps funders can take — and are taking — to address at least some of these challenges. We’ve seen numerous new and expanded efforts from philanthropy over the past several years, and even though a solution to the political impasse in D.C. seems unlikely, gun violence prevention philanthropy isn’t a lost cause.

On the research front, there’s been a definite uptick in activity since the repeal of Dickey in 2018. For the first time in 20 years, the CDC and the National Institutes of Health have appropriated $25 million for gun violence research. And philanthropic funders are pitching in through efforts like the National Collaborative on Gun Violence Research, also launched in 2018. Some notables include Arnold Ventures, the Joyce Foundation, the Kendeda Fund and the David Bohnett Foundation — all longtime gun violence prevention funders.

Philanthropies are also re-envisioning gun violence as a public health problem rather than solely as a matter of criminal justice. That approach underscores the need for research and prevention, and challenges the siloed way some advocates previously thought about the issue.

“Much in the same way we address an outbreak of a virus or infectious disease, so, too, can we address the root causes of gun violence at the source,” said David Brotherton, fund advisor for gun violence prevention at the Kendeda Fund, for IP’s recent State of American Philanthropy report on giving for violence prevention. Brotherton is also vice chair at the Fund for a Safer Future (FSF), one of the leading funder collaboratives tackling gun violence. Since it launched in 2011 with five funders onboard, FSF’s ranks have grown to over 30 today.

Besides FSF, another funder collaborative, the Hope and Heal Fund, has also embraced a public health mindset around gun violence prevention. Funders involved in the California-based collaborative include the California Endowment, the Weingart Foundation and the Lisa and John Pritzker Family Fund.

Meanwhile, another California funder, the Blue Shield of California Foundation, is also seeking to break down silos via its public health approach. “One of the ‘ah-ha!’ moments we had was about mass shootings, and if you look at the person who perpetrated that shooting, in most cases, you’ll find some form of domestic violence,” said Lucia Corral Peña, senior program officer for domestic and family violence, for our report.

That reality has been on grim display both during the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, where the killer began by shooting his mother, and in Uvalde this month, where the killer began by shooting his grandmother.

Intervening at the source

As more funders seek to address the root causes of gun violence, community violence intervention (CVI) is gaining traction as a strategy. In our deep dive, Tim Daly, program director for gun violence prevention and justice reform at the Joyce Foundation, called the growth of CVI the most obvious trend in recent years within gun violence prevention philanthropy.

The White House’s CVI collaborative is the most prominent example of funders coming together behind the strategy, which involves engagement and outreach to the specific set of at-risk individuals — usually, a small number of young men and youth — who either perpetrate or are targeted in the vast majority of a given community’s violent crime. Philanthropic backers include the California Endowment and the Annie E. Casey, Ford, Joyce, Kellogg, Kresge and MacArthur foundations, as well as Arnold Ventures, the Emerson Collective, the Heising-Simons Foundation and Microsoft.

While the CVI collaborative does focus on a limited set of geographies, it’s a good example of how funders can help steer government entities and budgets toward prevention strategies.

All of this is important work, and cause for hope. What philanthropy hasn’t been able to do, however, is make enough of a difference in the realm of democratic civil society to break the decades-long political stalemate holding back legislative action on guns. Until something changes there, we’re unlikely to see an end to tragedies like Buffalo and Uvalde.