Over the past year, since Trump’s electoral victory, an intense debate has been underway about the future of the Democratic Party.
This is the kind of soul-searching you’d expect from a party that has lost ground over the past three presidential elections in the vast majority of U.S. counties, including among many voters of color, and is also experiencing a “voter registration crisis,” along with record-low public approval.
Meanwhile, though, where’s the self-examination and debate within left-of-center philanthropy? I’ve seen very little of that over the past year.
Why should we expect such probing from nonpartisan 501c3 grantmakers? Because funder-backed nonprofit groups have played a key role in shaping the Democratic Party’s policy positions and brand over the past decade. They’ve also worked tirelessly to engage voters and shift who gets heard in elections.
Clearly, things have not worked out as expected. Now, nearly everything that left-of-center philanthropy cares about is under attack as a result of Trump’s return to office.
Given this asteroid strike, you’d think that by now — over a year later — the philanthrosphere would be awash with white papers explaining what went wrong, along with blueprints for long-term grantmaking strategies to help turn things around.
That is not the case.
A missing public debate
To be sure, there have been studies on some pieces of the puzzle. This includes an excellent report by the Freedom Together Foundation that offered a strong, if implicit, critique of why philanthropy’s efforts to strengthen democracy have fallen short and how grantmakers can make gains by investing in “bigger we” organizing.
Still, if you’re looking for a deep cache of in-depth and rigorous analyses exploring why left-of-center funders have gotten their asses kicked, and what they should do now, you won’t find it.
I’m sure many difficult conversations have been happening behind closed doors as foundations, top donors and intermediaries consider their strategies going forward. It’s hard to assess the scope of such private dialogue, or how much it has spurred either serious rethinking or real accountability in the wake of a cataclysmic defeat.
Regardless, the lack of extensive public debate within liberal philanthropy on how we got here or what to do now is striking.
Why the relative silence?
One easy answer is that people are too busy with crisis management to dwell on past missteps or map out future strategies. They have been focused on surviving the Trump 2.0 onslaught, including through important efforts such as Unite in Advance and related steps by funders to protect both their grantees and themselves from the authoritarian threat. In addition, funders have catalyzed a wide range of emergency funding efforts to fill the gaps left by government cuts, with many foundations increasing their payout to meet these urgent needs. All this work has taken tremendous bandwidth.
I understand that. But at some point, left-of-center funders and their grantees will need to answer the two big questions: How did we get here? And what do we do now?
I’ve written extensively on both the first and second questions over the past year, offering my own answers.
Broadly, my critique is that many mainstream foundations have lacked a strong enough focus on power, leaving everything they care about at risk, as we’re seeing. Gates is a great example of that. Meanwhile, the progressive funders who do focus on power have failed to achieve the results they expected, raising hard questions about their assumptions and strategies. I’ve offered ideas for moving forward that reflect these critiques.
Are my analyses and prescriptions correct? I’m not entirely sure. This stuff is complicated, and I’m more than ready to reconsider any of the points I’ve made in the face of compelling counterarguments backed up by evidence. What’s so frustrating, though, is that such dialogue has been scarce, with some welcome exceptions, either in response to my arguments specifically or similar points made by others.
Business as usual
The big mainstream foundations are certainly interested in the power problem. How could they not be, as they watch elected leaders inflict so much damage on their causes and grantees? But what I’ve heard in conversations and seen in grants going out the door is that most major foundations have no intention of revamping how they operate to adapt to a radically changed political and media landscape. They’re unlikely to upend longstanding grantmaking models and program priorities, much less the sacrosanct goal of perpetuity, no matter how bad things get.
That’s their choice. But I have yet to hear a persuasive argument from a mainstream foundation leader, either publicly or privately, as to why business as usual, with a few tweaks, will deliver the long-term results funders want in the America we now have. Maybe such arguments exist, outlined in internal strategic plans, but I haven’t seen them.
The unwillingness, so far, of major foundations to engage in public self-examination of how well their approaches have fared over the past decade and how lessons learned might inform future decisions isn’t surprising. Because these institutions are unaccountable to external stakeholders, they don’t owe anyone an explanation for their actions. If they want to stick with more of the same, without defending this decision, they’re free to do so.
Some progressive funders, though, have been far more willing to publicly double down on their existing strategies, and defend that decision. Their arguments have been presented as moral imperatives — that at this perilous moment, with widespread attacks on vulnerable populations, funders need to lean even more heavily into social justice grantmaking that centers on race and gender, alongside appeals around equity and rights.
I certainly understand the sense of moral urgency here. What I haven’t seen, though, is a candid reckoning with how much the left has fallen out of sync with the working class, including growing shares of non-college voters of color.
The implications of this decade-long trend are alarming. There is a very real possibility that a MAGA-ified GOP can keep peeling away enough voters from traditional Democratic constituencies to win the White House well into the future and also control a majority of states, even as Republicans look likely to struggle in next year’s midterms.
The shrinking of the left-of-center coalition has occurred during the same period that funder-backed nonprofits have prioritized appeals around identity, equity and climate, helping move the Democratic Party further left in these areas than ever before. This shrinkage has also occurred despite record investments to expand the coalition by mobilizing “new American majority” voters.
What’s the argument?
Given how things have turned out, anyone arguing for doubling down on the progressive funding strategies of the past decade needs to answer an obvious question: Why is that likely to work?
Over the past year, I haven’t seen anybody answer that question with any measure of depth and rigor — starting with how such strategies can succeed in drawing enough working-class Americans back into the left-of-center coalition to reliably win governing power. (Maybe I’ve just missed such writings, so please send things my way!)
This lack of substantive engagement doesn’t inspire confidence. Progressive nonprofit leaders have often complained over the past year that some donors have abandoned them. I don’t know how true that actually is, based on grants and fundraising data. But if it is true, one reason may be that their organizations have failed to provide credible analyses of why things haven’t gone as expected, and how they plan to get different results going forward.
To wrap up, I’m not asking today for anyone to agree with my arguments on how we got here or what to do now. What I’m hoping for is that people will make stronger arguments for their own ideas. I’ll be more than happy to publish such pieces in Inside Philanthropy.
We’re in a bad situation here. Getting out will require deeper reflection on the past and more debate about the future than has occurred so far. Let’s get those conversations going.
