Party politics and constant Twitter barbs aside, the vast tidal changes in Washington are sweeping away decades of collaboration and interdependence that ties the U.S. government to America’s millions of nonprofits. While the news media is focusing on the latest squalls from the White House, the bigger storm is tracking on a path that may lay waste to the postwar order of nonprofit alliances that have made America a more liberal democracy.
Over the past few months, I’ve spoken to dozens of nonprofit and corporate leaders, philanthropists, foundation chiefs, and fellow consultants and professionals. Since January, there has been one constant thread in all these conversations: fear.
As the most radical administration of our lifetimes took charge of the largest enterprise on earth — and with it, the leadership of the national network of agencies and partnerships that creates the main engine of civil society in the United States and much of the wider world — the nonprofit world braced itself for significant change. But it didn’t anticipate such a broad campaign against the underpinnings of what nonprofit workers have long taken for granted.
In short, American civil society itself is under sustained attack.
And I don’t think we’re winning.
Even worse, few if any figures of national prominence have stepped forward to address this attack directly, organize a unified and interdependent defense, and gather the political and social willpower to mobilize nonprofits, foundations, philanthropists, corporate grant makers, social entrepreneurs, and others outside the government to oppose the destructive forces damaging the very organizational ties that bind American society.
To be sure, these cutting winds slice through the ranks of the hated “establishment” from ideologues on both the political right and left; this is not a season for defending institutions and organizations. It’s a season for tearing them down — often without any replacement at all.
Perhaps no better example is available than Tuesday’s announcement that the children of immigrants born in the United States, the so-called dreamers, will be deported in six months unless Congress acts in time to put an end to this administration’s cruelest act.
This is not to cast President Trump as a singular maniacal figure bent on destroying U.S. civil society. In truth, he’s part of a broad populist upwelling that devalues and distrusts institutions in general and nonprofits and the government in particular. Yet it’s impossible to ignore the intent. If you work in the nonprofit sphere and aren’t alarmed, then you’re either not paying attention or you don’t value the impact we all try to have. No matter what mission your organization focuses on, this administration and its adherents are taking dead aim at what you do every day.
A greatest-hits playlist is horrifying to anyone pursuing a stable and just society:
- The Muslim-centered travel ban singling out a religious minority.
- The ban on transgender Americans serving in the U.S. military.
- The draconian cuts to U.S. support for work of the United Nations.
- The open political association with white supremacists and equating their cause with that of civil-rights activists.
- Massive proposed cuts to U.S. social spending that will harm every social-service organization in the nation.
- The move away from civil-rights enforcement and criminal-justice overhaul in the Justice Department.
- The emptying out of the State Department, gutting of development assistance, and ending programs aimed at supporting social and economic justice for women and girls.
- Refusal to uphold vital aspects of the Affordable Care Act even after political defeat, possibly throwing the public health-care sector into chaos.
- Rolling back of environmental protection and climate-change policy, including opening public lands — and even designated national monuments — to development and energy exploration.
And there is so much more. Make no mistake: Taken together, this is a concerted offensive against the progress of American civil society.
Yet more alarming: That attack is working, piece by piece.
Nonetheless, nonprofits remain Balkanized and only occasionally effective, and we almost obsessively avoid the very political arena that is deciding the future of nonprofits.
There are exceptions. The coalition that successfully fought the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and the potential loss of coverage for millions of Americans did bring together nonprofits, member organizations, think tanks, and other civil-society organizations into a sharp and effective network with government officials that, for now, preserved an important part of our thin public health-care system.
Building a Connected Network
Since World War II, the center of civil society in the United States has been the federal government, sustained by a social safety net paid for with tax revenue and buoyed by the roughly 2 percent of gross domestic product contributed by American individuals to registered charities each year.
Through Republican and Democratic administrations, boom times and recession, scandal and war, those bonds between nonprofits and government at all levels have mostly held firm; indeed, the co-dependence and shared interest of the public and private wings of liberal civil society have been growing.
It is manifestly an imperfect union and does tend to sometimes overvalue private money in the public arena, including corporate power and the influence of many philanthropists interested in policy.
Yet that combination has also moved us forward — sometimes in fits and starts — on the key social and cultural issues of the age: race and gender and sexual orientation; immigration status; justice reform and civil rights; economic fairness and educational opportunity.
Progress in each of these areas is slow, sometimes plodding, and very often conflicted. Yet the willingness to engage in public, to commit funds, to create programs, to mount campaigns, and to take to the streets when necessary has created a framework of the possible.
The frustratingly slow pace of democratic progress, the time and treasure required for success, the years of organizing and policy work and campaigning — these are factors that slow the advance of a more liberal society. But they’re also the features that require the involvement of millions of people — voters and activists and nonprofit professionals and government employees. That connected network has a high social tensile strength — the more strands, the more durable it is.
What if those strands came apart?
It is too easy for Americans to point to other societies where either oligarchs reign and personal freedom is diminished or the public system breaks down completely and disease, starvation, and violence take hold. Yet the stakes are that high.
An Existential Threat
What distinguishes the United States as the oldest representative democracy is not just our financial strength but our investment of those resources in civil society. The business of America is not just business; it’s figuring out how to solve big problems together.
Two days after last November’s election, the philanthropy historian Benjamin Soskis argued in a Chronicle opinion article that “philanthropy must serve not as an instrument of accommodation but as an agent of resistance.”
Yet we continue to act as if this is a single tornado rather than a thousand-year storm, despite the harsh evidence in our midst.
Personally, it’s taken some time for me to come to this conclusion: As an analyst of the nonprofit world, I’ve picked up my pen many times only to lay it down again in reaction to (or horror at) the latest outage, the newest White House drama, last night’s crazy tweet. We cannot be distracted from the overall truth: This is a moment of existential threat to nonprofits, to the progress we’ve made and network we need to move forward. Too few are willing to step up and say that publicly. Now is the time for major philanthropists and nonprofit leaders to speak with a voice of opposition and strength. We may not get another chance.
Tom Watson is president of CauseWired, a consulting firm that advises nonprofits. He is a regular columnist for The Chronicle of Philanthropy.