The election of Donald Trump a year ago brought to the fore a movement that started building after America elected its first black president, Barack Obama. A crescendo of right-wing and often highly racialized hatred began to build in 2008 and is now at a loud din. Many nonprofits doing social-justice work are in the cross-hairs of direct attacks — and now so, too, is philanthropy.
The Center for Community Change, the organization I lead, helps low-income people, especially people of color, by helping them use their voices and organize to shape the policies and institutions that affect their lives. This commitment to making democracy real for vulnerable members of society means that in this environment, we regularly are the subject of fevered conspiracy theories and are targeted nearly every week.
Personally, I’ve been threatened with physical violence, called every name one could imagine and many you couldn’t, and stalked. A notable highlight was being the subject of Glenn Beck’s various misrepresentations and dog-whistle slurs at the peak of his popularity. He placed my picture on his famous blackboard of supposedly suspicious characters, as I recall right between Valerie Jarrett and Van Jones.
I share this not because my experience is unique but because it is not. My peers in social justice all experience this as an increasingly expensive “price of doing business,” one that occasionally flares into public view. My colleagues and I adapt, take new precautions, and devote increasing amounts of time to managing risk.
We have not shared this reality or its financial or psychological toll with the foundations and donors who support us. It is time to come out of the closet and have a real conversation about what’s going on and how to respond.
Publishing Donor Names
The latest strain of attacks on my organization made clear philanthropy’s crucial and evolving role in this new reality.
This fall, a reporter for a right-wing outlet obtained our unredacted 990s and published a list of our donors. My first reaction was bemusement — what is the news?
We proudly publish a list of our donors each year in our annual report, as do most nonprofits; private foundations are required to disclose their grants. And yet, this “news” bubbled into a minor right-wing sensation, quickly making it from the Washington Free Beacon to Breitbart and InfoWars to Fox News. The wave of hate it unleashed was, of course, part of the strategy.
Much of this is familiar — but the stakes of this particular kind of attack are very high. This time, the real targets were our donors. In the most perilous period for vulnerable people in my lifetime, the extent of the change we can achieve depends on the extent to which donors can be intimidated. So how philanthropy responds will be hugely consequential for social change in America.
I was moved by the levelheaded response of most of our donors and their steadfast support. They agreed that in this toxic environment, the attacks are a sign that what we do matters. But I also began to detect fear in exchanges with a few donors. Some voiced irritation at the distraction this episode caused for them as they (like we) had to deal with inquiries from the press, trustees, and others. A couple implied that we did something wrong and invited the attacks.
Efforts to intimidate foundations that are committed to social justice will likely increase. Though the substance of these attacks is likely to be overwrought and inaccurate, the real danger is a conscious or unintentional “flinch” on the part of donors — who may understandably wish to shield themselves from scrutiny or criticism.
We are in a titanic struggle for the soul of our nation. This is a time when it is increasingly hard for any institution in civil society to avoid taking sides — for or against inclusion and democratic practice and norms — and there are inevitably risks associated with taking those stands. Those risks pale in comparison, of course, with the risks that frontline activists and everyday people — especially immigrants, Muslims, people of color, women, and many others face every day.
Ask Grantees What They Need
All the more reason why philanthropic leaders must have hard conversations now with each other, with their trustees, and with their grantees and make conscious choices about how they’re going to show up and help their grantees prepare and respond. This is especially important for newer players in philanthropy, for whom some of these attacks are a new phenomenon.
What can philanthropy do?
First, foundation leaders can help support the management and systems nonprofits need to prepare for and weather inevitable storms, including the ability to handle crisis communications. And when the crises inevitably arrive, it’s now part of the job description of foundation leaders to ask their grantees how they can help. No organization or foundation should be left to fend for itself. Solidarity is crucial to the efficacy and well-being of the nonprofit world.
Second, grant makers should take public stands on issues without apology — as some did after President Trump took action to end, within six months from his announcement, the ability of immigrants brought to the United States as young children — the so-called Dreamers — to stay in the United States. They should also have explicit conversations with their grantees to demonstrate that they will actively encourage bold, public, and at times controversial leadership to defend democratic norms and vulnerable populations. This will require discussion about potential risks among foundation boards and associations that serve grant makers so that attacks surprise no one, and everybody involved is prepared to stand forthrightly behind the foundations’ work.
Third, foundations can direct substantially greater resources to make it easier for marginalized people to have a voice in the debates that affect their lives. For instance, efforts like the Safety Net Defense Fund, a pooled fund supporting grass-roots and policy groups at the state and local levels working to defend vital programs like food stamps and Medicaid, and the Defend Our Dreams campaign to response
Protecting Workers From Harm
Changing grant-making mechanisms so that foundations can be nearly as nimble and responsive as nonprofits must be these days — including being willing to give money to projects that fall outside of standard grants programs — has become more essential than ever.
The reasons for these changes in behavior became clear to us even before my organization faced the disclosure of our donor lists.
The Center for Community Change had gone through several rounds of review of our legal compliance, public-relations risks, and physical-safety protocols. We are spending more and more time helping our grass-roots partners working at the local level to deal with crises and risk management.
Small, grass-roots nonprofits that are unaccustomed to these kinds of attacks, or are less well prepared, with fewer resources to deal with them, face an existential threat. Building their capacity and supporting their leadership before they come under attack is crucially important.
Social-justice groups are already among the most poorly financed but most important pillars of civil society. That’s why we need the proactive and unapologetic support of philanthropy. As Sen. Jeff Flake, the Arizona Republican, reminded us in a speech to his Senate colleagues: “We must never regard as normal the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals.”
For philanthropy, this is a time for choosing — and a time for courage.
Deepak Bhargava is president of the Center for Community Change.