For many nonprofit and foundation leaders, the focus on what is to come after Donald Trump takes the presidential oath of office has been policy-oriented. What will happen to tax policies that encourage charitable giving? Or to the mission of groups that work on the environment, women’s issues, civil liberties, immigrants’ rights, domestic and international security, and so many other vital causes?
What has been overlooked is the danger to charities posed by Mr. Trump’s belief in strongman leadership, a view he shares with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a figure our new president much admires. Charities will need to be strategic in the face of such beliefs, and to be on the alert for challenges to the First Amendment — the right to speak out and to freely associate that undergirds the entire nonprofit world.
People have much less confidence in Donald Trump’s abilities than they had in predecessors Barack Obama and George W. Bush, and public faith in him is dropping as the inauguration nears. Yet the incoming administration has claimed an electoral mandate, a justification for strongman leadership that is based on false assertions of massive voter fraud. In reality, Mr. Trump lost the popular vote by nearly 2.9 million votes, more than 2 percent of the ballots cast. He won the Electoral College as a result of only 75,000 votes spread out in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
It is important to remember these facts as a strongman leader, aided by the Republican-dominated Senate and House, pursues his policy plans aggressively. Many of those efforts may well belie or counter fundamental values and principal goals of charities and foundations.
Big Lies
Like Mr. Putin, President-elect Trump bullies his opponents and encourages such behavior in others. He aggressively quashes dissent and tells big lies with little regard for the truth. Although intelligence agencies and others agree that the Kremlin worked to help Mr. Trump win the election, Mr. Trump is protecting Russia and himself by suggesting that the intelligence briefing he received said those efforts had no effect.
This Trump-Putin collusion, and their affinity as strongman leaders, presents a real danger for nonprofits well beyond national-security concerns. Mr. Putin has created an oligarchy where the very wealthiest rule. Particularly disturbing is that the Russian president’s popularity among Republicans has grown by more than 50 percent, rising with astounding speed as Mr. Trump began promoting him.
Donald Trump emulates Vladimir Putin by appointing billionaires and others of great wealth to high-placed government positions, including cabinet posts. The U.S. government’s own watchdog agency said it is unprecedented that the Republicans were trying to ram through Mr. Trump’s nominees before complete information is filed for background checks and ethics investigations.
While Mr. Trump absurdly insists that as president he cannot have any conflicts of interest because he is exempt from some laws, he fails to mention or acknowledge constitutional dictates. It is already clear that he, his family, and his cronies — the new American plutocracy — do not mind being seen as corrupt.
In fact, when Walter M. Shaub Jr., head of the tiny Office of Government Ethics, expressed concern about the confirmation timetable and the extent of Mr. Trump’s announced break from his business empire, congressional Republicans called him to a closed-door hearing and threatened the office’s funding. Reince Priebus, Mr. Trump’s White House chief of staff, warned Mr. Shaub to “be careful” in what he said about the incoming president.
It seems that Mr. Trump and his allies want to be protected from criticism and dissent while accelerating the privatization of government in ways that serve corporations rather than people. Ben Carson, at his confirmation hearing for secretary of housing and urban development, even promoted corporate involvement in federal housing programs and would not rule out a President Trump personally profiting from them.
Room to Bully
Nonprofit organizations and foundations working for the common good are likely to find the president-elect’s actions troubling in several ways. Specific policy proposals that favor the wealthy at a cost to most ordinary people and the environment create one set of problems. More general efforts to turn government services over to corporations so that they might be profitable create another set of difficulties. And a strongman government that might bully and undermine the nonprofit world the way Mr. Putin has in Russia creates yet another set of fundamental problems for philanthropy and democracy.
If American nonprofits think of themselves as more secure and constitutionally protected than their Russian counterparts, they are wrong. The Supreme Court has already ruled that government can restrict the free speech and actions of any charitable organization it subsidizes. The court previously declared tax exemption itself a subsidy. This means Mr. Trump has the latitude to bully charities if he chooses.
Nonprofit efforts to serve people and the planet — and to protect themselves — depend in great part on organizations’ capacity to spread truth and spur compassion so that both public policy and personal actions work to make things better for all of us. The price of silence, of keeping a low profile and hoping that the bully will pass by, is to accede to failure.
Charities must increase their capacity to pursue advocacy work, not run from it. Doing so means learning to operate in ways that might close traditional divides. Nonprofits and grant makers should place a priority on pitching ideas, and pitching their own organizations, with unifying themes.
Common Ground
But everyone involved in the nonprofit world must also understand that when fighting for the common good, disagreements do not arise because too many people are evil or mean-spirited, no matter what side of a controversial issue (or presidential campaign) they might take. Nonprofits need to reach out to those who think they are never seen and that their concerns are ignored, and help them collaboratively shape and lead advocacy and organizing work that will improve their lives and those of others.
One good example of this has been the Project on Government Oversight’s work to involve a range of nonprofits in good-government advocacy. In the face of congressional Republicans’ egregious attempt to weaken enforcement of Capitol Hill ethics rules that rein in cronyism and lobbying excesses, advocacy groups quickly mobilized the public to deluge the House of Representatives with calls and emails. The flood had elected officials scrambling to reverse the ill-considered move long before President-elect Trump tweeted his own opinion on the matter.
The popular outcry seems to have bridged differences among Trump voters, mainstream Republicans, and those who opposed Mr. Trump’s election. It demonstrates the possibility of effective organizing and public action when issues are framed in ways that evoke feelings of decency and fairness and a conviction that abuse, disrespect, and corruption by the powerful must be moderated.
And it shows how the nonprofit world can go beyond fighting for compassionate and sound public policy — how it can stand up to bullying, self-serving leadership that seeks to undermine civil society and intimidate its way out of accountability. By helping people to do the right thing, charities and philanthropy can, as a friend of mine says, make America good again.
Mark Rosenman is a professor emeritus at Union Institute & University.
