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When Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, the staff at the National Women’s Law Center was not prepared. As the Trump administration began enacting rules that affected everything from abortion access to equal pay, the law center found itself on the defensive. “There were so many fires burning all the time, it was difficult to prioritize and focus and remain effective,” says Emily Martin, the charity’s chief program officer.
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When Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, the staff at the National Women’s Law Center was not prepared. As the Trump administration began enacting rules that affected everything from abortion access to equal pay, the law center found itself on the defensive. “There were so many fires burning all the time, it was difficult to prioritize and focus and remain effective,” says Emily Martin, the charity’s chief program officer.
The organization is determined not to make the same mistake this time, Martin says. Since early this year, the law center has been engaging in scenario planning, envisioning its operating environment under various election outcomes. Those include preparing for the vastly different approaches of Trump and his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as examining possibilities if one political party has trifecta control — including the presidency and both chambers of Congress.
The law center has been planning internally and with partners. It has identified issues on which it would take a leading role, such as abortion, child care, and Title IX, while ceding leadership on additional issues to other progressive organizations.
“That moment of not being ready has definitely informed our planning this time around,” Martin says.
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Scenario planning is something that nearly all charities should do regularly — not just for elections, many nonprofit consultants say. Planning is especially important for events that could jeopardize the charity’s financial or programmatic stability — such as navigating the 2008-9 financial crisis or, more recently, surviving the harrowing early months of the Covid-19 pandemic. Regular planning helps organizations better respond to such shocks. Then when a crisis hits, nonprofits can think through different scenarios: If the recession is deep and lasts a long time, what steps will the charity take to conserve cash? How will the organization respond if the pandemic shuts everything down for six months? A year?
This election — coming at a time when polarization in the country is near an all-time high — is a significant event for much of the nonprofit world, particularly charities whose work had to shift dramatically in the first Trump administration. Yet even as organizations prepare for another round of Trump, they also need to assess what a Harris administration would mean. In some areas, Harris’s policies aren’t yet fully developed, leaving open the potential for advocacy efforts to help shape her agenda.
Many conservative charities, meanwhile, are hoping for a Trump win and new policies that might better support their approach to solving social problems.
Scenario planning won’t look the same for every organization. How deep to go depends on how much the charity will be affected by the outcome of the election. A coalition of more than 60 immigration charities has been scenario planning — in person and online — for most of the past year. For many other nonprofits, especially those unlikely to be in the crosshairs of a new administration, planning might require little more than a 30-minute discussion for the charity’s board or senior managers.
Victoria Vranaisthe CEO of GlobalGiving, which recently went through a daylong scenario planning process with pro bono help from the consulting firm Dalberg. Charities can access many free templates for their own scenario planning, she says.
“It can sound daunting, but it doesn’t have to be fancy,” Vrana says. “It could be as simple as getting together a collection of people who think big and can brainstorm out of the box.”
Laura Lanzerotti, a partner at Bridgespan, says charities shouldn’t worry about weighing different outcomes with precise odds. “Use a common-sense approach,” she says. “Take a clear-eyed look at a few scenarios and really home in on a couple of implications.”
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Danger to Revenue
One important scenario to gauge is the risk of losing revenue — and that’s something that Gary Ivory, the CEO of Youth Advocate Programs Inc., is already dealing with. YAP, which provides community-based alternatives to youth incarceration, recently lost a $250,000 contract in the Texas county that includes Fort Worth. County judges terminated the contract because they thought the charity was soft on crime and they didn’t like its use of terms like “systemic racism.”
The politicization of YAP’s work is one reason that Ivory wants to diversify the charity’s revenue. YAP currently receives 91 percent of its revenue from federal, state, and local governments. Its strategic plan calls for eventually relying on philanthropy for 15 to 20 percent of its budget.
Ivory is concerned that Project 2025, the conservative policy document spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, is calling for changes to Medicaid, a strong source of support for the charity.
“We’re concerned about these potential negative implications,” Ivory says. “We are meeting with a lot of folks in philanthropy to get their support. We care about the financial stability of our programs.”
Some social-service organizations say a Trump win would be a welcome change. James Whitford is the founder of the True Charity, a network of organizations dedicated to ending poverty. He has criticized “handout charity” and says he’s excited that the Trump administration would likely turn to faith-based charities to address the homelessness crisis.
He also hopes to see a shift in policy on public-assistance programs. “Certainly if we were to see a more conservative administration, you’d have a shift toward implementing work requirements in welfare,” Whitford says.
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Calm Before the Storm
With a deadlocked presidential contest entering its final weeks, handicapping the odds of who will win might be a fruitless exercise. What’s more important for charities is grappling with the possible outcomes now, during a time of relative calm, says Trista Harris, a philanthropic futurist. Waiting to plan until after the election might lead to panic as the brain shifts into “fight or flight” mode, she says.
How to Get Started
Many consultants say all charities should engage in scenario planning, especially around high-stakes events like the upcoming election. Here are some tips to get started.
Take advantage of free resources. Consulting firms offer a number of free resources online, including a diagnostic tool from Bridgespan, a scenario-planning example from Freedman Consulting, and webinars from FutureGood about how to prepare for both a Trump and a Harris presidency.
Protect the core. If certain scenarios will likely result in a financial hit to a charity, identify in advance where cuts can be made. “Be super clear about your core work,” says Trista Harris, a philanthropic futurist. “Often charities can become franken-nonprofits, as they drift away from their sweet spot. During times of crisis, that’s when organizations fall apart. You need to say, ‘Here’s the actual center — here are the most important services we provide.’”
Focus on the scenarios that matter to your organization. Laura Lanzerotti, a Bridgespan consultant, recently suggested a scenario-planning exercise related to the national election to a charity she works with that focuses on affordable housing in California. But the charity said local election-related outcomes were far more important to its future, including an upcoming vote on a bond measure.
“I don’t think everybody has to do this a certain way,” Lanzerotti says. “But just asking yourself the question can be valuable. There’s probably very little risk that everyone’s doing too much scenario planning.”
Consider policy changes that may affect the entire sector. Vice President Harris’s proposals to tax the ultra-wealthy may not land on many individuals, but they would affect a broad swath of charities, since the rich do a disproportionate share of the giving, says Sandra Swirski, a lobbyist who focuses on federal tax policy that affects philanthropy. “Itdoes make a difference,” she says. “Paying more to the government means you have less in your own pocket.”
Meanwhile, Independent Sector and other advocacy organizations focused on nonprofit issues will continue to push for a change in tax policy that would incentivize all people to give to charity. Currently only about 11 percent of households itemize their taxes — which means they’re the only ones getting a tax break from their giving.
“This is something that truly does unify the sector,” says Jeffrey Moore, Independent Sector’s chief strategy officer.
Planning for election outcomes is not a political statement. A 2023 study conducted for Independent Sector found that far fewer charities are doing advocacy work than 20 years ago,in part because they wrongly fear that taking part in debates on policy matters would put their nonprofit status in jeopardy. The same confusion about what is permissible may hold some charities back from election-related scenario planning, Moore says.
“Nonprofits are pretty clear on what they cannot do,” Moore says. “But they are less clear on what they can in fact do, and therefore they just don’t do.”
“There is a creative part of your brain that is harder to access when you’re in crisis mode,” Harris says. “Doing scenario planning before that big change means you can have some distance. You can look at things thoughtfully, without panic and emotion.”
InterAction, a membership organization that advocates for greater U.S. foreign aid, has been meeting with its members to identify key areas of focus regardless of the election outcome, says Lisa Bos, a vice president at the charity. Those include advocating for greater appropriations, reforming the aid process to get more money to local organizations, and protecting space for civil society.
“One of the challenges we would likely face, particularly in a Trump administration, is a lot of different things we can react to,” Bos says. “We wanted to make sure we had a degree of consensus across our membership so that we’re not playing Whac-a-Mole and trying to fight a bunch of different fires. If we don’t focus, we’re not going to have that impact that we want to have.”
If Harris wins, InterAction may try to work with the administration to inform its approach, since Harris hasn’t focused heavily on foreign policy to date. “Is there an opportunity to influence what her views look like?” Bos says.
In their planning, many progressive organizations are focusing most heavily on the Trump scenario. Nonprofit leaders say that’s rational because for them the risks of disruption are far greater under Trump.
Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center, says immigration groups have been meeting for the past year to coordinate a response that can match the effect on immigrants that she expects from a Trump administration.
“What we are expecting is nothing short of a very radical and extreme, deeply anti-immigrant agenda that will terrorize and disrupt and destroy communities all over the country,” Matos says.
If Trump wins, he will also benefit from courts and judges that are friendlier to conservative ideas than in his first term, says Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth. Pica says the first Trump administration was “very sloppy from a legal perspective,” enabling lawyers at Friends of the Earth and elsewhere to pursue legal angles to protect the environment. Pica expects much tougher legal fights if Trump wins in November.
‘Bite-Sized and Manageable’
For many nonprofits, one downside of focusing heavily on a Trump win was raised by a participant in a Bridgespan webinar on scenario planning earlier this year: How do you make sure you’re not just doomsday planning?
Conor McKay, a vice president with Freedman Consulting who participated in the webinar, said that forgoing scenario planning can make less ideal outcomes seem even scarier. Without planning, the future becomes a black box.
“When you have more information, it makes it more bite-sized and manageable,” McKay said during the webinar. “It makes things feel less overwhelming.”
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Another antidote to doomsday thinking is figuring out ways to continue to move the mission forward, even with an unwanted election outcome.
“It’s important to remember that people cannot constantly be operating in response to catastrophe,” says Kindred Motes, who leads a social-impact consulting firm. “I always advise our clients: Don’t only frame your work as being what you’re against. You have to proactively state what you are for, and you have to paint a vision of what you’re working toward. … All of those things can exist even when the situation is dire and challenging.”
Martin, the chief program officer at the National Women’s Law Center, says that as part of its planning, the organization is exploring ways it can continue to do affirmative work even during a Trump administration — either by working with state legislatures or by releasing narratives about the charity’s impact. “It’s very easy to get sucked into just being 100 percent reactive to whatever the crisis is,” she says.
Of course, bad news on the programming front can be good news for fundraising, as supporters get energized and turn to “rage giving” to vent their frustration. Motes says charities should sharpen their fundraising pitches to donors in advance of the election so they’re ready if individuals respond emotionally to the outcome.
“In 2016, there was a surge of individual giving from people who felt compelled to respond,” Motes says. “Tapping into that momentum is a really vital and essential strategy.”
Prepared charities might also be able to enlist a new generation of volunteers. Trump’s efforts to roll back environmental regulations during his presidency means a new generation of young people — those who are more likely to be passionate about the climate and environmental justice — will be motivated to get involved if he wins in November.
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“They will be looking for somewhere to put their energy,” says Eva Hernandez, executive director of Mosaic, an environmental grant maker. “We want to ensure that organizations and networks are prepared to absorb and train and mobilize potentially huge numbers of people.”
Stress and Security
Ahead of this highly polarized election, not all planning is around programmatic and financial issues. Many charities are worried about the impacts on their employees — including burnout and safety risks.
A spot check of 19 charities by Motes’s firm, KM Strategies Group, found that eight said a second Trump presidency would pose a “significant risk” of staff burnout and retention issues.
Although Trump left office less than four years ago, high turnover rates in the nonprofit world mean many organizations have less institutional memory of his first administration than one might expect.
Martin says relatively few employees at the law center were on staff when Trump won in 2016, leading to anxiety about what another Trump win might mean. In September, the charity held an all-staff meeting in which veterans who had been around during that period talked about what the experience was like — the challenges, where the law center was able to have some success, and how simply reducing harm was itself a win at times.
“That’s part of the conversation,” Martin says. “How can we support staff, and think about creating a community within the organization that enables people to show up and do their best work?”
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Many charities are making plans related to safety — including protecting their buildings, computer systems, and even their employees. Pica of Friends of the Earth says environmental and racial-justice organizations need to think through security plans, including increasing protection against phishing and other attacks that may attempt to get at charity data.
Victor Valentine, executive director of the National Human Services Assembly, says the potential for civil unrest and violence is a major concern among the CEOs in his network. Valentine says his organization is bringing those CEOs together virtually to brainstorm ways they can keep their employees safe.
“It’s an unknown,” Valentine says. “Regardless of who wins, will there be some level of backlash?”
The attack on the Capitol following the 2020 election has many Washington organizations weighing security — and government shutdowns — in their planning around the election.
The Greater Washington Community Foundation has been a “philanthropic first responder” in previous crises — from 9/11 to the recent pandemic, says Darius Graham, its managing director of community investment. The charity has been holding meetings with other Washington funders to discuss election scenarios that would require philanthropic aid. In addition to preparing for civil unrest, the foundations are creating plans to address large-scale layoffs. Trump has talked about replacing or relocating thousands of federal workers.
Alive, a safety net charity in Alexandria, Va., a D.C. suburb, is already stockpiling additional food and essential items, in much the same way it would prepare for a hurricane, says Jennifer Ayers, its executive director. She fears that disruption or a disputed election could lead to a federal government shutdown similar to the one that lasted more than a month in 2018 and 2019.
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“If something happens, and the government shuts down, it will affect our clients, who are mostly in the service industry,” Ayers says. “Federal employees won’t be going out for haircuts or to buy lunch. There is a trickle-down effect we’re worried about.”
Grant Makers Should Plan, Too
Foundations throughout the country should be doing their own scenario planning, experts say. In 2016, many took a wait-and-see approach, which contributed to the faltering initial response from charities when Trump took office.
“We’re calling on those who are in a position to give to give more,” says Matos of the National Immigration Law Center. “Under a Trump administration, we’ll have to double or triple the amount of our legal staff.”
“Now is not the moment to keep your powder dry,” Motes says. “It’s much easier to have an upstream solution than later to have a downstream response when everything is more fractured.”
For some charitable efforts that have sprung up in the Biden years, the election could be existential. Hyphen, an intermediary nonprofit that has helped the Biden administration run public-private partnerships, would likely see a continued flow of deals in a Harris administration but might see its work grind to a halt under Trump.
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Hyphen incubated the Initiative for Inclusive Entrepreneurship, an effort announced in 2022 by Harris to expand access to capital for small businesses owned by people of color. Hyphen has a small team and is a sponsored project of Panorama Global, not a separate 501(c)(3), so it can scale down with ease if needed, says Archana Sahgal, Hyphen’s founder and president.
“I didn’t create Hyphen to be an institution that exists in perpetuity,” Sahgal says. “If there’s no role, the team will do other things. We’re not going to force public-private partnerships.”
Ben is a senior editor at the Chronicle of Philanthropy whose coverage areas include leadership and other topics. Before joining the Chronicle, he worked at Wyoming PBS and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Ben is a graduate of Dartmouth College.