We have reached the end of what feels like the longest 100 days in memory. If, like me, you’re grasping for solutions amid the relentless Trump-fueled horror show, I have a suggestion: Take a moment to contemplate the famous decades-long construction of the Sagrada Família — the Catholic church in Barcelona, Spain. The architect, Antoni Gaudí, worked on the project for more than four decades, starting in 1882, when he was 31. The Sagrada Familia Foundation has said it hopes to finish the building next year — the centennial of Gaudí’s death.
I was lucky enough to visit the cathedral a few years ago and was awed by its beauty — the soaring ceilings and breathtaking stained-glass windows. But beyond this stunning work of art, Gaudí left us with a perfect illustration of what’s known as “cathedral thinking” — the idea that even as the first bricks of great cathedrals were laid, builders like Gaudí recognized that construction would never be finished in their lifetimes. They knew that the next generations of builders, with their revised plans and new technologies, would complete the work.
Cathedral thinking focuses on building for future generations and prioritizing long-term benefits over immediate gratification. Climate activist Greta Thunberg applies the concept to fighting climate change: “Avoiding climate breakdown will require cathedral thinking. We must lay the foundation while we may not know exactly how to build the ceiling.” Cathedral thinking has also helped me consider how to respond to President Trump’s first 100 days — and plan for the next 1,362. Philanthropy needs to reconsider how it’s doing business now and focus on what it will take for new generations to thrive.
Historically, those of us in the philanthropy world have clung to foundation endowments as a ballast for future generations. We give away 5 percent of endowments annually and replenish them each year with interest payments — allowing us to maintain the funds to address societal needs — presumably into eternity. Why stop doing what we’ve been doing for so long? Because given the current level of crisis, this approach is wildly inadequate.
Rather than hold on to the 5 percent rule, Dimple Abichandani, author of the just-released A New Era of Philanthropy, calls on foundations to allocate resources based on their mission, values, and the realities of the moment. As a philanthropic adviser, Abichandani has helped dozens of foundations and their trustees understand that they can’t rely on a calculator to determine how much to spend. Instead, good spending decisions result from strategically examining numerous factors, one of the most important of which is what’s at stake in the present time.
Laying the Bricks
In other words, we need to consider what kind of cathedral we’re building today. Gaudí wanted to create a beautiful monument to his God. I want my grandchildren and yours to have a planet they can live on and a multiracial democracy in which they can thrive. How do we start such a huge project when we have so little idea about what is coming next? How do we build what we can and prepare to hand the project off to future generations? I think the bricks we need to lay look something like this:
Fight our fight, not theirs. Attacks on the nonprofit sector are part of the Trump administration’s attempts to consolidate power and distract from their efforts to dismantle democracy. They have no interest in the critical role nonprofits or foundations play in our nation. They can’t be convinced of our value since they lack a positive vision of a civil society.
We need to fight back on our own terms by creating and widely disseminating powerful narratives about the work nonprofits do to strengthen communities — and the risks of taking away the services they provide for children, the elderly, veterans and so many more. We need to come together as a sector to forcefully speak out about why the work each of us does matters and why it must be protected.
Meet the flood with a flood. One lesson I’ve learned during these first 100 days is that the act of overwhelming people is itself an effective strategy. The scope, volume, and cruelty of the actions coming out of the administration make it nearly impossible to develop and maintain a thoughtful response. Retreat is a natural response to the nonstop barrage. But what if instead we met the flood of need with a flood of resources and reconsidered the purpose of our endowments? What if, as Abichandani suggests, we focused on how best to meet our missions at a moment when our country and planet face existential threats?
We might start by studying how others are doing it. The Marguerite Casey Foundation announced last week that it will increase its giving to $130 million this year in response to Trump administration policies — up from $23 to $57 million since 2019.
What can the rest of us learn from how the foundation made that decision? What will it take for us to add a flood of our own dollars to address the tidal wave of need?
Stay flexible. The administration has set its sights on advocacy groups, universities, and foundations, and Congress is considering tax proposals the could remove the 501(c)(3) status of many of these entities. In response, grant makers will need to be more flexible about how they do their work and what they fund, including being open to funding organizational structures that fall outside of their typical comfort zones. Nonprofit leader and observer Thaddeus Squire suggests taking a hard look at funding non-501(c)(3) organizations, such as cooperatives, B-Corps, and even small businesses, as well as those with informal structures like mutual aid groups and volunteer networks.
Stop making excuses. One excuse for inaction I often hear from my philanthropic colleagues is that our support can’t replace government funding. Philanthropic dollars will never fill every hole this administration is drilling.
That is indisputably true. And it is equally true that we should not have to do the work of the government. But here we are, and this is not a reason to throw up our hands. As author Rebecca Solnit said early on in these 100 days: “The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything, and everything we can save is worth saving.” Who better than those of us charged with redistributing wealth to take on the task of saving whatever we can?
Spread resources far and deep. We don’t get to make a choice between supporting our current grantees and addressing the biggest threats to our democracy. We must do both. We need to do all we can to help grantees continue their work — and then do more. Our individual foundations don’t need to live forever. We can start building that beautiful cathedral today — moving money from endowments to critical institutions so they can stay alive now and shift and grow into the future.
As horrible as these 100 days have felt, those of us who work in philanthropy are fortunate. We have the resources at our disposal to make a meaningful difference. I’ll leave you with these hopeful words from Mandy Van Deven, the founder of Both/And Solutions and an expert on the power of narrative:
“A world of justice, care, and belonging lies on the other side of this period of lawlessness, cruelty, and destruction, and funders have the capacity to decide how long this moment will last and whose version of the future comes next. More than that, philanthropy has a responsibility to catalyze its creation.”
