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How should grant makers concerned about the health of democracy in America respond to the 2024 election? One response would be for them to countermobilize and once again join the vanguard of the resistance to Trumpian populism. This has been the strategy that many philanthropists and grantees working to defend democracy have pursued during the rise, fall, and resurgence of Donald Trump’s political fortunes.
Now that he and his party have prevailed decisively in the 2024 elections, we can expect calls for philanthropists to fund the resistance to intensify. However, the demonstrated staying power of Trump and the Republican Party that he has remade along populist lines — despite billions in philanthropy devoted to opposing their agenda — suggests this is not a winning strategy.
This defensive approach, in which philanthropy underwrites resistance to Trumpian populism in the elusive quest to protect democracy against itself, has several limitations:
First, it provides MAGA enthusiasts with nearly perfect foils — wealthy and unaccountable elites based in blue coastal enclaves financing efforts to counter the people’s will.
Second, it accelerates polarization by fomenting an apocalyptic, fear-based politics in which the population is starkly divided into friends and enemies, darkly mirroring the Manichaean worldview of the most vociferous populists.
Third, it embroils philanthropy in the near-term political fray, where it enjoys little comparative advantage. It thus generates mounting opportunity costs in the form of forgone longer-term investments in the fertile expanse of our civic culture and infrastructure — areas where philanthropy is uniquely positioned to make a difference.
Fourth, it overlooks the negative effects of the illiberalism on the left that have come to predominate in and emanate from a range of institutions and professions in civil society, including philanthropy.
Fifth, it does not begin to take responsibility for polarization in our public life, which philanthropy has helped fuel by funding high-octane, all-or-nothing advocacy and activism across a range of policy areas. This approach has hampered policy settlements on issues such as climate, education, immigration, and policing — further stoking the fires of populism.
Responsible Pluralism
For philanthropy, addressing populism requires adopting a proactive and engaging stance rather than a defensive one. The emphasis should not be on protecting democracy from populism but on practicing and promoting responsible pluralism. By this I mean that grant makers have a responsibility to preserve and enhance the institutions and culture of democracy in America, even as they use them to advance their goals. By meeting this obligation, philanthropists can ensure their actions hold up under the appropriate democratic scrutiny. As Spider-Man would say: With great power comes great responsibility.
I describe six steps philanthropists can take to practice responsible pluralism in a recent report for the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University titled “Taking Democracy for Granted: Philanthropy, Polarization, and the Need for Responsible Pluralism.” Importantly, the steps do not entail grant makers changing what causes they support. Rather, the opportunity and obligation for funders is to support pluralism in civil society by changing how they make grants. These steps include:
Admitting polarization is a problem. Philanthropists need to assume their fair share of responsibility for the health of the democracy into which they have poured all that support for activism and advocacy. Put differently, they need to recognize that polarization is not someone else’s mess to clean up.
Practicing pluralism from the inside out. Funders have made great strides in hiring more demographically diverse staff and advisers. But political and ideological diversity? Not so much — even though it is essential to understanding how to foster change in a country that is a thorough mix of red, blue, and purple.
Building expansive and varied coalitions. By using a pluralistic approach to enlisting a range of partners, including grantees and other funders, philanthropists increase their odds of assembling the broad majorities needed for systemic change. This also reduces the risks of blind spots and dogmatism that bedevil homogeneous and static coalitions.
Letting grantees take the lead. Grantees need unrestricted funding to pursue their strategies as they see fit. When funders micromanage their approach, it imposes a uniformity of thought and limits timely and creative responses to new developments.
Thinking in decades, not years. Funders routinely overestimate how much impact they can have in one to two years and underestimate what’s possible to accomplish in one to two decades. Longer timelines allow for the assembly of broad coalitions and elevate goals beyond the cramped and polarized confines of an election cycle.
The sixth and final step — directly supporting democracy and pluralism through electoral reforms, bridge-building, depolarization, and civic infrastructure — is helpful but optional. Not all funders must take this step, although a critical mass is needed to have a sustained impact.
To be sure, responsible pluralism requires the vigilant safeguarding of civic space against mounting efforts to close it, regardless of which side of the political spectrum the attacks come from. The same is true when it comes to ensuring free and fair elections. But defending these essential ramparts can and often will coincide with losses on substantive policy matters, even the most important ones — and, indeed, defeats in elections themselves.
Democracy in America will prosper if the multifaceted pluralism built into the nation’s founding — and more fully realized over the course of its history — is reawakened, enabled, and defended. If that pluralism continues to be subordinated and diminished by polarization and populism, then all bets are off — for liberal democracy and philanthropy alike.
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