Nonprofit Leaders Must Help to Restore the Nation’s Democratic Principles

By MARK ROSENMAN

Our democracy is in trouble, well beyond the contested outcome of the presidential election, and nonprofit leaders are partly to blame.

The nonprofit world has failed to demand that the nation’s broken system of campaign financing be fixed, and it has fallen down in its duty to motivate people to be responsible citizens in a democratic society. What’s more, the charity world has not been free from the corrosive influence that has undermined the nation’s electoral process: the power of money, which has made nonprofit groups less charitable and more commercial.

Never has the need for philanthropic leadership been more apparent than in this month’s national elections. Only about half of eligible voters went to the polls, a rate that was even lower than in the 1992 presidential election. And this year’s turnout was weak despite repeated warnings from both major political parties that every vote would count.

Many reasons exist for the election’s failure to animate voters, not the least of which were the presidential candidates themselves. Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore offered little vision of national purpose and no clear call to the broader public good. They both ran mercantile campaigns that appealed to the self-interest of narrow segments of the public.

The presidential contenders and other candidates for national office collectively raised and spent a record amount of money, underscoring the fact that they depend more on the ad-buying dollars of corporate donors and on other wealthy contributors than they do on committed individuals working at the grassroots level. Our system no longer honors “one person, one vote,” but rather champions “many dollars, much influence.” Campaign contributions don’t simply help to get candidates elected, they buy access and influence for the contributors once the politicians are in office.

Clearly, many charities want a change in our money-centered electoral system. In a recent online survey of about 1,000 nonprofit groups conducted by four Washington public-policy and education organizations (including the Union Institute’s Office for Social Responsibility, which I direct), campaign-finance overhaul ranked highest on a list of policy recommendations for the next president.

The corrupting influence of money has long raised profound issues for nonprofit groups. Most disturbingly, it has placed nonprofit organizations at a disadvantage in representing the public interest in legislative and executive chambers, and sometimes even in judicial ones. When charity leaders speak for the people and causes they represent, their message often has been overwhelmed by financial contributors and their powerful lobbyists.

Still, many charities, and the nonprofit world as a whole, have long failed to challenge this corruption of our democratic system. In fact, many charitable groups have refused to join the debate, afraid to antagonize politicians who benefit from the status quo.

Another reason that nonprofit leaders have avoided the campaign-finance debate is that it is difficult for them to envision effective reform that would not impinge on their own advocacy rights. The problem is that any meaningful change must curtail “soft money” political contributions by wealthy donors and halt the creation of nonprofit organizations to serve blatantly partisan purposes. Nonprofit leaders fear that if policy makers crack down on such tactics, their own legitimate advocacy work will be curtailed too.

Granted, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between advocacy efforts by legitimate charities and the cynically disguised tactics of political operatives. But that should encourage nonprofit leaders to look for new ways to advance the public interest.

To help steer the U.S. political system back on track and make nonprofit groups more effective advocates, charities and foundations must encourage civic engagement and advance both the values and the skills of democracy.

It is not sufficient for nonprofit leaders simply to talk about civil society and social capital. They need to create ways for people to become effective agents who can help not only themselves but others too. Instead of putting volunteers to work only raising money and handling administrative tasks, for example, charities also should help them to be more active citizens and advocates for public policies that will help to advance the organizations’ work.

Likewise, the nonprofit world must reverse the trend of defining problems ever more narrowly and setting specialized groups in competition with one another. Charities must search for more comprehensive ways of framing issues and describing their missions. Instead of trying to appeal to carefully selected segments of the population with slick, targeted fund-raising campaigns, they need to encourage broader engagement by all members of society.

Nonprofit groups also need to foster environments in which neighbors can talk to one another directly about problems that move them personally.

All of that requires nonprofit groups to recommit themselves to the fundamental values of caring, justice, trust, and altruism. Those values are necessary if the nation is to promote social cohesion and replace commercial activity and the market as the defining forces in our democracy.

Such a change requires the nonprofit world to help to educate citizens about civic responsibility, encourage cooperation among competing charitable organizations, forge coalitions and joint campaigns on social issues, and even promote mergers among like-minded charities.

Helping to rebuild the nation’s commitment to democratic ideals also requires that foundations ease up on demands that grantees produce easily measured, immediate results. Charities, especially social-service organizations, need time to develop methods to increase civic engagement while meeting human needs. Demands for short-range outcomes can undermine those efforts.

The need for the nonprofit world to focus its energies on renewing American democracy cannot be overstated. It is clear from the recent election that our political system is moving in the wrong direction. People are becoming more disengaged from public purposes and public life, and more polarized along demographic lines. We cannot look to electoral campaigns or government itself to reverse those trends. It is in the nonprofit world that our salvation must be found.

Mark Rosenman is a vice president of the Union Institute, a Cincinnati-based university. He oversees its Office for Social Responsibility in Washington.