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April 23, 2025

Most U.S. Adults Give to Charity, but Young People Are Less Likely to Donate, Survey Finds

Fears of a “generosity crisis” have dogged nonprofit fundraisers for much of this century as they experienced precipitous drops in U.S. household donations. The results of a new poll suggest most Americans gave at least a little to some charities in the past year but offer mixed signals for those hoping to improve giving trends.

The survey, released Tuesday by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, found that about three-quarters of U.S. adults say their household contributed money to a charitable organization. But about one-quarter of respondents said their household had donated $0 to charitable organizations. Most Americans who donated said they gave $500 or less, far below “major gift” territory for even the smallest nonprofits.

The suggestion that many Americans gave anything, even if the totals were low, could be considered a promising sign looking ahead for a sector whipsawed by federal aid cuts and major funders’ relatively muted response. After all, the past year saw pocketbooks squeezed by the rising cost of living and everyday donor attention split by the persistent small-dollar fundraising appeals of a high-stakes presidential election.

But adults under age 45 were also more likely to say they donated no money in the last year — regardless of their level of income — raising the possibility that some younger generations may be less inclined to give to charity generally.

Americans Were Likeliest to Donate to Religious Organizations

U.S. adults were likeliest to say they donated to religious organizations or groups that help with bare necessities in the past year.

About 4 in 10 U.S. adults say they’ve donated to an organization that helps people in the U.S. who need food, shelter or other basic needs. A similar share say they’ve donated to a religious institution, such as a church, mosque or synagogue.

Some people say they trust their church best to use their money as intended. Florida resident Daniel Valdes said he donates whenever he has enough funds because “it’s just goodwill to help the disadvantaged.” He reported giving between $101 and $500 over the past year — including tithes while attending services at a local Catholic church.

“So, I feel I know where my contributions go,” said Valdes, 50. “They don’t go to a big corporation. I know they’re held locally and within the community.”

About 3 in 10 say they have donated to disaster relief organizations, and about one-quarter donated to animal care groups. Bethany Berry, 37, said donating became more important to her after she lost pets in the 2018 Camp Fire, which destroyed most of the homes in Paradise, Calif.

Berry reported donating between $51 and $100 over the past year. Some goes to pet rescue organizations. The rest goes to small-dollar requests in a mutual aid group on Facebook where she said members can ask for “anything, wants or needs.”

People like her who have experienced disasters understand how easy it is to “be in that position,” she said, and don’t want to watch others suffer.

“I’m not sure you can ever put enough back into the universe to compensate,” Berry said. “So, all you can do is try.”

Younger Americans Were Less Likely to Give — Even Those With Higher Incomes

Generational differences also emerged throughout the poll.

Younger adults were more likely than older adults to say they didn’t donate any money. About 3 in 10 adults under age 45 said they donated $0 over the past year, compared with about 2 in 10 adults age 45 or older.

That gap extended to other charitable behavior. About 8 in 10 adults age 60 or older said they donated food, clothing or household items in the past year, compared with about 6 in 10 adults under age 30.

The persistence of those differences as younger adults come into more money — either by making the difficult climb up the income ladder or through wealth transfers from baby boomers to their heirs — would spell trouble for nonprofits hoping to tap into the next generations’ bank accounts.

Household finances were likely playing at least a partial role. Low-income adults were more likely than higher-income adults to say they didn’t donate, and older adults are more likely to have the highest household incomes overall.

But there were hints that younger generations think differently about their personal obligation to give. Adults under age 45 were more likely than older adults to say that “people like them” have only a little responsibility or no responsibility at all to help people in the U.S. who are in need.

And even in higher-income brackets, younger adults were more likely to report donating no money, compared with older adults. That suggests younger adults may be less likely to make charitable gifts, regardless of their financial situation.

Georgia retiree Regina Evans, 68, said she’s just “an old lady that’s lived life” and learned that “what you give comes back to you.” She falls in the roughly 1 in 10 U.S. adults who reported donating more than $5,000.

Still, she said, she couldn’t give as much as she wanted because Hurricane Helene knocked two pine trees onto the house where she and her husband have lived for more than a decade.

Evans gives to her faith community — Augusta’s Tabernacle Baptist Church — and a local homeless shelter, like many respondents. Her household stepped up its contributions to Golden Harvest Food Bank when inflation left the pantry low on funds. Outside of monetary donations, she’s part of a network that provides secondhand professional attire and winter coats for young women and children.

Donations of food and clothing are also common, according to the poll, although volunteering is less widespread. The survey found that about 7 in 10 U.S. adults said they donated food, clothing or household items in the past year, while about 3 in 10 volunteered their time to a religious or secular charitable organization.

Evans said she keeps giving even when it “hurts” because she has relied on others for food and shelter during hardships, such as last fall’s storm, which still has her living in an apartment.

Such charitable behavior is “normal” to Evans — and she believes there are more likeminded people who are “generous of spirit.”

“It’s like a requirement for me. If you live in this place, you live in this world, you should give if you expect to receive,” Evans said. “It never comes back in the way that you expect, and it doesn’t come back dollar for dollar. But I can say with complete surety that every dollar that I’ve ever donated came back to me in a way that I could not count.”

Editor’s note: This article is part of a partnership the Chronicle has forged with the Associated Press and the Conversation to expand coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits. The three organizations receive support for this work from the Lilly Endowment. The AP is solely responsible for the content in this article.

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.

April 18, 2025

Can the IRS Revoke Harvard’s Tax-Exempt Status?

For more than a century, the majority of colleges and universities have not paid most taxes. The Revenue Act of 1909 excused nonprofits operating “exclusively for religious, charitable, or educational purposes” in order to continue acting in the public interest.

President Donald Trump is looking to challenge that designation, complaining that colleges and universities are “indoctrinating” their students with “radical left” ideas, rather than educating them. And he has decided to start with the 388-year-old Harvard University, one of the world’s most prestigious institutions of learning and the first college founded in the American colonies.

On Tuesday, he targeted Harvard University in a post on his social media site, questioning whether it should remain tax-exempt “if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting “Sickness?” Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!”

Tax-exempt status, which is decided by the Internal Revenue Service, means that these institutions do not pay certain kinds of taxes and that their donors receive a tax deduction when they make gifts. The rules they have to follow to maintain that status are set out in the tax code. We spoke with attorneys who specialize in nonprofit law and freedom of speech to try to answer questions about this challenge.

Does a university’s curriculum affect its charitable status?

In general, no. Colleges and universities have broad leeway to design the education they provide.

Genevieve Lakier, a First Amendment scholar at the University of Chicago Law School, said the U.S. Supreme Court has laid out four essential freedoms for colleges and universities — what to teach, how to teach it, who their students are, and who their professors are.

“That’s the irreducible core of academic freedom, and it is constitutionally protected in this country,” she said, adding that the government cannot threaten funding cuts or revoking a school’s tax status as punishment for its views or what the school teaches.

The First Amendment also protects the rights of other nonprofits to pursue their charitable missions under freedom of assembly, Lakier said, even if those missions are odious or the government does not like them.

Can the president ask the IRS to revoke a nonprofit’s tax-exempt status?

No, he is not supposed to, according to two nonprofit tax attorneys who wrote about a previous call from Trump to revoke the nonprofit status of colleges and universities.

In 1998, Congress passed a law that forbade federal officials from telling the IRS to investigate any taxpayer — an effort to increase trust in tax enforcement.

The attorneys, Ellen Aprill and Samuel Brunson, also pointed to legislation that forbade the IRS “from targeting individuals and organizations for ideological reasons,” after a controversy over how it treated Tea Party groups in 2013.

How does a nonprofit get and keep its tax-exempt status?

The IRS recognizes multiple reasons for a nonprofit to be exempt from paying many kinds of taxes, including pursuing charitable, religious or educational missions, among many other examples. The statute specifically names sports competitions, preventing cruelty to children or animals, and defending human or civil rights as exempt purposes.

Nonprofits can lose their tax-exempt status for things like improperly paying its directors, endorsing a political candidate or operating a business unrelated to its charitable mission.

In short, tax attorneys say nonprofits must operate “exclusively for charitable purposes,” which is a different standard than what the president referred to as “acting in the public interest.”

Phil Hackney, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh, said, “Long history and precedent suggest that Harvard and institutions of higher education are operating for educational purposes, which are considered charitable,” under the tax code.

He said it would be exceedingly difficult to make a case that a college or university was not operating for charitable purposes under current law. However, Edward McCaffery, who teaches tax policy at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, warned there is precedent for the IRS revoking the tax-exempt status of colleges that the government could lean on.

“I think to dismiss it out of hand as over-the-top bluster and that the administration has no power to unilaterally pursue it, I think that’s naive,” McCaffery said. “This could happen.”

Has the IRS ever stripped a college of its tax-exempt status before?

Yes. In 1983, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision that the IRS could deny tax-exempt status to Bob Jones University, a private Christian university that banned interracial dating and marriage on campus, and Goldsboro Christian Schools, which employed racially discriminatory admissions policies.

The court found the IRS had some discretion to determine whether an organization seeking tax-exempt status met standards of “charity,” meaning that it “must serve a public purpose and not be contrary to established public policy.”

Nonetheless, McCaffery said, “The ability of the IRS just to come in and deny tax exemption, it better be a very clear, long-standing, deeply held public policy, and not political preferences for certain kinds of positions, attitudes and voting patterns.”

How can the IRS revoke a nonprofit’s tax-exempt status?

Usually, the IRS would open an audit, where it gathers evidence that a nonprofit is not operating exclusively for charitable purposes.

“The IRS would have to send to Harvard a proposed revocation of its status,” Hackney said. “At that point, Harvard would have many different means to talk with the IRS about why they believed they were within the law,” including suing.

However, Hackney said the U.S. Department of Treasury could implement new regulations, for example, stating that operating a diversity, equity and inclusion program is not consistent with charitable purposes. Such a change would usually take years to make and would run counter to decades of precedent, Hackney said.

“I am skeptical this effort will be successful,” he said. “If it were, this would be the most dramatic change of charitable law in my lifetime and I would say in the history of our charitable law.”

Editor’s note: This article is part of a partnership the Chronicle has forged with the Associated Press and the Conversation to expand coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits. The three organizations receive support for this work from the Lilly Endowment. The AP is solely responsible for the content in this article.

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.

Students and faculty rally at the University of California, Berkeley, campus to protest the Trump administration.

March 21, 2025

Facing Anti-DEI Investigations, Colleges Cut Ties With Nonprofit Targeted by Conservatives

Until recently, it was a little-known program to help Black and Latino students pursue business degrees.

But in January, conservative strategist Christopher Rufo flagged the program known as The PhD Project in social media posts that caught the attention of Republican politicians. The program is now at the center of a Trump administration campaign to root out diversity, equity and inclusion programs in higher education.

The U.S. Education Department last week said it was investigating dozens of universities for alleged racial discrimination, citing ties to the nonprofit organization. That followed a warning a month earlier that schools could lose federal money over “race-based preferences” in admissions, scholarships or any aspect of student life.

The investigations left some school leaders startled and confused, wondering what prompted the inquiries. Many scrambled to distance themselves from The PhD Project, which has aimed to help diversify the business world and higher education faculty.

The rollout of the investigations highlights the climate of fear and uncertainty in higher education, which President Donald Trump’s administration has begun policing for policies that run afoul of his agenda even as he moves to dismantle the Education Department.

Investigations target public and private universities

There is a range of nonprofits that work to help minority groups advance in higher education, but The PhD Project was not well known before Rufo began posting on X about its work with colleges, said Jonathan Fansmith, senior vice president of government relations at the American Council on Education, an association of college presidents.

“It’s not hard to draw some lines between that incident and why 45 institutions that were partners with The PhD Project are getting this investigation announced,” he said.

The 45 colleges under investigation for ties to the organization include public universities such as Arizona State, Ohio State and the University of California, Berkeley, along with private schools like Yale, Cornell, Duke and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Education Department sent letters to the universities informing them its Office for Civil Rights had received a complaint and they were under investigation for allegedly discriminating against students on the basis of race or ethnicity because of a past affiliation with The PhD Project. The letters set a March 31 deadline for information about their relationship with the nonprofit.

In a statement, the PhD Project said it aims to “create a broader talent pipeline” of business leaders. “This year, we have opened our membership application to anyone who shares that vision,” it said.

Colleges tread carefully on Trump administration inquiries that threaten funding

Public reaction from the universities’ leadership has been minimal and cautious, with most issuing brief statements saying they will cooperate with investigators and refusing further comment.

Colleges may see reason not to push back. The Trump administration has shown willingness to withhold federal funding over issues involving antisemitism allegations, diversity programs and transgender athletes. At Columbia University, under fire for its handling of pro-Palestinian protests, the administration pulled $400 million in federal money and threatened billions more if it does not comply with its demands.

“There is a concern that if one university steps up and fights this then that university will have all of their funding cut,” said Veena Dubal, general counsel for the American Association of University Professors. “They are being hindered not just by fear but a real collective action problem. None of these universities wants to be the next example.”

Some colleges moved swiftly to stop working with The PhD Project

The University of Kentucky said it severed ties with the nonprofit on Monday. The University of Wyoming said in a statement that its college of business was affiliated with the group to develop its graduate student pipeline, but it plans to discontinue its membership.

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, issued a statement saying three professors participated in the program, but two no longer work at the university and a third was killed in a shooting on campus in 2023. Arizona State said its business school is not financially supporting The PhD Project this year, and it told faculty in February the school would not support travel to the nonprofit’s conference.

A campaign against The PhD Project began on social media

Similar fallout came in Texas earlier this year, when Rufo began posting on X about the PhD Project.

“Texas A&M is sponsoring a trip to a DEI conference,” Rufo posted on Jan. 13. Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, accused the university of “supporting racial segregation and breaking the law.”

The next day Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott posted on X that the university “president will soon be gone” unless he immediately “fixed” the matter. Texas A&M responded by withdrawing from the conference, and soon after at least eight other Texas public universities that had participated previously in The PhD Project’s conference also withdrew, the Texas Tribune reported.

Rufo has not responded to a request for comment.

Some of the schools under investigation raised questions about where the complaints against them originated.

Montana State University said it follows all state and federal laws and was “surprised” by the notice it received and “unaware of any complaint made internally with regards to The PhD Project.”

Six other colleges are being investigated for awarding “impermissible race-based scholarships,” the Education Department said. Additionally, the University of Minnesota is being investigated for allegedly operating a program that segregates students on the basis of race.

At the University of California, Berkeley, hundreds gathered Wednesday on the campus known for student protests. But this one was organized by faculty, who stood on the steps of Sproul Hall, known as the birthplace of the free speech movement in the 1960s.

“This is a fight that can be summed up in five words: Academic freedom is under assault,” Ula Taylor, a professor of African American studies, said to the crowd.

In a campus email Monday, Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons did not specifically mention the investigation targeting his school. But he described the federal government’s actions against higher education as a threat to the school’s core values.

“A Berkeley without academic freedom, without freedom of inquiry, without freedom of expression is simply not Berkeley,” Lyons said. “We will stand up for Berkeley’s values and defend them to the very best of our ability.”

Associated Press writer Collin Binkley contributed to this report.

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September 27, 2024

OpenAI Looks to Shift Away From Nonprofit Roots and Convert Itself to For-Profit Company

OpenAI’s history as a nonprofit research institute that also sells commercial products like ChatGPT may be coming to an end as the San Francisco company looks to more fully convert itself into a for-profit corporation accountable to shareholders.

The artificial intelligence company’s board is considering a decision that would change OpenAI into a public benefit corporation, according to a source familiar with the discussions who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly about them.

While OpenAI already has a for-profit division, where most of its staff works, it is controlled by a nonprofit board of directors whose mission is to help humanity. That would change if the company converts the core of its structure to a public benefit corporation, which is a type of corporate entity that is supposed to help society as well as turn a profit.

No final decision has been made by the board and the timing of the shift hasn’t been determined, the source said.

OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman acknowledged in public remarks Thursday that the company is thinking about restructuring but said the departures of key executives the day before weren’t related.

Speaking at a tech conference in Italy, Altman mentioned that OpenAI has been considering an overhaul to get to the “next stage.” But he said it was not connected to the Wednesday resignations of Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati and two other top leaders.

“OpenAI will be stronger for it as we are for all of our transitions,” Altman told the Italian Tech Week event in Turin. “I saw some stuff that this was, like, related to a restructure. That’s totally not true. Most of the stuff I saw was also just totally wrong,” he said without any more specificity.

“But we have been thinking about (a restructuring),” he added.

OpenAI said Thursday that it will still retain a nonprofit arm.

“We remain focused on building AI that benefits everyone and as we’ve previously shared we’re working with our board to ensure that we’re best positioned to succeed in our mission,” it said in a written statement. “The nonprofit is core to our mission and will continue to exist.”

OpenAI is not the first technology company to try to balance commercial and humanitarian objectives, but its maneuvers drew a rebuke Thursday from Mozilla, which blends a nonprofit foundation and research hub with a company known for making the Firefox web browser.

“The principled staff exodus at OpenAI is another example of their true long-term goal: profit,” said Mozilla president Mark Surman in an emailed statement. “As far as we can tell, OpenAI no longer exists as a public interest organization.”

Altman asserted Thursday that the resignations of Murati, Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew and another research leader, Barret Zoph, were “just about people being ready for new chapters of their lives and a new generation of leadership.”

But the exits were the latest in a string of recent high-profile departures that also include the resignations of OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever and safety team leader Jan Leike in May. In a statement, Leike had leveled criticism at OpenAI for letting safety “take a backseat to shiny products.”

Much of the conflict at OpenAI has been rooted in its unusual governance structure. Founded in 2015 as a nonprofit with a mission to safely build futuristic AI to help humanity, it is now a fast-growing big business still controlled by a nonprofit board bound to its original mission.

This unique structure made it possible for four OpenAI board members — Sutskever, two outside tech entrepreneurs and an academic — to briefly oust Altman last November in what was later described as a dispute over a “significant breakdown in trust” between the board and top executives. But with help from a powerful backer, Microsoft, Altman was brought back to the CEO role days later and a new board replaced the old one. OpenAI also put Altman back on the board of directors in March.

It may not be easy to change OpenAI’s corporate structure, even if it’s designed to make investors and employees happy.

Tax experts have said that OpenAI’s corporate structure appeared to be set up to give the tax-exempt nonprofit entity full control of the for-profit entities that the organization created as its growth started to take off.

In 2016, the goal of OpenAI’s founders — a group that included Altman and Tesla CEO Elon Musk — was to “advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return.”

A few years later, the organization realized it needed billions of dollars to finance the computing power required to develop AI technologies. “We want to increase our ability to raise capital while still serving our mission, and no pre-existing legal structure we know of strikes the right balance,” wrote co-founders Sutskever and Greg Brockman in 2019.

So they set up a new for-profit corporation with a “cap” on the amount of profits that investors or employees could reap and put the nonprofit and its board in charge of the new entity.

Any “excess” profit would go back to the nonprofit, Brockman and Sutskever explained, though in practice little money has gone back to the nonprofit in recent years. Brockman has been on leave since August, leaving Altman one of the few early leaders still at the helm.

In research published in February, Ellen P. Aprill, professor emerita of tax law at Loyola Marymount University, noted that OpenAI’s structure appeared to be “painstakingly” designed to protect its nonprofit status.

All of its subsidiary corporations are governed or managed by the nonprofit and its board, and OpenAI says it warns investors that they may never receive a return.

However, Aprill and her colleagues pointed to Altman’s ouster and reinstatement as evidence that the nonprofit’s board may not be meaningfully in charge. “Unless the members of the board fulfill their fiduciary duties… even the most carefully thought-out structures are for naught,” Aprill and her co-authors wrote.

The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to part of AP’s text archives.

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September 23, 2024

U.S. Historian Leads Charity Run in Kyiv to Highlight the Plight of Ukrainian POWs

U.S. historian and author Timothy Snyder recently led a charity run in Kyiv to raise awareness of the conditions under which Ukrainian prisoners of war are held in Russia as the conflict approaches a third winter.

The race came following a recent escalation in Russian missile and drone attacks, largely aimed at Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure.

People clapped and cheered after Snyder, a 55-year-old Yale University professor who has written extensively on Eastern Europe and the global resurgence of authoritarian regimes and is much admired in Ukraine, addressed the nearly 1,000 runners. He then joined a workout and participated in the run.

“Thousands of Ukrainian civilians and soldiers are illegally held in captivity during an illegal war,” Snyder told the Associated Press just ahead of the run. “This race is about reminding everyone of that and expressing solidarity with Ukrainians and giving Ukrainians a chance to do something together,” he said.

The 5- and 10-kilometer runs took place around a sprawling park in the Ukrainian capital created out of a renovated Soviet-era exhibition center.

The runners included members of the public, servicepeople and veterans, as well as wives of the POWs. Among them was 27-year-old Anastasia Ofyl, whose husband, Oleksandr, was captured by the Russians. “We have to fight for him,” she said. “That’s why I’m running.”

Ukrainian soldiers often give harrowing accounts of their conditions in Russian captivity when they return home as part of regular prisoner exchanges.

In a report issued in July, a United Nations human rights agency said it “continued to document the widespread use of torture and ill-treatment, including sexual violence, against civilians and Ukrainian prisoners of war held by the Russian Federation.”

Snyder, who has organized fundraisers as part of the country’s war-relief effort, enjoys near-celebrity status in Ukraine. On Tuesday, he visited President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who thanked him for his charity work. The Ukrainian head of state also received former UK prime minister Boris Johnson, former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and the American actor Michael Douglas this week.

After Saturday’s race, Snyder was surrounded by admirers, many of whom waited in line for autographs and selfies. Some asked the historian to sign translated copies of his widely-read books on Ukraine, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin and The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America.

Saturday’s race was organized by the Kyiv School of Economics’ charity foundation which, according to its website, has been raising funds for charitable assistance for Ukrainians since the start of the Russian invasion.

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August 6, 2024

A Year After Maui Wildfire, Chronic Housing Shortage Persists

LAHAINA, HAWAII

Josephine Fraser worried her young family’s next home would be a tent.

Fraser and her partner, their two sons and their dog had moved nine times in as many months, from one hotel room to another, since the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century razed her hometown of Lahaina, on Maui. They would sometimes get just 24 hours to relocate, with no immediate word where they were headed.

Now, the Red Cross was warning that the hotel shelter program would soon end and Fraser was having trouble explaining to her 3-year-old why they couldn’t just go home.

“He just kept asking, ‘Why?’” she said. “It really broke me.”

Like Fraser, thousands on Maui have faced a year of anxious uncertainty since the Aug. 8, 2023, wildfire brought apocalyptic scenes of destruction to Lahaina, the historic former capital of the Hawaiian kingdom, forcing some survivors to flee into the ocean. The fire killed at least 102 people and displaced 12,000.

Government and nonprofit groups have offered temporary solutions for displaced residents, including providing hotel rooms, leasing apartments, assembling prefabricated homes and paying people to take in loved ones.

Disaster housing experts say the effort, expected to cost more than $500 million over two years, has been unprecedented in its cooperation among federal, state, county and philanthropic organizations toward keeping the community together.

But on a tourism-dependent island where affordable homes were in short supply even before the fire, a housing market squeezed by vacation rentals is undermining attempts to find long-term shelter for survivors even a year later.

Just about all of the 8,000 survivors put up in hotels have been moved into other accommodations, but many of those are pricey condos once rented to visitors, and they aren’t near residents’ jobs or their children’s schools.

Work to finish developments of temporary homes has been slowed by the difficulty of clearing toxic debris, obtaining materials from thousands of miles away, blasting and grading volcanic rock and installing water, sewer and electricity lines.

Members of at least 1,500 households have already left for other islands or states, some estimates say. Locals fear more will depart if they can’t find stable, affordable, convenient housing.

That’s particularly painful for Hawaii, where leaders have long worried the islands are losing their culture as housing costs fuel an exodus of Native Hawaiian and other local-born residents.

“You start to change the fabric of Hawaii,” said Kuhio Lewis, chief executive of the nonprofit Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, which is involved in housing survivors. “That’s what’s at stake, is the future of who Hawaii is.”

Gov. Josh Green told The Associated Press in an interview that the state is building transitional and long-term housing, changing laws to convert 7,000 vacation rentals to long-term rentals and swiftly settling lawsuits by fire survivors so plaintiffs can get the money they need to start rebuilding.

“Will some people leave? Of course,” Green said. “But most will stay, and they’ll really be able to stay if they get their settlements and can invest in their new houses.”

Plaintiffs and the state reached a $4 billion global settlement on Friday, according to court filings.

The Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement is building 16 modular units in Lahaina and 50 in Kahului, about an hour away, which kept Fraser and her family from winding up in a tent. In May, they moved into the first unit completed in Kahului, a small, white structure with two bedrooms and one bathroom.

The neighborhood remains a dusty construction site. The location is not convenient for her job as a manager at a hotel restaurant in Lahaina, but Fraser, 22, is grateful. She can cook for her kids and they can play outside.

“Everyone’s choice is to move out of Lahaina, to move off-island, to move to the mainland, and that’s not something that we want to do,” she said. “Lahaina is our home.”

Lahaina’s plight highlights an important question as human-caused climate change increases the severity and frequency of natural disasters: How far should governments go to try to keep communities together after such calamities?

Shannon Van Zandt, with the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center at Texas A&M University, said it’s a worthy goal. Being a part of a community that supports its members is important not only to their livelihoods but their mental health, she said.

Jennifer Gray Thompson, the CEO of nonprofit fire-recovery initiative After The Fire, said she has worked in 18 counties that have suffered massive wildfires since 2017, when she herself lived through blazes that ripped through Northern California’s wine country.

Thompson has never before seen the Federal Emergency Management Agency invest so heavily in keeping a community together, she said.

“Maui is the first one I’ve ever seen the federal government fully listen to the community … and actually really try to do what they were asking, which was to keep people on the island,” she said.

FEMA has focused on providing rentals for survivors who did not have insurance coverage for fire losses. The agency is directly leasing homes for more than 1,200 households and giving subsidies to 500 others to use on their own. Many of the rentals are in Kihei, 25 miles (40 kilometers) from Lahaina.

Still, the approach has proved tricky partly because vacation rentals and timeshares are one-quarter of the housing supply.

In October, FEMA raised its rates by 75% to entice landlords to rent to locals. The agency is now paying $3,000 per month for a one-bedroom and more than $5,100 for a three-bedroom. People seeking housing on their own say that has inflated the rental market more.

Frustration over the prevalence of vacation rentals after the fire prompted Maui’s mayor to propose eliminating them in areas zoned for apartments. The measure is still under consideration.

FEMA also is constructing 169 modular homes next to a similar site being built in Lahaina by the state and the Hawaii Community Foundation. Residents begin moving into FEMA’s development in October. The $115 million project next to it will provide 450 homes for people who aren’t eligible for FEMA; the first families arrive in the coming weeks. Residents begin moving into FEMA’s development in October.

Bob Fenton, FEMA’s regional administrator, told the AP the agency is even paying for survivors to fly elsewhere to live temporarily and to return when housing is ready.

“Our goal is the community’s goal,” Fenton said. “We’ve tried to do everything we can to support that.”

Lucy Reardon lost the home her grandfather passed down to her and her brother. When July came, she was still living in a hotel with her partner and two children. She twice declined offers from FEMA to move off the island temporarily and provide her a car, she said, because her grandfather would have wanted her to stay.

Finally, the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement moved her and her family into a two-bedroom apartment in West Maui, in the same building as her brother and his family.

“To get that phone call was like somebody reaching out with light,” Reardon said. Her daughter will be able to start kindergarten with her cousins at the school she would have attended before the fire.

The council also is paying people who take in displaced loved ones, providing $500 a month per guest. That has been helpful for Tamara Akiona, who bought a small condo in central Maui with her husband after she lost the multigenerational home where she lived with 10 family members in Lahaina. The money has covered food and other costs since they took in her uncle, Ron Sambrano.

“Without my family, I’d probably be living on the beach or under a bridge or something,” Sambrano said.

With stable housing, Fraser’s family can begin finding a routine once again. She works during the day while her partner watches their sons. She returns to do dinner and baths before he leaves for his night shift as a restaurant server.

“It’s awesome to have a roof, somewhere to call home,” Fraser said. “At least for now, until we go back into Lahaina.”

McAvoy reported from Honolulu. Freelance journalist Mengshin Lin shot drone video accompanying this story.

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.

April 1, 2024

Not So Fast

For the launch of The Commons, the Chronicle invited guest essayists to debate how to strengthen civic engagement, build community, and bolster democracy. The essays below are from critics of these philanthropic efforts; read also the pieces by leading advocates and donors.

Keep up with everything happening in The Commons by signing up for our Philanthropy Today newsletter and joining our Commons group on LinkedIn.

Jeff Cain | Leslie Lenkowsky

Big Philanthropy to the Rescue? Think Again.

Americans shouldn’t look to nondemocratic, publicly unaccountable foundations to save democracy

By Jeff Cain

As the media and elites across America take up a fight to “save democracy,” Big Philanthropy is casting itself in the role of superhero. Since 2011, the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for High Impact Philanthropy reports, some $5.7 billion has gone to programs supporting U.S. democracy, with grant announcements that often depict foundations as stepping up to forestall a doomsday.

The Carnegie Corporation, warning of a “fragility of our democracy … unimaginable just a few years ago,” has pledged to strengthen social cohesion and combat polarization. The MacArthur Foundation is partnering with Carnegie and the Ford and Knight foundations, among others, in the $500 million Press Forward effort to “address the crisis in local news.” As Knight president Alberto Ibargüen put it to the New York Times: “There is a new understanding of the importance of information in the management of community, in the management of democracy in America.”

Even those typically allergic to Big Philanthropy want to affix capes to the shoulders of megadonors. “Big philanthropists have a potentially transformative role to play in rehabilitating our democracy,” wrote philanthropy scholar Rob Reich and his Stanford colleagues in the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

There is a strong temptation to dismiss Big Philanthropy’s “transformative role in rehabilitating democracy” or, as Ibargüen put it, “managing democracy,” as a thinly veiled partisan and politically liberal effort to manage electoral outcomes.

After all, the “fragility of democracy” seems to have first appeared around the time George W. Bush ascended to the White House in 2000. Democracy made an extraordinary eight-year recovery during the Obama presidency but became even more frail when Donald Trump won election in 2016. Now democracy itself, as President Biden has campaigned, is on the ballot in 2024.

Let’s take Big Philanthropy at its word, however. After all, many of the largest so-called conservative foundations in America — the Charles Koch, Scaife, and Bradley foundations and the Searle Freedom Trust — also believe that they have a special role to play in architecting the restoration of American institutions. Their work, however, is more often cast in the language of strengthening citizenship, free markets, and America’s founding principles rather than democracy itself. Nevertheless, their philanthropic organizations and methods look like and behave similarly to their liberal counterparts.

Liberal or conservative, the professional philanthropic class shares a fundamentally progressive belief that it can design America and Americans from above: Salvation comes by way of experts and elites, top down, not bottom up.

Should Americans look to the nation’s largest nondemocratic, publicly unaccountable charitable foundations to save democracy?

Americans’ regard for elite institutions, including nonprofit and philanthropic organizations, is in precipitous decline. Gallup records a “historically low faith in U.S. institutions.” Last year Edelman found that trust in nonprofits decreased by 4 percentage points over the prior year and that 26 percent of those surveyed had “low” trust in philanthropy, a 5 percentage-point increase.

What’s more, 20 million households have stopped giving to government-sanctioned charities. Volunteering is in generational decline. And year-over-year charitable giving in the form of nonprofit donations saw its largest recorded drop in 2022, according to “Giving USA.” Additionally, that giving is concentrating at the top. Average Americans are shying away from the very institutions that propose their salvation.

Americans have every reason to be suspicious of Big Philanthropy. It has coalesced and concentered over the past 50 years as income and wealth inequality divided the nation. The ranks of the billionaire class swelled, and their philanthropic machinery and resources grew to scales unimaginable to most Americans. That behemoth philanthropy can somehow right our nation’s underlying economic wrongs and heal the social wounds that fueled its growth is a self-justifying fiction.

Big Philanthropy can’t possibly unite a divided nation for the simple reason that its very being is a symptom of a diseased economic and social order and, by extension, a broken and corrupt body politic. The liberal economic order that propels Big Philanthropy also undermines the equitable scatter of economic, social, and cultural goods. The rise of megadonors and accompanying megafoundations is a flashing red warning light that our system of democratic institutions is broken.

For all its talk about change, equity, and empowerment, philanthropy can’t help but conserve the inequitable structure that keeps it in power. America’s system of tax-incentivized giving encourages the creation of large concentrations of unaccountable wealth in the form of endowments, donor-advised funds, and perpetual foundations that allow powerful individuals to impose their will onto others in a wholly undemocratic way.

That’s why foundations — conservative and liberal alike — band together with America’s largest financial-services corporations to oppose any change to the self-serving laws governing tax-advantaged charitable giving. Before Big Philanthropy saves democracy, it must first preserve its tax advantages.

Herein lies the irony: By ensuring that they have a leg up on their fellow Americans through the tax code and a vast swath of other social and cultural institutions where they command extraordinary privilege, megadonors and the professional philanthropic class embody not democracy’s salvation but its antithesis.

Big Philanthropy’s ascent hastened democracy’s decline and weakened the civic bonds that foundations now aim to mend. The concentration of wealth and power obviates the need for voluntary association because, as Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out in his Democracy in America, it’s in the absence of concentrated power that men and women must band together to accomplish great things. In a democracy, no one person has the power or resources to do great things of themselves, Tocqueville observed. So democratic citizens must unite and work together through the art of civil association.

This is not the case for the aristocracy, Tocqueville observed. Like today’s behemoth philanthropies funded by the superrich and governed by elites, Tocqueville’s rich and powerful had no need to marshal, confer, or band together with their fellow citizens to get things done. They could do great things by commanding they be so. And they did.

Thus, when Carnegie president Dame Louise Richardson pronounces, “We at Carnegie Corporation of New York believe that engaging in national and community service can help to inculcate an appreciation of the value of democracy and bring together people from all races, regions, and backgrounds and thereby strengthen the forces of social cohesion in our country,” we hear the imperial din of an aristocratic age, not democracy’s salvific chords.

Jeff Cain has served in leadership roles at numerous foundations, nonprofits, and for-profit corporations. He was a founding partner of American Philanthropic, from which he retired in 2017.

Outside Looking In

Nonprofits no longer have the influence they once did to bridge divides.

By Leslie Lenkowsky

IIn May, the Council on Foundations will host its annual conference in Chicago. The gathering — called “Building Together: Leading Collaboratively Across Differences” — aims to help “philanthropic leaders” develop “strategies and skills to bridge differences and counteract toxic polarization.” The roster of well-known presenters includes New York Times columnist David Brooks, High Conflict author Amanda Ripley, Braver Angels co-founder Bill Doherty, and several grant makers working on programs to strengthen democracy.

With another divisive election season at hand, the council’s meeting is timely. But what philanthropy can do to reduce “toxic polarization” is by no means obvious. To the contrary, foundations may have contributed to the problem by displacing grassroots efforts to perform public services with top-down, sometimes technocratic ones.

The idea that philanthropy can bridge social and political differences dates to Alexis de Tocqueville’s observations on America’s “civic associations” in the 1830s. With government weak and no aristocracy to do good works, Americans relied on these organizations to perform a variety of public tasks. In addition, these groups taught valuable lessons, including how to compromise to accomplish common goals. They showed the fractious citizens of that era, deeply divided even then, the value of “self-interest rightly understood” and of moderating disagreements.

Ever since, Americans have viewed philanthropy and the nonprofit sector — “civil society,” in other words — as bedrocks of democracy. But a great deal has changed since the 1830s. Government now provides many of the services civic groups once did. Business and philanthropy now underwrite activities that once depended on individual contributions of time and money. Through marriages, residences, and jobs, Americans have sorted themselves into communities that consist of people more like themselves than otherwise. Divisions — along ethnic, religious, racial, income, gender, and many other lines — have multiplied and erected barriers to working together.

Nearly two centuries after Tocqueville’s visit, Americans are less likely to join civic groups — the “Bowling Alone” phenomenon documented by social scientist Robert Putnam in the late 1990s. And when they do, they have less need to moderate their views, since they are more often in the company of people with whom they agree.

Organizations that used to “bridge differences,” such as political parties or federations of civic clubs, are no longer as influential as they once were. And the forces that once worked alongside them to create civic bonds are withering as well. Tocqueville saw newspapers as important for democracy, since they gave widely dispersed residents a common lens through which to view community problems. Today, not only is local journalism a shadow of its former self, but the proliferation of other sources of information — social media chief among them — is also likely to amplify differences more than lessen them. Not least important, long before Donald Trump arrived on the scene, leaders in politics and other walks of life had learned that polarizing rhetoric, such as negative advertising, worked.

Against these and other long-term trends and changes in American society and politics, what exactly can philanthropy do?

Philanthropy — especially as practiced by foundations — has long seen its role as addressing the root causes of problems, not just their symptoms. In recent years, it has launched a variety of high-minded efforts to reduce polarization in American society, such as enhancing civic education and culture, improving election laws and governance, redesigning economic institutions, and more. Pursuing any of these on a large scale — for example, in the nearly 17,000 school districts in the United States or still larger number of election districts — would challenge even the biggest grant makers. In any case, philanthropy can never be entirely disinterested but, to one degree or another, reflects the interests of its donors, trustees, and staffs. What they intend as a well-meaning effort to increase participation in elections or disqualify ineligible voters, for example, may look like an attempt to favor one party’s supporters over another’s.

For better or worse, philanthropy suffers from elitism. To paraphrase what a political scientist wrote several decades ago, “The heavenly chorus” of civil society “sings with an upper-class accent.” To offset that, many grant makers and nonprofits are inviting others into their decision making, even, in some cases, allocating funds to community groups to spend on what they consider priorities. However, the problem with this kind of participatory grant making (as it is often known) is that “the community” has many parts to it; deciding whom to support inevitably requires choosing some portions over others, usually favoring those who are most attuned to the donors. Moreover, if we really have less sense of common purpose, philanthropy may not like what the groups it supports wind up doing.

Another approach that will be featured in the Council on Foundation’s meeting is underwriting organizations like Better Angels that promote dialogue among people with differing views, religious beliefs, or partisan affiliations. Such efforts have a long history; for example, Chautauqua societies, which encouraged local discussion and character-building amid tent-show entertainment, were prominent features of American life in the 19th and early-20th centuries. But whether modern versions will be as influential is doubtful. So many other ways of spending one’s (limited) free time are now available that such conversations are likely to draw only those already committed to finding common solutions to local problems. And unless discussions are tied to action, they may resemble nothing more than a public-spirited debating society. (John Wood Jr., the national leader of Better Angels, is a Chronicle board member.)

At a Council on Foundations meeting in 1980, Irving Kristol, an influential writer and thinker who helped create the Philanthropy Roundtable, pointed to a more promising approach. Philanthropy, he argued, should abandon its fixation on tackling root causes and instead focus on more concrete problems that its resources could improve. Rather than trying to reform education or end poverty, Kristol said, grant makers should underwrite better schools or help deliver more effective social services.

This is exactly what Americans of Tocqueville’s day did. Despite the growth of government (and philanthropy) since then, widespread unhappiness with schools, health care, and other public services suggests a lot that still can be done — and some promising efforts are already underway. A noteworthy example: the Philanthropy Roundtable’s Opportunity Playbook, which connects foundations and donors to community problem-solvers. By providing support for civic action to address real problems (or help reduce barriers people face in doing so), philanthropy will also do more to develop the habits and attitudes of democratic citizens.

Leslie Lenkowsky is a professor emeritus of public affairs and philanthropic studies at Indiana University and a regular contributor to the Chronicle for more than 30 years.

The Commons is financed in part with philanthropic support from the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, Einhorn Collaborative, and the JPB Foundation. None of our supporters has any control over or input into story selection, reporting, or editing, and they do not review articles before publication. See more about the Chronicle, the grants, how our foundation-supported journalism works, and our gift-acceptance policy.

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.

April 1, 2024

Investing in a More Perfect Union

For the launch of The Commons, the Chronicle invited guest essayists to debate how to strengthen civic engagement, build community, and bolster democracy. The essays below are from donors supporting such efforts; read also the pieces by leading advocates as well as by critics.

Keep up with everything happening in The Commons by signing up for our Philanthropy Today newsletter and joining our Commons group on LinkedIn.

Rachel Pritzker | Darren Walker | Brooke D. Anderson | Crystal Hayling | Melanie Lundquist

A Partisan Warrior’s Reckoning

How efforts under the banner of ‘democracy’ can further its decline.

By Rachel Pritzker

In their must-read book How Democracies Die, Harvard scholars Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue that broad-based coalitions have a unique role in preserving liberal democracy. “Coalitions of the likeminded are important,” they write, “but they are not enough to defend democracy. The most effective coalitions are those that bring together groups with dissimilar — even opposing — views on many issues. They are built not among friends but among adversaries.”

Twenty years ago, in the mid-2000s, I was a partisan warrior, and my philanthropy was entirely dedicated to pursuing my ideological beliefs. At the time, I served as a founding board member of the Democracy Alliance, a network of philanthropists focused on advancing a progressive policy agenda.

But at a certain point, I came to see that my efforts, under the banner of “democracy,” were actually furthering the decline of democracy. Our passionate advocacy, while aimed at strengthening the country, was contributing to mounting gridlock and toxic partisanship. Democratic elected officials felt increasingly pressured to adhere to party orthodoxy rather than passing legislation through compromise, lest they be primaried by a progressive group for being insufficiently pure. Recognizing the extraordinary period of U.S. and global democratic backsliding in which we live, I have since shifted my philanthropy toward creating spaces, such as the Democracy Funders Network, where supporters of liberal democracy from across the political spectrum can step out of our ideological bubbles, build new relationships, and learn together how to defend democracy.

In typical policy fights, advocates seek to build a coalition just big enough to achieve a policy outcome. But when it comes to protecting liberal democracy, “just big enough” won’t cut it. Democracy is no typical policy issue; it is the arena in which we compete and the rules of the game by which we abide. Without agreement on these rules, the system collapses into anarchy or autocracy.

Assembling a broad coalition for liberal democracy demands that we create a democracy agenda in which people of many different beliefs and backgrounds can find a home. It means we must embrace political adversaries and others with whom we may have profound disagreements. It means pro-choice individuals teaming up with abortion opponents, union members teaming up with corporate leaders, communities of faith teaming up with secular groups. Bridging divides matters to American society for many reasons, but my contention is simple: In this moment of autocratic threat, when authoritarian leaders in the United States and around the world are trying to divide and weaken the public, a united front is precisely the antidote for upholding our democracy.

Even though philanthropy frequently uses the language of democracy, philanthropists and grant makers too often align themselves with ideologically rigid movements that view engagement with “the other side” as hopeless, naive, and harmful. Donors rarely participate in or support the truly expansive coalition-building that American democracy needs to survive — the kind of coalition, for example, that worked to uphold the integrity of the 2020 election. To be sure, groups like the Democracy Funders Network are evidence of a growing cross-ideological field, but we are still swimming upstream against progressive, conservative, and even “mainstream” philanthropy’s focus on near-term policy goals and ideological purity over long-term systemic health and coalition-building.

Philanthropy must quickly reckon with this challenge. And that reckoning begins with three surprisingly countercultural lessons about democracy:

Democracy is not the same thing as our preferred political or policy outcomes. Because philanthropy supports many righteous causes, we often see our own moral commitments as the very definition of democracy. Yet for every issue on which one might stake a claim — climate change, religious liberty, reproductive rights, immigration — another small-d democrat, equally committed to liberal democracy, will have a different opinion about how to address it.

We must stand up for our views and contest them in the political arena. But at the same time, we must agree with our adversaries on the rules of the game. If we conflate our policy views with democracy and call opposing positions “undemocratic,” it is more likely that both we and our opponents will be tempted to declare new rules that restrict the other’s rights. It is thus urgent that supporters of liberal democracy clearly distinguish our policy preferences from the rules of a free and open society.

Democracy is about more than voting and elections. Philanthropy — especially progressive philanthropy — has a proud history of supporting work to expand the franchise, protect voting rights, and combat voter suppression. This work is deeply important, but it does not encompass the totality of what is needed to ensure a thriving liberal democracy in the United States. Even worse, supporting voter engagement chiefly to win elections, and funding power-building and organizing for progressive policies — all in the name of democracy — is politicizing democracy work. That makes it all the harder to build a broad coalition.

Democracy-movement supporters would do well to focus greater attention on other core areas, such as building healthy norms and institutions (e.g., a free press, an independent judiciary, individual rights, and the rule of law); creating a government that is responsive and effective; and developing an economic and social agenda that can help reduce the demand for illiberal policies, such as revitalization of rural America, rebuilding local media, and improving the status of working-class men.

Autocrats are modeling effective coalition-building. Opponents of democracy around the world are building transnational alliances. These leaders and advocates are often ideological opposites, but that does not hamper their collaboration and support of a shared illiberal vision of the world. Although they often deploy racist and xenophobic rhetoric, public-opinion research indicates that their support is growing even among people of color.

Pro-democracy forces need to borrow from their coalition-building strategies. This means hitting pause on internecine policy arguments and listening openly and responding to the hopes and fears of Americans outside elite circles. And it means building public support for liberal democracy by showing that it can address what people care about, like affordable housing, safe neighborhoods, and quality education. We must recognize that failure to make common cause with all fellow democracy proponents will set back philanthropy’s most important issues for decades.

There are those who believe talk of illiberalism and even authoritarianism in the United States is overblown. I am not one of them. We can defend liberal democracy, but we will need to build an extraordinary coalition.

Rachel Pritzker is chair of the Democracy Funders Network and president and founder of the Pritzker Innovation Fund, which supports the development and advancement of paradigm-shifting ideas to address the world’s most serious problems.

How the Fight Against Inequality Will Save Democracy

Polarization is not the cause of our alienation but rather the effect.

By Darren Walker

I have long maintained that hope is the very oxygen of democracy. Yet today, inequality threatens to suffocate that hope.

Despite a reckoning with anti-Black racism in 2020, hate crimes in the United States have increased year after year. Despite attempts to overhaul a broken health care system, Zip Code is still more determinative of health than genetic code. Despite a global pandemic that underscored just how essential so many workers are, labor protections are under attack as income inequality continues to rise. Despite promises from both parties to lower costs and improve daily life, one in six Americans struggles with food insecurity. In a nation where disparities are this stark, it’s no surprise that so many feel that the odds are stacked against them.

Inequality segregates our society, splitting our communities and country along racial and economic lines and reducing the odds that we’ll interact with those who don’t share our experience. And thanks to a profit-driven media ecosystem where outrage garners eyeballs, we are increasingly confined to digital echo chambers that inflame our passions but dull our empathy. As a result, polarization rages through our screens and into our streets.

In truth, polarization is not the cause of our alienation but rather the effect. And while our polarized society is rife with strong opinions, volume doesn’t equate to engagement. In fact, this cacophony reflects a lack of engagement — and an unwillingness to empathize — with those who are different.

Partisan animosity in America nearly doubled in the course of a decade and continues to grow. Americans are now divided not just over traditionally contentious topics, but also over areas like public health, which once held a measure of collective consensus. Those at the far ends of the political spectrum believe the opposing party’s policies “are so misguided that they threaten the nation’s well-being,” according to the Pew Research Center. This division damages our democratic systems, obstructing compromise and giving zealots false justification for political violence.

These problems aren’t unique to the United States. Other countries and conflict-riddled regions have pulled themselves back from the brink — not by shying away from engagement but by seeking it out. In post-apartheid South Africa, Nelson Mandela’s new government required perpetrators of racist violence to confess fully and confront the consequences of their crimes in order to receive amnesty, helping the nation move forward in peace. And in Northern Ireland, coalitions grounded in civil society helped forge an imperfect but invaluable peace, opening channels of communication between Catholics and Protestants to end decades of violence known as the Troubles.

As the head of a global organization dedicated to combating inequality, I believe deeply in philanthropy’s power — and responsibility — to support civic engagement as the antidote to a polarized society.

And I have seen firsthand the impact of investing in organizations that help governments and citizens come together, fostering and facilitating increased engagement.

By funding the essential work of grantees such as the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center and the Equity Alliance, we promote community leadership and give marginalized communities tools to fully engage in the civic process. And through partnerships such as the new Global Initiative on Polarization, our collaboration with the Institute for Integrated Transitions, we develop research and delve into stories that foster a deeper understanding of the causes, consequences, and solutions to growing global polarization.

Unfortunately, polarizing forces too often attack initiatives that threaten the division on which they thrive. They criticize philanthropic support for civic engagement as inherently political, mischaracterizing it as benefiting a particular group, when in truth, greater engagement helps society as a whole. We must not buckle under such baseless claims. At best, they reflect a cynical view of the world; at worst, they represent a calculated campaign designed to discourage participation.

We know that democracy is not a partisan prize but a collective inheritance. Ultimately, the benefits of civic engagement are overwhelming — and they extend to everyone and every cause.

As philanthropists, whether we are funding urban revitalization or rural development, tackling the opioid crisis or taking action on climate change, we must recognize that progress depends on a healthy democracy — one that attacks inequality and restores hope for the future, and one that carries the cares and concerns of an engaged populace through a trusted, transparent system that reflects the will of “we the people.” Democracy is the bedrock upon which all else stands or falls. Now is the time for foundations and other funders to reinforce our dedication to its advancement. Civic engagement is the antidote to polarization, and philanthropy, its catalyst.

Darren Walker is the president of the Ford Foundation.

Put Women in the Rooms Where It Happens

The power centers that will do the most to determine the future are mired in the past.

By Brooke D. Anderson

Before I became the president of Pivotal Ventures, I spent most of my career in national security. In my roles at the United Nations, the White House, and the U.S. State Department, I had the chance to work on big, audacious challenges with teams I deeply respected and admired. But as much as I valued my colleagues, I was also conscious of who was missing from the rooms where decisions were made. It was not unusual over my long career to find myself the only woman in the room — or one of only a few.

Unfortunately, women’s underrepresentation in those rooms probably made us less effective. Research makes clear that peace agreements are longer-lasting and more durable when women help make them.

We are missing opportunities across many other aspects of American life, too. Women hold less than one-third of the jobs in the technical workforce, about one-third of elected offices, and approximately one-sixth of check-writing positions in venture capital — and in every case, women of color are even more underrepresented than white women.

In other words, the power centers that will do the most to determine the future are mired in the past. If women were proportionately represented in these areas, our technology would be more innovative, our politics would engage a whole new range of issues, and our companies would serve the needs of many more customers.

That’s why, at Pivotal, we see expanding women’s power and influence not as a single issue but rather as a prerequisite to progress on more or less every issue. We believe dismantling barriers to equality for women of all backgrounds will spark widespread social progress. And if equal representation benefits everyone, then it means that there are a lot of potential allies for our work, including people who don’t currently think of themselves as advocates for women.

Last summer, at the Summit on Resilient and Enduring Democracy, our team joined other donors who care deeply about protecting our political system in these polarizing times. Ultimately, we can’t have a thriving, healthy, active democracy if we don’t have equal representation. And, if we don’t have a democracy that is fair, transparent, and welcoming, it’s going to be harder and harder for women to participate fully. Women need the democracy movement, and the democracy movement needs women. We’re now convening regularly with the Democracy Funders Network to support a broad-based movement built on shared priorities such as combating dis- and misinformation and protecting the safety of candidates, election workers, and officeholders.

Similarly, partners in our caregiving portfolio are helping to roll out the historic provision in the 2023 federal CHIPS and Science Act that requires employers who receive funding under the act to provide child care to their workers. Plenty of people who don’t think of themselves as champions for women’s rights endorse child care for other reasons — for instance, because they want to promote economic growth. Indeed, equality and economic growth go hand in hand, and when advocates for both priorities work together to implement an important policy, that’s success.

Finally, we recently celebrated the fifth anniversary of Reboot Representation, a coalition of tech companies created in 2018 to double the number of Black, Latina, and Native American women receiving computing degrees by 2025. These companies are in the business of developing and selling technologies, not promoting social justice, but they know that more-diverse engineering talent is better for their long-term prospects. Reboot includes Google and Microsoft, Dell and HP — a lot of companies that compete against each other — so our value-add, besides modest operational funding, was to provide a neutral venue to help them come together. Now they’re sharing data, discovering best practices, and investing millions of dollars in programming. Reboot’s goal is on track, and the tech industry is a few steps closer to reflecting the people who use its products and services.

I’m not exactly breaking new ground by calling for holistic thinking and creative collaborations, but as social-change grant makers and nonprofits, we’re working against perverse incentives, resource scarcity, zero-sum thinking, and other traps that make it hard to build partnerships. These examples help me imagine what’s possible if more of us resolved to share ideas, forge stronger links, and merge agendas.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was onto something when she said, “Women belong in all the places where decisions are being made.” They belong there, and we need them there. Whether it’s national security, technology, politics, finance … you name it, decisions made in rooms that matter are smarter and better when women help make them.

Brooke D. Anderson is president of Pivotal Ventures, an investment and incubation company founded by Melinda French Gates to advance social progress. She has served as a U.S. ambassador at the United Nations and as a senior adviser to U.S. presidents, cabinet secretaries, members of Congress, presidential candidates, philanthropists, and business leaders.

Organizers and Our Precious Sense of Hope

Those working on the ground help us listen deeply and dream big.

By Crystal Hayling

It’s hard to ignore the rising and bitter tide of anger and division. This is not a matter of mere incivility in the body politic — the wounds go far, far deeper. Renewed attacks on voting rights. Black leaders and organizations under fire. The scourge of antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate. Communities torn apart by intolerance and hateful violence.

Trauma, as criminal-justice activist Mariame Kaba notes, doesn’t just sit there. It creates future vulnerability.

Our democracy, our sense of “we-ness,” is increasingly vulnerable right now. Rights we cherish are under siege. As I’ve written before, this is not a moment to plaster over our differences in the name of pluralism. These divides are important, but they are a symptom of our broken democracy, not the cause of it. This is a moment to fund the hard work of coming together with purpose at the neighborhood level. In other words, this is a moment for community organizing.

Organizing is where we do two things essential to democracy: We listen deeply and dream big. Yes, listen and dream. Extremism feeds on despair — the belief that no one cares and nothing can be done. We need to turn away from doomscrolling about the presidential election and turn toward our hopes for our kids, families, and communities. Organizing at its best can stoke our precious sense of hope and help us imagine our lives together, lived whole and well, while giving us insights about how we can get there from here.

As nationalistic, antidemocratic forces proudly assert their intentions, it’s natural to ask what makes Americans susceptible to the drumbeat of division. History teaches that fear, isolation, and hopelessness play a big part. Much of the strife in our communities stems from racial prejudice and gender-role stereotypes spread by well-funded hate groups and think tanks. Conspiracy theories bloom in the waters of indifference and despair.

Organizing helps people feel connected to their neighbors and part of a network that resists the urge to blame some “other.” Instead, community members experience how collective power creates change for the better. Organizers are the opposite of dividers — they build bridges. Those bridges endure because they are built around issues of material and ethical importance.

People’s Action, a powerhouse organization working throughout the Midwest, recently launched an “Organizing Revival” to move beyond the transactional, one-and-done spurts of organizing typical of election years. It’s addressing the housing crisis, growing green jobs, and bringing federal infrastructure money to communities that need it. As executive director Sulma Arias writes: “This organizing is an end and a means — it builds community and democracy and makes people feel powerful and whole.” Isn’t that what pluralism advocates say they want?

There are many other resourceful, dynamic groups working on this broad agenda. The visionary Gina Clayton-Johnson, who started the Essie Justice Group to bring together women whose loved ones are incarcerated, sees the unique power in building community bonds among women whom society has made feel isolated and ashamed. Essie sisters proudly and joyfully canvass neighborhoods asking community members how they define safety and inviting them to demand more than abusive police and empty promises from elected officials. The sisters then take policy proposals to the state capital and the city council and back them at the ballot box.

New Mexico-based OLÉ Education Fund, which promotes universal access to early-childhood education and preschool, organizes everyday working folks to speak out for — and win for — kids, drawing its strength from the experiences of people of color, early-childhood educators, parents, workers, and immigrants.

The battle to defend reproductive rights in Ohio last fall offers an example of the power of broad-based organizing. Often viewed as a divisive issue, reproductive rights was transformed into a unifying banner, especially among young voters. URGE, a group of young activists, was among the leading organizations that pulled together support across lines of party, income, race to win a vital — and surprising to many — victory in a conservative state.

We know only too well what hour it is — zero hour for our democracy. Funders who recognize the urgency of the moment are doubling down and speeding up their giving. I strongly urge that funders display a bias toward action and make donations to organizing — now.

If you truly want to heal the country’s divides, fund organizers. They are the leaders and wise ones who know how to bridge gaps created by income inequality, racism, and sexism. They are the catalysts who give people hope, a common purpose, and a connection to something bigger than themselves. They are the ones who teach us how to practice democracy daily. And that, after all, will be the only way we save it.

Crystal Hayling is the executive director of the Libra Foundation and founder of the Democracy Frontlines Fund.

Manufactured ‘Truth’

How can we agree when we can’t separate fact from conspiracy?

By Melanie Lundquist

I have long felt that democracy is circling the drain. Last summer, from the stage at the Aspen Ideas Festival, I urged philanthropy to recognize what’s at stake and act.

Today, our country’s growing divisions confirm my fears about the threats we face. International crises from Ukraine to Gaza and domestic issues too numerous to name have the right and the left standing like mixed martial arts fighters snarling at each other from opposite sides of the octagon. In between is the moderate majority of voters swinging from one election to the next, reacting to issues of the moment or, on courageous occasion, standing as defenders of democracy. The question is: Why are we so far apart?

Answers vary, but there is an underlying problem. Despite the benefits of the Information Age, the downside is that opinion and misinformation are now both labeled as fact. Anyone can easily manufacture their own version of the “truth.” When we can’t even agree on facts, how can we possibly find common ground in our communities or our politics?

We all initially react to information with our “gut” — a mixture of emotion, instinct, experience, and prejudice. In the best moments, we test our reaction with discernment, engaging trusted information sources. For much of the history of our republic, reputable news sources were key to our individual and collective search for truth.

Today, too many take that gut feeling and cherry-pick supporting evidence from across the internet or news sources, reinforcing our preconceived notions with information relayed to us by those who base their gospel on political agenda, material gain, or someone else’s cherry-picking.

So how do we start to turn things around? We find, build up, and fund nonpartisan nonprofits that serve as honest brokers and empower us to become honest brokers ourselves.

I am drawn to the News Literacy Project (NLP), a nonpartisan nonprofit that seeks to bring the tools necessary to separate fact from fiction into classrooms across America. It helps educators teach students to determine the credibility of news and other information and recognize the standards of fact-based journalism.

Last year, I joined the NLP Board of Directors and made a $10 million commitment — the largest in its 16-year history. But writing checks and attending quarterly board meetings aren’t enough. Given the national crisis of confidence in our democracy, philanthropy must do more than we’ve done before.

We can use our convening power to make sure groups like NLP get in front of the right people so they can expand their work. I’ve hosted convenings that include meetings at the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce headquarters and lunches in San Francisco and beyond. In 2022, I hosted Los Angeles schools superintendent Alberto Carvalho at Roosevelt High School to demonstrate the importance of teaching news literacy to the next generation. Today, NLP is expanding in the city’s public schools.

It is a significant undertaking to rebuild and reinforce the pillars upon which this country stands. And whether we like it or not, we are all stakeholders. It truly doesn’t matter which political party you are with — or none at all. We all must understand that democracy is only as strong as the next generation who will defend it. As philanthropists, we can help honest brokers on the local, state, and national levels engage our young people in the cause of democracy.

This critical work can’t be done without accelerating funding. More than $1.3 trillion in assets is sitting in foundations throughout our country. Another $230 billion is parked in donor-advised funds. These resources can and must be used immediately to build better infrastructure to promote a sounder democracy.

That funding shouldn’t come from special interests of any ideological or political stripe. It needs to come from philanthropic individuals and foundations that make donations with one requirement: that they are used to achieve a mission effectively and efficiently. I am a believer in providing general operating support. If I choose to make a big bet on a nonprofit, I believe it knows best how to deploy my investment.

And when making a big bet, I like to find organizations that get more “cluck for my buck.” In the case of NLP, it helps teach students the importance of accurate local and national journalism while showing how good reporting is held to a much higher standard than a post on Facebook.

Young people need to recognize the importance of local and national news organizations. Throughout our country’s history, robust fact-based reporting has exposed wrongdoing and led to significant reforms. In 1892, Ida B. Wells documented lynchings and exposed the horrific murders of Black men and women. Upton Sinclair’s undercover investigations of meatpacking plants led to monumental change in worker and food safety in the early 1900s. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein reported on verified corruption at the highest levels of the Nixon administration, prompting a presidential resignation. In recent years, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey brought Harvey Weinstein and other sexual harassers into the light and sparked a movement long overdue.

Yet we increasingly rely on social media to get our news — an online comment section where anyone can say anything and claim it as fact. When Americans know how to find trustworthy sources and rely on them instead of social media, we can stop debating what is real and start talking through what conclusions should come from facts. That is our path to lasting solutions — and to a democracy that will not just survive, but thrive.

Melanie Lundquist is co-founder of the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools and a signatory with her husband, Richard, of the Giving Pledge.

The Commons is financed in part with philanthropic support from the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, Einhorn Collaborative, and JPB Foundation. None of our supporters have any control over or input into story selection, reporting, or editing, and they do not review articles before publication. See more about the Chronicle, the grants, how our foundation-supported journalism works, and our gift-acceptance policy.

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.

April 1, 2024

Democracy SOS

For the launch of The Commons, the Chronicle invited guest essayists to debate how to strengthen civic engagement, build community, and bolster democracy. The essays below are from advocates; read also the pieces by donors supporting such efforts as well as by critics.

Keep up with everything happening in The Commons by signing up for our Philanthropy Today newsletter and joining our Commons group on LinkedIn.

Rachel Kleinfeld | Edgar Villanueva | Spencer Cox | Danielle Allen | Michael Wear

The Coming Attacks on Nonprofits

The far right and far left want to eliminate organizations that challenge them.

By Rachel Kleinfeld

There is a scene in the first Star Wars where the heroes find themselves in a garbage compactor. They frantically grab for anything that can keep them from getting crushed as the walls inexorably close in. Such is the plight of civil society in countries facing what democracy experts call “closing space” — and it has now come to the United States.

Fifteen years ago, civil-society organizations abroad that supported ideas anathema to governing parties found themselves getting squeezed from all directions. Russia, Ethiopia, and other semi-authoritarian regimes began restricting foreign funding to their nonprofit sectors. These regimes undermined the legitimacy of organizations by painting their ideas as foreign or insinuating that their leaders were corrupt. Registration laws were crafted that made perfect compliance impossible. This indirect subversion of civil society spread globally, including within democracies: India closed 10,000 nonprofits in 2015 for minor administrative issues. Poland raided women’s and gay-rights groups and seized computers after large antigovernment protests.

Unlike under totalitarianism, not all organizations faced retribution, only groups that refused to back the ruling party’s line. Nor were activists, at first, whisked off to jail. Instead, they were weighed down with legal cases, fines, investigations, and the like until leaders burned out and funders distanced themselves from controversy.

Today, the space in which U.S. civil society operates is closing in — thanks to polarization, not a ruling party. Illiberals on the far right and far left have decided that it’s not enough to persuade: They must eliminate undesirable ideas — and organizations — using whatever power is at hand, their tactics pulled straight from those used by anti-democratic regimes abroad.

States have passed 38 new anti-protest laws. Free speech is being throttled by universities firing tenured professors for their words and by gag-order bills introduced in 36 states such as Florida. Businesses have faced state retaliation for offering customers desired products such as investment funds that employ environmental, social, and governance (ESG) screening. U.S. House of Representative committees have investigated mainstream environmental groups for failing to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Fifty-year-old church ministries are suddenly facing state lawsuits.

When I looked for examples of “closing space,” I ended up with six pages. Since illiberals on the right wield more political power than those on the left, they are more likely to use governmental regulatory, legal, and oversight agencies to silence their critics. Illiberals on the left exercise more power in universities, schools, and cultural institutions; they are largely working through private regulation of speech and funding. Unprosecuted violence also plays a role in shutting down the civic sphere. Threats and violence are already terrifying many nonprofits, voter-registration efforts, and religious institutions.

Illiberals often target the other side of the political spectrum, of course: The illiberal right is harassing environmental groups and organizations pursuing LGBTQ+ rights, among others; the illiberal left has made conservatives an endangered species on college campuses. But both also obstruct the work of the liberals on their side of the partisan divide.

In fact, classical liberals on the right were the first to feel the full force of the illiberal right’s power. Powerful public leaders whose ideas may be quite conservative but who believe in the free exchange of ideas were caught unprepared. Pastors like Russell Moore were forced out. Magazines like the Weekly Standard were defunded. Intellectuals such as David French faced unrelenting, ugly, violent threats directed at themselves, their children, and their families.

Why target one’s own side? By closing space, illiberals eliminate the middle ground and reduce competition for their extreme views. That expands their power as people grudgingly accept more anti-democratic action from their own side, believing it is necessary to prevent similar actions by their opponents.

U.S. philanthropists are addressing the problem quietly and in piecemeal fashion. When grantees are targeted by cyberthreats, seven-figure lawsuits, or an attorney general’s investigation, they respond to the individual incident, with as little attention as possible.

Overseas, such a limited response failed. More organizations faced restrictions. Philanthropy itself was targeted.

In the United States, philanthropy does not have to look overseas — we can recall our own history. Space for civil society was constricted during the Jim Crow South: In Birmingham, Ala., a Junior League could operate — but an interracial league for checkers players couldn’t. In Mississippi, there was a free press, but it was illegal to publish anything supporting social equality between whites and Blacks. Groups promoting disapproved ideas might have their private insurance denied, be closed for regulatory violations, or face vigilante violence that would go unpunished.

Overseas, after a decade, philanthropists learned to band together. They set up pooled funds to defend their grantees. They supported lawyers, crisis communications, and created physical and cybersecurity programs. Programs began to whisk activists to safety if danger arose.

Luckily, we are at the early stages of closing space in the United States. And groups like the Democracy Funders Network are learning from overseas to help nonprofits and philanthropies across the political spectrum find solutions. Liberals — whether conservative or progressive — should join the effort to protect the national treasure that is America’s vibrant civil society.

Rachel Kleinfeld is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she researches democracies under pressure and how they can rebound. This is drawn from her latest paper, “Closing Civic Space in the United States.”

Race Matters More Than Red and Blue

Philanthropy must reckon with its racist past to truly heal divides.

By Edgar Villanueva

In an election year, perhaps the last thing political parties and operatives want to discuss is bridging divides. We live in an era of hyperpartisanship, and division will become more pronounced the closer we get to November. But the divides that most shape our country run much deeper than politics. Centuries old, they separate out communities of color as “others” and leave pain that no red-blue kumbaya can touch.

To heal our divides, we must create a world in which all are seen and all are valued. And we must create a world in which we all see the benefit of collective belonging, then commit to bring it about. “We must” is critical; each of us must invest in this goal and see how we’re affected by it, regardless of our race, ethnicity, sexual or gender identity, our religion or creed.

But for everyone to engage, the benefits must be readily apparent. Healing divides isn’t the sole burden of those who have been excluded from the American dream. It is a collective opportunity for both the historically advantaged and disadvantaged to recognize and right past wrongs and experience the joy and liberation that comes with that. Everyone has a role to play in the work of repair — especially philanthropy.

As I encourage foundations and donors to use their resources to heal, I highlight the importance of reparative philanthropy, which calls for that acknowledgment of past oppression and steps to repair it through redistribution of resources. This model requires collaboration, accountability, and mutually respectful relationships. It is drawn from the Indigenous tradition that practices the principle known as “All My Relations.” In short, it is the idea that we have all been harmed by oppressive systems, and we all have a role to play to secure collective healing.

The last part is key. Often, when you hear about societal problems, it’s easy to look the other way if you are not directly affected. And it can be easy to find reassurance in the list of reasons why you will not be similarly victimized. In psychology, this tendency is considered a cognitive bias called the “fundamental attribution error.”

Such mental gymnastics, however, give us false hope. And they create distance between us and those directly impacted. I want us all to appreciate that when a group is hurt, all are affected. What ails one, ails us all.

I get that such a mind-set isn’t easy. The world can be frightful, with its deepening inequity, widespread resistance to racial equity, and fierce commitment to the status quo. There is also fear that helping others is a zero-sum proposition that means harming one’s self. It may feel good psychologically to look for safety, but I believe true safety lies in working toward healing.

In recent years, we have seen significant moments of progress but also retrenchment. Most notably, the killing of George Floyd prompted a professed commitment to equity. Corporations, philanthropy, and others declared a desire and drive to tackle racial justice. Horrified by the blatant disregard for Black life, philanthropists and grant makers made small and large donations. Black activists were finally being heard, and everyone knew it.

Next, however, came the expected, but no less distressing, backsliding on funding and commitments. The retreat was sparked by fear — fear of campaigns demonizing the teaching of race in schools, fear of attacks on critical race theory, and fear of efforts to squelch programs ensuring diversity, equity, and inclusion. Last summer’s U.S. Supreme Court decision banning race-based affirmative action in higher education fueled the attacks. Following the decision, a wave of lawsuits hit entities such as the Fearless Fund, which is being sued over its support of Black-owned businesses. Anxiety is growing in some parts of the philanthropic sector along with trepidation about funding anything explicitly in service of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, or other people of color. This is an affront to us all.

We cannot heal divides without a steadfast and unbreakable commitment. It is pointless for philanthropists or advocates to search for common or safe ground if they do not agree on the fundamentals of racial equity. It is pointless to think that pluralism will lead to safety. In fact, no one should embrace pluralism as a solution for issues that have plagued the nation for centuries. Pluralism does not lift up and empower the marginalized; to the contrary, it works in service of the oppression of those who have always struggled to be seen and heard.

This is not the time to play it safe; it is time to double down. Philanthropy may not be driving the attacks on communities of color, but it cannot afford to be silent in the face of them. To heal divides, we must, as a field, adopt reparative philanthropy as a central approach to our work — both taking responsibility for our contributions to division and unapologetically committing to address the need to redistribute resources to communities of color.

Edgar Villanueva is the founder and principal of Leverage Philanthropic Partners and Decolonizing Wealth Project.

A Politician’s Crusade

Progress is infinitely harder when each side thinks the other is the enemy.

By Spencer Cox

When I was elected by my fellow governors last summer as chair of the National Governors Association, I started a program we call Disagree Better: Healthy Conflict for Better Policy. It’s backed by philanthropies as diverse as the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Hewlett Foundation, the New Pluralists, the Packard Foundation, the Stand Together Trust (formerly known as the Charles Koch Institute), the Carnegie Corporation, and a number of corporate partners.

“Healthy conflict” is certainly not the traditional focus for a public-policy arm of the 55 state and territorial chief executives, but it’s critical for the problem-solving that governors want to lead.

I’m a conservative who believes in a strong national defense, low taxes, free trade, a sane immigration system, paying teachers more, and American energy dominance, among other priorities. But I’ve realized that progress on any of these goals is infinitely harder when each side thinks the other is the enemy. In our pluralistic society, conflict is essential, but the type of conflict matters to whether it yields welcome steps forward or endless bickering.

I also am deeply concerned about how America’s toxic political conflict erodes our leadership in the world. Over the past year, I’ve had conversations with two former secretaries of defense and numerous diplomats from the United States and our allies. They all tell me that polarization is undermining our ability to influence world events. As partisan animosity and political violence rise at home, we simply have less credibility modeling democracy and encouraging good behavior abroad.

How do we promote healthy conflict? Structural changes to our electoral system like ranked-choice voting and other innovations are worth considering but aren’t enough. Nor is it enough to encourage candidates for office to avoid negative campaigning or divisiveness out of a sense of civic responsibility. We have to demonstrate that it’s also good politics — that there is indeed an “exhausted majority” of Americans who want something different and will reward candidates and elected officials who treat their opponents respectfully. Studies by More in Common and the Polarization Research Lab, among many others, prove this idea.

Lots of well-meaning conservatives and liberals are skeptical of efforts focused on civility, bridge-building, or depolarization. My friends on the right greet my descriptions of Disagree Better with an eye-roll (sometimes rhetorically). They perceive it as a naive effort to “go along to get along,” yet one more example of a RINO (Republican in Name Only) preaching compromise as cover for capitulating to the left.

From the left, I most frequently hear that promoting healthy conflict unfairly expects people who feel marginalized to treat their political opponents with dignity. These advocates believe their power imbalance comes with moral permission to be loud and militant. Furthermore, they see someone concerned about surgeries for transgender youth, DEI initiatives on campus, or other progressive priorities as inherently bad or at least operating in bad faith.

Yet the concerns from both sides are genuine — and important to understand if we are to reduce partisan animosity.

To my friends on the right: I hear you. I, too, am leery of efforts that imply I must ignore my beliefs or suppress my concerns with progressive policies. Disagree Better is not that. My focus is on conflict but the right kind of conflict. I want to give people permission to express strong ideological views but without hatred and contempt.

To my friends on the left: I understand your concern, but you will never persuade anyone or open their mind by telling them they’re a terrible person.

Perhaps the most difficult part of practicing healthy conflict is distinguishing between policies or arguments that are bad faith and ones we believe are merely wrong.

Constitutional scholar Tara Leigh Grove beautifully describes the importance of pluralism and persuasion.

Society and our legal system can work better if there is a background assumption that most people are operating in good faith and from sincere belief, even if they hold beliefs that you don’t share. This idea will lead to compromise and mutual understanding. I think many people in our society don’t think that’s a good thing. It’s about my side should win, your side should lose. I see this on both the left and the right. A broader functioning society recognizes, Let me be understanding toward one political faction knowing that I may not always win elections, and I would like to be treated with some good faith and understanding when I lose.

So how do we promote this “assumption of good faith” toward the other side? In our effort, we are inviting governors and other public officials to prominently model the right kind of conflict. Twenty governors have recorded Disagree Better ads, with most of those featuring a Republican and a Democrat standing side by side, acknowledging their friendship despite their disagreements. We believe, based on Stanford’s Strengthening Democracy Challenge’s study and loads of anecdotes, that the ads do in fact reduce partisan animosity.

Beyond these ads, we’re thrilled to support the thriving ecosystem of scholars and practitioners working to reduce partisan animosity through evidence-based tactics. Governors, through Disagree Better, are helping these organizations expand in their states, exposing high-school students to those who are different, teaching college students the right way to debate tough issues, helping faith communities navigate divisive matters, instructing activists on both sides how to persuade rather than vilify, and much more.

Former World Bank economist William Easterly has suggested that grand plans to end poverty usually accomplish nothing, while smart investments in solving discrete problems can be quite effective. He’s right, and his lesson should guide our efforts to tamp down partisan animosity and return America to solving problems. Lofty plans will be less effective than our collective efforts to build the institutions in our communities, police the rhetoric of our own side, engage others with curiosity rather than contempt, reward the elected officials who defend our preferred policies respectfully, and help Americans emphasize identities other than their political identities.

Human history is replete with tyranny and violence. It would be a needless tragedy if we let America — the greatest idea and experiment in history — obsess over our differences while ceding our global leadership. The world needs America to show that our messy form of democracy is still the best system to solve problems, produce human prosperity, and protect freedom.

Spencer Cox, a Republican, is governor of Utah and chair of the National Governors Association, the public-policy arm of the 55 state and territorial chief executives.

Democracy Isn’t Cheap

Our political institutions and elections are badly in need of renovation.

By Danielle Allen

Two data points keep me up at night. According to political scientists Yascha Mounk and Roberto Foa, roughly 70 percent of the generation born before World War II consider it essential to live in a democracy. Among millennials and younger, the number is not quite 30 percent. This is troubling: The simple fact is that you can’t have a democracy if you don’t want it.

We are on the verge of failing to give the next generation what we ourselves inherited: a constitutional democracy. Regardless of what happens in the November elections, we will not ensure that democracy endures unless we can correct that.

Many think the solution is civic education that connects young people to democracy. The Educating for American Democracy coalition, a nationwide, cross-partisan effort, is advancing a new framework for excellence in history and civic learning for K-12 students. An organization that I founded, the Democratic Knowledge Project, is one of hundreds in the coalition.

The answer, however, is bigger than that, because if you encourage people to participate in something broken and dysfunctional, the result just deepens cynicism. We see this in research on the impact of corruption in developing democracies.

To earn the allegiance of rising generations to our form of government, political institutions need to be worthy of their time and effort. Redoubling efforts in civic education must go hand in hand with investments of time, treasure, and talent in renovating our democracy so it can live up to its promise of offering all citizens voice and choice as well as institutions responsive to our participation.

The 2020 “Our Common Purpose” report from the American Academy of Arts and Science lays out 31 recommendations to renovate our democracy. The goal is to deliver responsive governance supported by civil-society organizations that help people build bridges and that deliver a healthy media ecosystem. Those organizations in turn sustain — and are sustained by — a rich and nourishing civic culture.

Recommended structural reforms include: expansion of the U.S. House of Representatives in alignment with the growth and evolution of the population; term limits for U.S. Supreme Court justices to lower the political stakes of those appointments; voter-registration options on Election Day; ranked-choice voting to give candidates incentives to campaign in bridge-building ways instead of negative attacks; independent redistricting commissions that would end gerrymandering; and taxes on social media and revenue to sustain local journalism.

Yet the report left out two important themes: the importance of parties to the American system and the destructive consequences of how they currently operate.

As Nick Troiano, executive director of Unite America, argues eloquently in his new book, The Primary Solution, reforms to the party primary process in the 20th century have unintentionally radicalized our politics. Party nominating processes were brought out of smoke-filled back rooms and put on the public ballot, courtesy of taxpayer dollars. The goal was laudable — a transparent process. But unintended results followed. Fewer and fewer people vote in those public primaries. Now only small minorities of voters — and mainly those with the most intensely held views — participate.

When combined with gerrymandering that creates congressional districts dominated by one party, this results in very small percentages of voters electing the so-called representatives. Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene won her primary with votes from 8 percent of her district’s electorate. She then faced a noncompetitive general-election race. New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won with support from just 5 percent of the electorate in her district.

As primary winners increasingly reflect the radical views of their party, moderate voters cease participating. Just over half of American voters are now enrolled in political parties, down from a high of about 70 percent in the 1990s. And as those numbers decline and fewer voters participate in primaries, elected officials have ever more to fear from being “primaried” if they seek compromises or cross-partisan solutions once in office. Their ability to govern declines because of a set of perverse incentives.

To restore functional institutions — and healthy incentives for elected officials — we should adopt a single primary in which candidates from all parties run on the same ballot. The top four or five vote-getters would then move on to a general election with an instant runoff, ensuring that the winner will represent the majority of voters.

The renovations described above aren’t easy for people to get their heads around. Yet popular support is necessary to get the reforms off the ground. I recommend significant and sustained philanthropic investment in voter education and engagement around democracy renovation.

My organization, Partners in Democracy, runs democracy-renovation learning communities in Massachusetts, and we’re about to start in Ohio. We find it takes up to a dozen deliberative sessions for even highly informed civic participants to think through the pros and cons of potential reforms and come to firm and stable conclusions. You can’t get democracy renovation on the cheap, in the same way you can’t build your dream house with cut-rate materials. For decades, we have underinvested in the innovations that could help us newly realize democracy’s promise in rapidly changing conditions.

We have a long way to go on educating adults about what is possible in our democracy if we are going to be able to deliver to the kids a set of institutions worthy of their hearts, hands, and minds.

Danielle Allen is director of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation at Harvard, president of Partners in Democracy, and author of several books, including Justice by Means of Democracy.

Care More for People Than Ideology

Philanthropy often seeks to influence people we do not love. That is dangerous.

By Michael Wear

There is a beautiful old song, “Moonlight Becomes You,” that Bing Crosby liked to sing, apparently as a convenient way around directly expressing love, which he thought was too vulnerable and emotional. The song ends: “If I say I love you/I just want you to know/it’s not just because there’s moonlight/although moonlight becomes you so.” Crosby wanted the object of his affection to think he loved her but he didn’t quite want to say it.

Now I’m a Bing-positivist, but a cynic might wonder if he loved her at all, or if the song was just a manipulation to get what he wanted while ducking the high bar of commitment and responsibility that love invokes.

In civic and public life, we too often seem as embarrassed about pronouncements of love as poor Bing. Love is deemed unserious and unsubstantial. It is especially odd to find this aversion to and discomfort with love, and expressions of it, in philanthropy, given that love is referenced by the very name. (Philo, or “phileo,” is Greek for “love,” after all.) Everyone involved rightly wants to convey that their decisions are based on what works — grantees making the case for funding, grantors making the case for the wisdom of their funding — and love is not valued for its efficacy. We want our philanthropy to be determined by evidence and rational decision-making, not the blinding force of love, right? Ask Romeo and Juliet about what love did for their life choices!

But we are wrong to discount love. Love is not saccharine. It is not mere preamble to the “real” work of philanthropy. Love is the real work of philanthropy, and if what you’re doing is not loving, it is not philanthropy.

This is easier to see, perhaps, in direct-service efforts that feed the hungry and clothe the poor. Yet it is also true for civic philanthropy and philanthropic efforts aimed at knitting our country together.

We think love is too soft to effect change in a politics of power. We think the problems in our country are too hard, too big, too technical, for love. But love, according to Aquinas, is the “will to good” — to be committed to others and their well-being. If we are not doing that, if we are not willing the good of the people, communities, and societies we serve, what are we doing?

Too often in philanthropic work and democracy at large, we seek to influence people we do not love. This is dangerous. People are right to be suspicious of those who have the audacity to try to change them and shape their communities without the audacity to love.

Suzette Brooks Masters of the Democracy Funders Network has called for funders and nonprofits to reflect on how their work might fuel division and polarization — indeed, even when that work is done under the very banner of countering polarization and reducing divisions. Brooks Masters, who previously spent nearly a decade as a grant maker focused on immigration, describes how she oversimplified the opposition in her determination to “win” for immigrants suffering hardship. Focused on the importance of rejecting and undermining antisocial forces like nativism, she did not consider and respect that people might disagree for reasons that aren’t reducible to the most malignant forms of opposition.

While we must be clear-eyed about threats to our democracy, we must be clear-eyed enough not to make strident, “with us or against us” distinctions solely because we are confident that our distinctions are born of positive intentions. Our principles, our funding priorities, must derive from a care for the people we are serving and affecting, and they must be kept in subordination to those people. We must care more for people than our ideologies. If we are to act in philanthropy, we must do so out of love: our will to good.

There is no policy, no technique, to overcome a lack of love. This is inescapable. We cannot reliably build a democracy in which people will the good of others without love, because willing the good of others is what love entails. We cannot pursue social cohesion or building bridges or knitting people together as a means to some other end but because we believe it is good for people to be knit together. People can partner out of self-interest, but only love will knit them together.

This must be ever at the forefront of our minds, especially as our efforts grow in scale and ambition, from serving individual persons to “culture change” and political influence. Our politics requires reform, yes, but our politics needs most a new heart out of which good and just reforms can emerge. There is no plan or system that will make our democracy whole without love. Without it, our work is but a vain conceit.

Michael Wear is the founder, president, and CEO of the Center for Christianity and Public Life. He is the author of the recently published The Spirit of Our Politics: Spiritual Formation and the Renovation of Public Life.

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.

July 26, 2023

For Emmett Till’s Family, National Monument Proclamation Cements His Inclusion in the American Story

When President Joe Biden signed a proclamation Tuesday establishing a national monument honoring Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, it marked the fulfillment of a promise Till’s relatives made after his death 68 years ago.

The Black teenager from Chicago, whose abduction, torture, and killing in Mississippi in 1955 helped propel the Civil Rights Movement, is now an American story, not just a civil-rights story, said Till’s cousin the Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr.

“It has been quite a journey for me from the darkness to the light,” Parker said during a proclamation signing ceremony at the White House attended by dozens, including other family members, members of Congress, and civil-rights leaders.

“Back then in the darkness, I could never imagine the moment like this, standing in the light of wisdom, grace, and deliverance,” he said.

With the stroke of Biden’s pen, the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument, located across three sites in two states, became federally protected places. Before signing the proclamation, the president said he marvels at the courage of the Till family to “find faith and purpose in pain.”

“Today, on what would have been Emmett’s 82nd birthday, we add another chapter in the story of remembrance and healing,” Biden said.

It’s the fourth such designation by the Democratic president’s administration, reflecting its broader civil rights agenda, the White House said. The move comes as conservative leaders, mostly at the state and local levels, push legislation that limits the teaching of slavery and Black history in public schools.

“At a time when there are those who seek to ban books [and] bury history, we’re making clear, crystal clear,” Biden said. “We can’t just choose to learn what we want to know. We should know everything — the good, the bad, the truth of who we are as a nation. That’s what great nations do.”

On Tuesday, reaction poured in from other elected officials and from the civil-rights organizing community. The Rev. Al Sharpton said the Till national monument designation tells him “that out of pain comes power.”

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the monument “places the life and legacy of Emmett Till among our nation’s most treasured memorials.”

“Black history is American history,” he said in a written statement.

Till’s family members, along with a national organization seeking to preserve Black cultural heritage sites, say their work protecting the Till legacy continues. They hope to raise money to restore the sites and develop educational programming to support their inclusion in the National Park System.

Brent Leggs, executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, said the federal designation is a milestone in a yearslong effort to preserve and protect places tied to events that have shaped the nation and that symbolize national wounds.

“We believe that not until Black history matters will Black lives and Black bodies matter,” he said. “Through reckoning with America’s racist past, we have the opportunity to heal.”

The African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund has provided $750,000 in grant funding since 2017 to help rescue sites important to the Till legacy. A number of other philanthropic organizations have contributed several million dollars toward preservation of the Till sites.

Biden’s proclamation protects places that are central to the story of Emmett Till’s life and death at age 14, the acquittal of his white killers by an all-white jury, and his late mother’s activism.

In the summer of 1955, Mamie Till-Mobley put her son Emmett on a train to her native Mississippi, where he was to spend time with his uncle and his cousins. In the overnight hours of August 28, 1955, Emmett was taken from his uncle’s home at gunpoint by two vengeful white men.

Emmett’s alleged crime? Flirting with the wife of one of his kidnappers.

Three days later, a fisherman on the Tallahatchie River discovered the teenager’s bloated corpse — one of his eyes was detached, an ear was missing, his head was shot and bashed in.

Till-Mobley demanded that Emmett’s mutilated remains be taken back to Chicago for a public, open casket funeral that was attended by tens of thousands of people. Graphic images taken of Emmett’s remains, sanctioned by his mother, were published by Jet magazine and fueled the Civil Rights Movement.

At the trial of his killers in Mississippi, Till-Mobley bravely took the witness stand to counter the perverse image of her son that defense attorneys had painted for jurors and trial watchers.

Altogether, the Till national monument will include 5.7 acres (2.3 hectares) of land and two historic buildings. The Mississippi sites are Graball Landing, the spot where Emmett’s body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River just outside of Glendora, Miss., and the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse in Sumner, Miss., where Emmett’s killers were tried.

At Graball Landing, a memorial sign installed in 2008 had been repeatedly stolen and was riddled with bullets. An inch-thick bulletproof sign was erected at the site in October 2019.

The Illinois site is Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Chicago, where Emmett’s funeral was held in September 1955.

Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who originally introduced the bipartisan legislation to federally recognize and protect Roberts Temple, noted the church’s importance to the history of Chicago and the nation.

“It’s past time we recognize how national monuments can not only teach us about our history — but provoke us to build a more just future,” the Democratic senator said in a statement.

Mississippi state Sen. David Jordan, 90, was a freshman at Mississippi Valley State College in 1955 when he attended part of the trial of the two men charged with killing Emmett. As a state senator for the past 30 years, Jordan, who is Black, spearheaded fundraising for a statue of Emmett Till that was dedicated last year in Greenwood, Miss., a few miles from where the teenager was abducted.

On Tuesday, Jordan praised Biden for creating the Till national monument.

“It’s one of the greatest honors that a president could pay to a person, 14, who lost his life in Mississippi, that’s created a movement that changed America,” Jordan told the AP.

Daphne Chamberlain, a history professor at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Miss., said Emmett’s brutal killing continues to resonate in racial-justice issues of today.

“Over the past decade or so, we have seen as a nation the murder of young Black men like Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Tyre Nichols in Memphis, [and] Ahmaud Arbery,” she said. “In each of these instances, what we have also seen is the bravery of the mothers in coming to the forefront and speaking out against what happened to their sons but also making sure that they stayed the course in pursuing justice.”

The Till national monument joins dozens of federally recognized landmarks, buildings, and other places in the Deep South, in the north, and out west that represent historical events and tragedies from the Civil Rights Movement. For example, in Atlanta, sites representing the life and legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., including his birth home and Ebenezer Baptist Church, are all part of the National Park Service.

The designation often requires public and private entities to work together on developing interpretation centers at each of the sites, so that anyone who visits can understand the site’s significance. The hiring of park rangers is supported through partnerships with the National Park Foundation, the park service’s official nonprofit, and the National Parks Conservation Association.

Increasingly, the park service includes sites “that are part of the arc of justice in this country, both telling where we’ve come from, how far we’ve come, and, frankly, how far we have to still go,” said Will Shafroth, the president and CEO of the National Park Foundation.

For Parker, who was 16 years old when he witnessed Emmett’s abduction, the Till monument proclamation begins to lift the weight of trauma that he has carried for most of his life. In an interview with the AP ahead of Tuesday’s White House event, Parker reflected on the decades-long fight to portray Emmett and his story in a proper light.

“I’ve been suffering for all these years of how they’ve portrayed him — I still deal with that,” Parker, 84, said of his cousin Emmett.

“The truth should carry itself, but it doesn’t have wings. You have to put some wings on it.”

Associated Press writers Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Mississippi, and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.

Aaron Morrison is a New York-based member of AP’s Race and Ethnicity team. Follow him on social media.

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.

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