Conservative Foundations Aren’t Racing to Change Grants Strategy Because of Trump

Even though a Republican occupies the White House for the first time in eight years, many leaders in conservative philanthropy aren’t sure they have a true partner on Pennsylvania Avenue — and thus aren’t sprinting to take advantage of the shift in Washington to advance their policy goals.

Part of the hesitancy may be about President Trump’s recent political troubles, but right-leaning grant makers and think-tank officials say it is largely because he has so far governed more on the basis of personality than ideology.

“There’s a real schism in the conservative ranks,” says Chester Finn, president emeritus of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and an assistant secretary of education in the Reagan administration. “Conservatives are not exactly getting on a Trump bandwagon.”

‘Wait and See’

Mr. Trump put several issues embraced by conservative foundations at the forefront of his presidential campaign, including greater school choice, strengthening law-enforcement agencies, boosting entrepreneurs, and curtailing immigration. But Michael Hartmann, senior fellow at conservative advocacy group the Capital Research Center, says foundations are wary.

“The uncertainty transcends specific issues,” says Mr. Hartmann, who for nearly two decades developed education policy at the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in Milwaukee. “The Trump campaign did not rely on the policy apparatus that has been funded by conservative philanthropy. The campaign had a bit of disdain for that and probably viewed it as the establishment.”

He and other veterans of conservative philanthropy say grant makers are still assessing Mr. Trump as a potential partner.

“I don’t think any organizations are consciously trying to map their priorities with the administration,” says Howard Husock, vice president for research at the Manhattan Institute and a Chronicle columnist. “The administration’s priorities are still evolving. People are taking a wait-and-see attitude.”

Response on the Left

Progressive grant makers have taken a sharply different tack. Many have started emergency funds and announced changes in their spending and priorities since the election.

A recent survey by the Center on Effective Philanthropy suggests conservative and liberal groups alike are in many cases realigning their work with the voting results. Nearly three-fourths of the 162 grant makers polled, among them groups leaning both left and right, said they intended to adjust their spending in direct response to the Trump administration.

In anonymous responses quoted in the survey report, some leaders said they planned to make shifts in their priorities for distributing grants in accord with openings created by the administration in education policy and regional economic-development efforts. But conservative grant makers, by and large, have not made the same kinds of public pronouncements of purpose as have progressive foundations, and in many cases, they do not plan big changes.

Take the Adolph Coors Foundation, which has supported conservative and libertarian advocacy groups and think tanks like the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Cato Institute, and the Heritage Foundation.

“We don’t change our priorities based on who is in office,” says John Jackson, the foundation’s executive director. “We just keep doing the same thing.”

Foundations shouldn’t obsess over who occupies the White House, says Adam Meyerson, chief executive of the Philanthropy Roundtable, a donor network formerly chaired by conservative philanthropist Betsy DeVos. There is plenty of opportunity, he says, to push policy agendas and build programs at the state level.

Mr. Finn, the former Fordham Institute leader, counsels a similar strategy on the education front. Mr. Trump’s appointment of Ms. DeVos, a fierce advocate of school choice, as secretary of education would seem to auger well for charter schools and voucher programs, but Mr. Finn says foundations that share his support for those policies might make more headway if they make their case at the state level.

He points to the Walton Family Foundation as an example of grant maker committed to action in cities and states. In February, for instance, the foundation committed $2.1 million to the Atlanta school system to create a “real-time” data-collection program to evaluate student performance and behavior.

“The action on education policy resides locally — in cities and states — which is why for 20 years that’s where we focused our education grant making,” Marc Sternberg, who directs Walton’s education grants, said in a statement. “Increasing the number of great schools in cities depends on enlightened local policy and leadership.”

Tough Conversations

Although she cut her political teeth during the Reagan revolution, Mason Rummel has reservations about the ideas brewing in the Trump White House.

Ms. Rummel, a former Reagan administration appointee at the Office of Management and Budget, is now president of the James Graham Brown Foundation in Louisville, which she characterizes as nonpartisan. In recent years, she says, the grant maker has taken “baby steps” toward funding organizations that work to reduce inequity in Kentucky.

Those efforts — a shift from the fund’s historical focus on providing big grants to capital campaigns run by nonprofits in the state — are threatened by Mr. Trump’s proposed deep cuts in federal spending on social programs, Ms. Rummel says. Philanthropy would not be able to fill the gaps, she says, particularly if changes in the tax code dampen charitable giving.

The Trump White House has only provided a sketch of a broad tax overhaul, but nonprofit advocates worry that one item in it, an increase in the standard deduction for individual taxpayers, could reduce the tax incentive for donating to charity.

Right now, Ms. Rummel says, the administration and its policies are in too much of a state of turmoil for her foundation to gauge if grant-making changes are needed. But she envisions tough conversations with her board in the near future.

“The foundation is going to have to figure things out when the dust settles,” she says. “We’re going to have to decide what role we’re going to play in this community.”

Reducing the Rancor

Steven Moore, president of the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, which has given $1.5 million to the Heritage Foundation over the past six years, sees a key role for philanthropy at a time when political discourse is growing ever more divisive. Grant makers, he says, can help people with opposing viewpoints communicate without rancor.

To advance the notion that people can disagree in a civil manner, the Washington state-based Murdock fund provided $50,000 to Democracy Northwest, an effort supported by a group of foundations that aims to decrease political polarization.

Mr. Moore says the president has failed to articulate a clear political philosophy. He faults Mr. Trump for adopting a negative tone in his messages on Twitter that Mr. Moore says contributes to division.

He also finds the response from liberal foundations lacking.

“Framing the new administration as the enemy and opposition is unhelpful,” he says. “It is incumbent on us to provide and open space for people who disagree to come together.”

Mr. Meyerson, of the Philanthropy Roundtable, says that given Mr. Trump’s unconventional rise to power, his lack of government experience, and the chaotic early months of his presidency, it’s too early to predict how conservative philanthropy can benefit. But he finds reasons to be hopeful.

“We haven’t seen what his economic agenda will look like,” Mr. Meyerson says. “But if he’s successful in achieving his objective of doubling economic growth, that will be great for the country, great for charitable giving, and great for foundation assets.”