July 7, 2008 | Read Time: 5 minutes
On Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign Web site, he offers no place for people in philanthropy to sign up, even though environmentalists, veterans, students, labor-union members, and other groups are all encouraged to provide their support. But judging from the demographics of his supporters, it may be fair to assume that a large majority of nonprofit employees back his candidacy against the presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain.
If so, Senator Obama’s actions in the past few weeks should certainly have produced some anxiety. On three important issues, he has taken stands at odds with positions his supporters in philanthropy have long been advocating.
To be sure, he still supports lots of measures they will like, including quadrupling the amount spent on national-service programs to $3.5-billion annually. But on these three significant issues, the Illinois senator’s call for “change” seems to be directed at the nonprofit world as much as at government.
Senator Obama first broke ranks with many in philanthropy when he announced he would not accept government financing for his campaign but instead would rely on donations from the public. Much of the support for limits on campaign contributions, which will not now apply to Senator Obama’s run for the White House, has come from foundations and nonprofit groups.
Next, after ducking the issue during the Democratic primaries and even suggesting that President Bill Clinton had erred in signing the legislation, he declared in a nationwide television ad that he favored the 1996 bill restructuring the nation’s public-assistance system. Advocates for the poor, social-service providers, and others in philanthropy have sharply criticized the measure as one that badly shredded protections for the needy.
And in a speech last week in Zanesville, Ohio, Senator Obama embraced an idea that had been a key component of George W. Bush’s run for the White House in 2000: providing more government support for charities sponsored by religious groups.
For a variety of reasons, ranging from fears of the loss of money for their own programs to concerns about blurring church-state boundaries, nonprofit groups (including some on the right) made Mr. Bush’s “faith-based initiative” the most controversial effort of his presidency, at least until the war in Iraq claimed that distinction.
How serious Senator Obama is about these positions only he and his closest advisers know. But his approach inevitably calls into question what philanthropy has stood for.
In declining government financing for his campaign, for example, the soon-to-be Democratic nominee not only called for fixing current election laws (as many in the nonprofit world would) but also suggested that raising money directly from the public might be a better way to guard against undue influence by lobbyists and others. This strikes at the heart of philanthropy’s calls for stricter regulations on fund raising and spending for elections.
When he endorsed the 1996 welfare-overhaul bill, Senator Obama praised the fact that it had “slashed the rolls by 80 percent.” But to the measure’s opponents, including those at charities and foundations, the problem of public assistance was not that it aided too many but that it aided too few, and not that it gave them too much gave them but too little.
In last week’s remarks, though, he made it clear he also supported secular charities, Senator Obama took pains to emphasize the role of “faith and values” as a “source of strength in our lives,” even going so far as to call his plan to help religious groups “the foundation of a new project of American renewal.”
For more than a century, secular nonprofit groups have claimed that role, arguing they offered greater possibilities for widespread social change than traditional religious charities did, which was one of the reasons for their opposition to the Bush administration’s program.
Yet with Senator Obama now reconsidering this and other issues, his supporters in the nonprofit world could face some difficult challenges if he succeeds in winning the White House.
One is facing up to how little their years of advocacy have really accomplished. Many election observers regard Senator Obama’s recent statements merely as political maneuvers, designed to broaden his appeal to centrist voters.
Yet this implies that a number of ideas that the philanthropic world has long championed with considerable money and effort have still not found much traction among large segments of the public or, for that matter, a presidential candidate who enjoys the nonprofit world’s support.
A second set of problems will arise if he seeks to follow up on his views once elected: How will philanthropy respond?
Nonprofit groups had considerable success blocking the Bush administration’s efforts to provide more assistance to religious charities or expand work and training requirements for welfare recipients; they were also instrumental in a major expansion of campaign-finance restrictions (co-sponsored by Senator McCain).
But in an Obama administration, working against a president whom they wish to see succeed and whose other policies they support would be more challenging and could necessitate making some hard choices.
In any election, it is tempting to treat speeches as just rhetoric, words designed to win votes, not to express serious thoughts. That may explain Senator Obama’s recent reversals on issues of special concern to philanthropy. However, so much of Senator Obama’s appeal rests on his oratory that it would be foolish to assume he did not mean what he said, especially in the context of a campaign whose mantra is “change.”
Election Day is still four months away, and both major-party candidates still have plenty of time to expand, clarify, and adjust their positions. But based on the surprising stands he has taken in recent weeks, Senator Obama may turn out to give the philanthropic world much more than it bargained for.
Leslie Lenkowsky is a professor of public affairs and philanthropic studies at Indiana University and a regular contributor to The Chronicle of Philanthropy.
