Hi everyone, this post will be disorganized and will possibly piss off some people. The kids didn’t have school today, so I spent time hanging out with them and didn’t have much time to work on this. The proverb about parenting and how “the days are long but the years are short” is terrifyingly accurate. It feels like yesterday I was bathing them in the bathroom sink; and now they are sassy as hell:
“Daddy, tell us stories about how poor you were as a kid, like about how you got one salted plum each week as a treat because your parents couldn’t afford candy!”
“Yes, and about how you didn’t have real toys and had to make tiny boats out of banana leaves!”
With the horror happening all around us all the time, I find comfort in my kids. Children are a good reminder of why we do this work, and why we can’t give up, even when the tides seem insurmountable, as they often feel right now. I love their imagination, which is filled with hope and optimism, balanced by occasions when relatively minor events can suddenly become catastrophic, like the time my then-three-year-old thought the world was ending because he left behind a cool stick he found when we visited a park. (I went back to get it later).
It is us, the adults, who must be practical, and who must shield our kids from harsh reality and let them keep their hopeful innocence for as long as possible. We nod encouragingly at their unrealistic dreams of being a Youtuber or whatever, and we reassure them that many things they freak out about will not come to pass.
But every once a while, I wish we, the adults, would have the imagination kids have, including the imagination to picture how awful things can be. Especially the adults who have the most power and resources to make a difference. And especially now, when we’re facing the rapid dismantling of democracy and the exponential growth of fascism.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who has been disheartened by funders’ response or lack thereof to the threats facing our sector and communities. Now, as transgender people, DEI, social justice, decency, women, science, immigrants, the “sin of empathy,” and everything good in the world are under attack and we need funders to step up, many have done the opposite. Hiding. Withdrawing. Or worse, caving in.
You may have read this article in the New York Times last week (The NYT sucks and has played a huge part in the dehumanizing of transgender people and the platforming of all sorts of hateful ideas that led us to this moment, but that’s for another article): “Venting at Democrats and Fearing Trump, Liberal Donors Pull Back Cash.” Here are some excerpts of what our donors and funders are doing during this crisis:
“Charitable foundations that have long supported causes like voting rights, L.G.B.T.Q. equality and immigrants’ rights are pulling back, devoting time to prepare for expected investigations from the Republican-led Congress.”
“And some of the country’s biggest liberal donors have paused giving, frustrated with what they see as Democrats’ lack of vision and worried about retaliation from a vengeful president. Some Democrats say a few of their reliable donors are now openly supporting Mr. Trump, or at least looking to curry favor with him.”
So much for not obeying in advance, which is the first of “Twenty Lessons on Fighting Tyranny From the Twentieth Century” by Timothy Snyder, who studied this stuff.
His second lesson is “Defend institutions. It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. Do not speak of ‘our institutions’ unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. So choose an institution you care about and take its side.”
Libraries, museums, archives, arts organizations, civil rights organizations, the nonprofit sector in general, are these vital institutions helping our society to “preserve decency,” and the right-wing is hell-bent on destroying them, and has been very effective at it. We need funders and donors to step in at this moment, to choose the institutions they profess to care about and take their sides by funding and protecting them.
Yet, even those who want to do something seem to be tentative and incremental. A colleague told me about a foundation that proudly boasted about how they just voted to increase their payout from 5% … to a whopping 6%! 🥳🎉🙌🍾
All of this is a pattern that is thoroughly predictable based on observations of liberal-leaning foundations’ and donors’ behaviors during past crises, but it is still disappointing. I know there are some amazing funders out there that have been all-in, fighting tooth and nail (thank you!). The problem is that they don’t have vast resources, while those that do have billions in endowments are the most squeamish and risk averse.
A few years ago I wrote “How nonprofit and philanthropy’s lack of imagination is a barrier to equity and justice.” It seems a lot of people who oversee foundations have lost the ability to imagine a world that’s just and equitable, where philanthropy may not be needed at all. Hence, they are adamant about their foundations existing in perpetuity.
But they have also lost the ability to imagine the world getting much, much worse. Those who study fascism, like Timothy Snyder, tell us what the signs are, and we’ve been hitting each of them right on schedule: A strongman cult leader, dismantling of democratic norms, scapegoating of minorities, rhetoric around law and order, control of media, dissemination of misinformation, banning of books, hyper-nationalism, weakening of civil and human rights, expanded government surveillance, suppression of dissent, encouragement of violence against those who don’t fall in line, and so on.
Democracy is not like a cool stick we forgot at the park and can make our parents go back to get later. Once it’s gone, there may be no turning back in any of our lifetimes, or even our kids’.
Funders, stop being in denial about how bad things are and how much worse they will get. We are reaching a point where if we don’t collectively do something big, it may be impossible to go back. Stop withdrawing. Stop caving in. Now is the time for foundations to go beyond 5% payout to 50%, 75%, or even 100%. Go all-in. We need you fully in the trenches with organizations and individuals risking their lives in the fight against fascism. If democracy falls, all the billions left in your endowments will be worthless, a symbol of your cowardice.
