A few weeks ago, which now feels like an eternity ago, Inside Philanthropy gave me the award for Philanthropy Critic of the Year, saying “Through his blog Nonprofit AF, he’s long advanced a critique of funders that is irreverent, hard hitting[,] and often cuttingly funny.” It’s nice to be recognized for my ramblings, even if IP didn’t even use the Oxford Comma in the recognition, which is rather hurtful.
Among the other awardees are two that stood out to me:
Highest Return on Investment: Donating to the Heritage Foundation: “We’ve long argued that public policy grantmaking offers the greatest leverage for funders. Exhibit A is Heritage’s long record of outsized influence, which is set to hit a new peak in a second Trump administration with Project 2025 or its equivalent.”
No Kidding Award: The Generosity Commission: “Debuted with much fanfare in 2021, the blue-ribbon commission set out to study the decline in ‘everyday’ donors and found that, well, yes, small-donor giving is down. There’s more in the commission’s hefty report, but was it worth all the rigamarole?”
While it irks me that the Heritage Foundation gets lauded and platformed, there is no denying how horrifyingly effective this funder has been. What we are seeing now with the destruction of democracy and the rise of fascism can be greatly attributed to the work of the Heritage Foundation and aligned right-wing funders. And it will only get worse, as we will find out when Project 2025, which we failed to stop, gets implemented in full and erodes our rights over the coming years, if not weeks.
Meanwhile, let’s talk about the Generosity Commission. This is a project to learn why, during a global pandemic, everyday people haven’t been giving as much to charity as they did before. This project cost a total of $3.8 million dollars. And after three years of research and wordsmithing, the first recommendation in the report for how to address the problem is this: “Increase the depth and breadth of data on giving and volunteering.”
I don’t mean to beat up on people and organizations who mean well, especially as several of the people who worked on this project are people I like and admire who have contributed to the field in various other ways. But this whole episode illustrates the stark contrast between how conservative funders and “progressive” funders operate.
Right-wing funders are ruthless and focused in their goals of shaping society according to their often-abhorrent values. Meanwhile, progressive-leaning funders are mired in toxic intellectualizing, where white papers, evaluation reports, summits, and endless research and pontification are seen as equal, if not superior, to taking meaningful and decisive action.
Maybe, just maybe, people have been decreasing in their giving and volunteering because they can barely survive under an oppressive system of capitalism run by oligarchs who couldn’t care less if they lived or died. And maybe they have been giving and volunteering less because, as everything burns to the ground, the few wealthy funders and institutions they hoped would help put out the fires decided it would be a great idea to continue doing things like spend $3.8 million dollars and three years to do a study on why they’re giving and volunteering less.
There is a saying that “progressives come to a knife fight with a spreadsheet.” We’ve been seeing this over the past several decades as funders decrease funding for advocacy, refuse to engage in political work (such as by funding C4 organizations), give one-year grants (when conservative funders fund for 20 or 30 years at a time), spend months making decisions, won’t increase payout rates, and force nonprofits to waste time and mental capacity conforming to various funders’ whims and agendas, too tired and beaten down to be fully effective in fighting back against the right-wing movement.
I and others have written about this for years now. Here is “10 things progressive funders must learn from conservative funders before we’re all screwed.” The recent attempt to freeze federal grants, the planned dismantling of USAID, along with hundreds of other attacks on everything we care about, shows what we are dealing with. We are overwhelmed. There are knife fights all over the place on some of the most vulnerable people and communities.
Amidst these various existential threats, we need funders to stop using the same tools and habits and mindsets that got us to where we are. Even now, as communities are scared and facing violence the likes of which few of us have ever experienced, I hear stories of funders shutting themselves up to do strategic planning or even decreasing funding.
Please don’t do that! Stop the toxic intellectualizing. Get into the trenches with us. Increase your payout rate. Fund advocacy and organizing. Fund political work. Fund progressive organizations that are vital in enabling our side to fight back. Increase funding for legal defense and legal offense. Remove all the barriers of your current grants; we do not have time for grant applications, grant reports, and other relatively trivial, meaningless tasks anymore.
I know I sound like a broken record. I’m as tired of ranting about these things as you are of hearing me rant. But if you’re not going to listen to me, then please pay attention to other colleagues in the field. Here is a recent piece by Nina Luo: “Left Organizing Is in Crisis. Philanthropy Is a Major Reason Why,” where she implores:
“Trump’s reelection should be a wake-up call. My challenge to my fellow funders is this: You, more than anyone else, shape the left ecosystem that is supposed to be strong enough to win over the right. All of us who have the power to move or influence the moving of money must reexamine our assumptions.”
And here are the words of Dom Kelly, the Founder, President, and CEO at New Disabled South:
“Dear Philanthropy, I am begging you. BEGGING you. Fund our movements. Fund our movements with unrestricted dollars. Multi-year general operating support. Fund our c3s and our c4s. Let those of us on the frontlines, in this most critical moment for our collective futures, do the good work that needs to be done. Trust us. The time to do this was yesterday but today will work too. This is not the moment to ‘wait and see what happens.’ This is not the moment to pause your funding while you start a two-year strategic planning period and rethink your priorities. Our planet is literally on fire. Our systems are collapsing. Our government has gone full fascist in one week. The most marginalized in our communities are under attack. Our movements are already responding, but we can’t sustain this response without resources. For our communities, this is quite literally life or death. This time for action is right now.”
