Why Nonprofits Must Join and Lead the Charge for Democracy, Dignity, and Decency
This week I saw the inklings of a potential social movement that might halt and some day roll back the tide of authoritarian destruction of the nonprofit sector and fundamental American institutions. In writing that, I want to be clear. I don’t see a return to January 19, 2025. What’s done is done. An enormous amount of pain has already been visited upon the nonprofit sector and its beneficiaries. That will continue, since the party controlling the White House and both houses of Congress intends to make as much of that change as possible permanent. But as the Stoics say, that’s our reality: we choose how to respond. A movement will not take hold unless nonprofits speak up, collectively, to break through the noise and drive home the fact that what has been happening for the past three months is deeply un-American.
Before getting to my point above, a quick couple of diversions.
The election of a new Pope has no effect on federal policy. The Pope does influence, however, the 20% of Americans who are Roman Catholic. While of course conservative on many social issues because of Catholic doctrine, new Pope Leo XIV is someone whose values resonate with the nonprofit sector and do not resonate with those of the Trump Administration. I will be writing more about the new Pope this week on my blog.
In response to a January 21 executive order calling for investigations into large nonprofits and foundations, major U.S. foundations—including the Ford Foundation, Gates Foundation, and Koch Foundation—are collaborating to defend their tax-exempt status. The potential revocation of this status could severely impact philanthropic efforts by reducing funding from donors reliant on tax breaks.
Bill Gates promised to devote his remaining assets to the Gates Foundation, which plans to accelerate giving in order to spend down its assets over the next 20 years.
Here’s the main point of this update. What comes next is not exhaustive, but instead illustrative. Behind the shock and discouragement, behind the private tragedies and losses we have seen in the sector, there remains a startling and hopeful theme: most Americans profoundly disapprove of what Donald Trump has done since January 20, 2025.
A huge majority of people (68%) reject cutting Medicaid (which funds a lot of social service nonprofit work) in order to support tax cuts to billionaires, and those Medicaid cuts would hurt Republican states the worst. Cuts to universities are supported by just 27 percent of Americans. Trump’s tariffs are going to raise prices, according to 75 percent of Americans, and major shortages are expected soon. People are beginning to realize that they won’t be able to buy a home, and a Trump recession is openly contemplated. Farmers – who largely voted for Trump – are hurting because of his policies, as even Republicans admit. Big Tech spent big on Trump but have gotten little in return, while businesses generally are beginning to look to Congressional midterms to force Trump to modify his unpopular policies. Unsurprisingly, investors are intensely bearish.
According to polling aggregator Nate Silver, “On Feb. 1, essentially the same number of Americans strongly approved and disapproved of Trump. Now, strong disapprovers outnumber strong approvers by about a 3-to-2 ratio. It’s hard not to see this as bearish for Trump: his negatives are more entrenched than his positives.” Trump’s polling is even down among his core base who don’t read or watch a lot of news.
As a kicker, the only people making significant money in this Administration are members of the Trump Family. As one commentator noted, “I think we essentially have become a kleptocracy that would make Putin blush. I mean, keep in mind that in the first three months, the Trump family has become $3 billion wealthier, so that’s a billion dollars a month.”
There is so much fodder here for a broad movement to oppose these un-American actions that threaten to devastate our communities. My question is: who is going to lead this movement? I think Democrats in Congress are tainted by appeasement. Furthermore, as I have been saying all along, this is not a Democrat v. Republican issue. It is not partisan. It is about whether America determined on November 5, 2024, that it intended to abandon much of how they had believed America should act in this world.
I believe nonprofits, which represent so much of what is good about America, are in a unique position to advocate: in favor of their missions, and in favor of the basic decency of American civil society upon which nonprofits depend. We come from a place of centrality. We are neither Republican nor Democratic. By law, we must be nonpartisan. But what we care about, what our missions overwhelmingly intend, are things that are bedrock principles of American decency. By resisting efforts to undermine American decency, we can bring overwhelming boots to this march.
Relatedly, Steve Levitsky, Lucan Way, and Daniel Ziblat published a powerful and provocative piece in the New York Times this week entitled “How Will We Know When We Have Lost Our Democracy.” I want to quote at length from it, because it has lessons for the sector:
“We propose a simple metric: the cost of opposing the government. In democracies, citizens are not punished for peacefully opposing those in power. They need not worry about publishing critical opinions, supporting opposition candidates or engaging in peaceful protest because they know they will not suffer retribution from the government. In fact, the idea of legitimate opposition — that all citizens have a right to criticize, organize opposition to and seek to remove the government through elections — is a foundational principle of democracy.”
“Under authoritarianism, by contrast, opposition comes with a price. Citizens and organizations that run afoul of the government become targets of a range of punitive measures: Politicians may be investigated and prosecuted on baseless or petty charges, media outlets may be hit with frivolous defamation suits or adverse regulatory rulings, businesses may face tax audits or be denied critical contracts or licenses, universities and other civic institutions may lose essential funding or tax-exempt status, and journalists, activists and other critics may be harassed, threatened or physically attacked by government supporters.”
“When citizens must think twice about criticizing or opposing the government because they could credibly face government retribution, they no longer live in a full democracy.”
We have reached this critical point in America. Nonprofits and their beneficiaries play a role in dramatizing this loss of civil society. To do so, we need to be willing to risk punishment for sticking up for our missions and for basic notions and fairness and decency that underlie American civil society.