Six months after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, with vast federal spending cuts taking their toll and calls for support only increasing in volume across the nonprofit and international aid landscapes, it sure feels like philanthropy has reached a tipping point.
But the question is: Which way, exactly, is it tipping?
Months of headlines, investigations and analysis have created the impression the sector is beginning to mobilize serious money. The reports add up to a narrative that the sector — which commands $1.5 trillion-plus in foundation assets, over $250 billion in DAF assets and hundreds of billions more ostensibly committed via campaigns like the Giving Pledge — is starting to reach into its collective piggy bank to address present-day emergencies.
Our counterparts at the Chronicle of Philanthropy were early observers of the trend, writing in May that “Philanthropy Opens the Vault: Payouts Are Surging in Response to Trump.” Alex Daniels’ extensively reported piece reviews how three regional foundations, the Weissberg Foundation, McGregor Fund and Bonfils-Stanton Foundation, with collective assets of about $500 million, along with the $850 million Marguerite Casey Foundation are thinking about their payout. Daniels also explored moves by major grantmakers like the Freedom Together Foundation and MacArthur Foundation, and collected still more examples in a recent Chronicle piece, including the McKnight Foundation.
The mainstream press has also been on the case. Consider a recent article in the Financial Times on how philanthropists are responding to Trump. One strategy has been “to write bigger cheques,” it reported, citing three foundations: the Gates and MacArthur foundations, whose changes to payout have been among the most heavily covered in the entire sector, and, once again, Marguerite Casey.
And well-connected philanthropy reporter Theodore Schleifer, now at the New York Times, scooped last week that large, liberal foundations are seeking to raise at least $250 million to oppose the Trump administration’s attacks on democracy and civil society. The main named players? Freedom Together and MacArthur.
But is this a general opening of the vaults — or just a handful of big-time foundation leaders from New York, Chicago and Los Angeles pulling every lever they can think of to convince their colleagues to move? I have no beef with the good reporting done by my peers, but I worry some may see a narrative of mass action across the grantmaking world in what is at best a trend among a dozen or so funders — and at worst an illusion.
Some might point to data that suggests funders are, in fact, embracing increased payout en masse. Candid’s annual Foundation Giving Forecast Survey, which nearly 7,000 foundations answered between January and March, reported that 37% of foundations “expected to increase giving” in 2025.
But answers about “expected” giving don’t count as cash in hand for defunded nonprofits currently laying off staff. Neither is there any indication whether anticipated increases will consist of substantial payout bumps (such as with Marguerite Casey) or simply, say, using their president’s full discretionary budget and maybe throwing in some unspent travel funds. Also note that more than half of the survey respondents expected their payouts to remain the same.
A quick glance backward takes even more air out of the narrative of increased giving. In June 2024, with Biden in the White House and the prospect of vast federal funding cuts still a matter of dark speculation centered on Project 2025, Candid reported on the results of that year’s edition of the same survey. Some 31% of foundations told the organization they “expect to give more” in 2024. So the election of Trump and his wave of norms-shattering executive orders shifted last year’s baseline rate by all of 6%?
Is that a mass mobilization?
Journalists are often guilty of counting three examples and calling it a trend. Count me as among the culpable: When reporting on philanthropy, where hard data sometimes is unavailable until years later, if ever, reading the tea leaves based on partial information is a temptation that’s particularly hard to avoid.
Yet we should be especially cautious when it comes to foundations and major donors choosing to separate themselves from either their money or their power. Just as early hopes of COVID sparking a lasting, sector-spanning shift toward general operating support proved overblown, the evidence so far — such as it is — suggests that while the list of examples has grown, it hardly indicates a sector-wide shift.
Amid Trump’s first wave of outrages, there were really only two major foundations that took immediate action to up payout, and they are by now very familiar names: MacArthur and Freedom Together foundations.
More institutions have since acted: again, including Marguerite Casey and McKnight. But many others stepping up are much smaller funders, and some examples are less applicable to the present crisis the closer you look. Take Woods Fund Chicago; the small, private grantmaker had already planned to substantially increase its payout before Trump was elected. The Gates Foundation, meanwhile, got oodles of coverage for announcing a timeline for its spend-down — long promised and not a surprise, though sometimes framed that way — even though its CEO insisted its annual grantmaking total would not actually increase. Plus, its spend-down math does not, for me, add up.
The Trust-Based Philanthropy Project’s “Meet the Moment” sign-on statement, which included a suggestion that signatories increase their grantmaking budgets, has also grown. You can find all three of Daniels’ subjects — Weissberg, McGregor and Bonfils-Stanton — on its list. You can also find foundations that have for years planned to spend down (e.g., Stupski, James B. McClatchy) and regrantors without their own endowments (e.g., Hispanics in Philanthropy, Groundswell Fund). But I challenge you to find billion-dollar grantmakers. MacArthur signed, but not many others.
So it seems that the tipping point the sector has reached is not a collective opening of the vaults in favor of substantially larger payout. Rather, it is one in which enough foundations have increased payout that none of us can easily or quickly name them all. Yet in a sector with more than 40,000 foundations with $1-million-plus endowments, a dozen or so anecdotes should not be seen as a sector-spanning shift. Doing so might even be dangerous, giving potential funders reason to believe others have this mess handled.
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Are funders secretly mobilizing?
One can hope that this all reflects not a lack of action, but a lack of information. Though press releases and announcements are scarce, we’ve heard plenty of anecdotes of supposedly increased funder coordination and behind-the-scenes action. Perhaps time will reveal that hundreds if not thousands of foundations have flung wide the safe doors — or, at least, the money market accounts — and are issuing flurries of grants in excess of their normal spending limits. Perhaps a mass of foundations are increasing their payout to counter the systemic derailment of liberal philanthropy’s long-term priorities, but are keeping it all silent.
That kind of secrecy would not be remotely surprising. Grantmakers have reasons to fear (in no particular order): administration enforcement, Department of Justice lawsuits, FBI investigations, immigration raids, the Trump megaphone, MAGA trolls and even physical violence. Granted, no evidence has emerged yet that any of these things have menaced outspoken funders, at least based on my reporting (but perhaps they have, or will). Many foundations have piles of dough, but some seem to have risk tolerance lower even than their payout rates.
If there is a mass below-the-radar movement of money, it would seem that such funders have individually and collectively decided it is more feasible, desirable and strategic — and less risky for them — to attempt to fund such an effort while not actually being visibly part of it themselves. They may be right to do so, at least in terms of their short-term self interest. Foundations can scrub their websites of “banned” words, they can cut off grantees, they can shift their strategies to avoid offending Trump and his minions, they can remain silent, they can wait four years for the storm to pass.
But grantees cannot.
Nonprofits focused on immigrants, LGBTQ issues, climate justice, Muslims — heck, even those just trying to provide young people an education (see: Harvard), let alone organizations dedicated to diversity, equity, inclusion and justice — cannot hide and cannot perform a strategic pivot, or moral backflip, or whatever it is we should call funders’ current contortions. These nonprofits must fear all the same things that funders do, except that 99% of them cannot rely on a mountain of money nor even, it seems, on funders to stand with them in the line of fire.
Even if funders are solely concerned about success and not solidarity, staying quiet seems like an odd strategy. Some of the wealthiest, least-understood institutions in the nation attempting to secretly influence American society? At a time when foundations are facing a crisis of legitimacy and conspiracy theories multiply like bacteria and are magnified by the Oval Office? Do foundations see that as the path to success?
So either there is a giant gusher of secret money but no willingness to back it up in public, or there is no mass mobilization yet. Either way, until more evidence arrives, let’s not call it a brave stand by the sector. Not until a lot more funders follow the lead of those way out in front.
Michael Kavate covers climate philanthropy and billionaire donors. He welcomes feedback, tips, rebuttals, disagreements and suggestions.
