Donors aligned with progressive causes have often championed their investments as backing dynamic, systemic change, yet when it comes to tax policy, the energy for change isn’t the same. As conservatives wage a coordinated assault on tax fairness, embedding benefits, rollbacks and handouts for the wealthy into reconciliation bills, the progressive donor class has not mounted a serious defense. As a result, we’re witnessing an extreme imbalance in advocacy infrastructure.
This imbalance is especially glaring in the current reconciliation debate, where poison-pill provisions threaten to gut healthcare, food aid and student support — and yet there’s no coordinated progressive response powerful enough to frame the fight. This vacuum of leadership isn’t just theoretical — it’s playing out in real time. The current reconciliation bill includes provisions that would fundamentally gut key safety net programs in the name of decreasing taxes. Yet, progressive donors haven’t marshaled the resources and infrastructure needed to defend the public interest or shift the narrative.
Conservative funders are playing the long game, investing in legal arms, policy pipelines and messaging machines to tilt the system in their favor. Meanwhile, many liberal funders remain focused on short-term wins and feel-good initiatives, ignoring the tax code as a battleground for racial equity, democratic legitimacy and public trust. At a time when movement infrastructure needs reinforcement, progressive philanthropy can no longer choose comfort over confrontation — it’s time to broaden its investments. Without robust engagement in policy battles like these, the broader progressive agenda — from economic justice to the freedom to vote — risks being undercut at its financial foundation.
The silence around tax policy also has more profound ripple effects. While some philanthropic organizations have engaged and dedicated significant resources to advance tax justice, it pales in comparison to the number of progressive donors on the sidelines despite having a stake in the fight. When progressive donors disengage from the tax fight, it reinforces conservative narratives about giving and power — while quietly shaping who actually has the means and motivation to give. It has long been said that conservatives are more charitable than liberals. As progressive-aligned donors accumulate wealth, so do the ones backing conservative causes that range from ridiculous to downright evil.
The enactment of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017 undermined the progressive movement in meaningful ways by taking low-to-mid-level donors out of the game. Since 2017, we have seen a decrease in taxpayers taking advantage of the charitable interest deduction. This can be explained at least in part by the TCJA, which increased the standard deduction from $6,500 to $12,000, and as a result, the proportion of taxpayers that itemize their deductions decreased from 30.6% in the year before TCJA to 11.4% in the year after passage. As of 2022, only 9.5% of taxpayers itemized deductions, and deductions for charitable contributions were down to 3.5%.
In the years since the Supreme Court’s notoriously bad decision in Citizens United, super PACs have come to dominate the political giving landscape. These super PACs are often bankrolled by highly ideological billionaires looking to tilt the scales in American politics. Note that over $783 million of all the money spent during the 2022 midterm election cycle came from just 21 couples.
If progressive donors care about the impact of their investments into the ecosystem fighting for our democracy and our nation, then they need to get into the tax fight in a meaningful way. Whether or not we win on racial justice, the care agenda, voting rights, guaranteed income, and a range of other progressive causes is on the line in this tax fight. This is because our tax code governs the distribution of money and power throughout society, and in a post-Citizens United America, more money means more political influence.
By sitting out on this particular fight, progressive donors are ceding ground on some of the most critical issues of our time instead of doubling down and ponying up to secure the progress they’ve spent so much money to support.
To be clear, this fight isn’t about protecting elite interests to ensure that millionaires and billionaires have more money to give away — it’s about making sure that the tax code promotes a better distribution of wealth so more people have money to give in support of causes and millionaires and billionaires have less political influence.
Putting aside the type of giving that people do — to causes, to candidates, to churches, etc. — there is the reality of sheer numbers that we need to contend with. There are now more conservative billionaires funding causes and candidates than liberal ones, and they are much richer. Moreover, when it comes to giving to causes and candidates, many play both sides depending on the issues at play and the direction political winds are blowing. For example, Michael Bloomberg, Ben Horowitz and, to a lesser extent, Marc Andreessen all gave millions of dollars to both Democrats and Republicans in 2024. Thus, the ability of conservatives to run circles around progressives exists even without billionaires wanting to have their cake and eat it, too, but is exacerbated when they do. The imbalance in sheer numbers and resources flowing to fights for democracy and tax policy means conservatives can outspend and out-organize progressives even without ideological alignment — especially when liberal donors hesitate to fund the scaffolding of sustained influence.
In the end, progressive donors are apprehensive about getting behind tax proposals that may curb their own wealth accumulation. And while the societal need for billionaires — and soon to be trillionaires — is debatable, their desire for self-preservation is understandable. But the challenge facing us ahead is less about the impacts of taxing DAFs, increasing capital gains taxes or even taxing wealth like work on any particular set of individuals. It’s about what happens when tax policy choices remove a whole swath of potential donors from the equation altogether.
Long term, there are a few options to turn the tide, but they all need resources. One solution when it comes to actual charitable tax policy is to decrease the standard deduction, which would incentivize and reward a larger group of small- to mid-dollar donors. Another possibility is to transform the charitable deduction to an above-the-line deduction that allows folks to qualify for it even if they do not itemize. Alternatively, policymakers can explore turning this into a credit for donors under a certain income or giving limit.
Rebalancing this equation requires bold, practical solutions — ones that can reanimate grassroots generosity and shift the terrain away from oligarchic control. Extending TCJA further undermines charitable giving at a time when we need as many people in the fight as possible. But in order to fight back, the progressive ecosystem needs the resources, which means progressive donors need to get off the sidelines and into the game. Because in the end, tax policy is movement policy. And if progressive donors won’t fund the front lines of that fight, they risk watching everything else unravel.
Portia Allen-Kyle is a tax fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, Former Senior Advisor for Equity, Policy, and Stakeholder Engagement in the Office of Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Transportation under Secretary Pete Buttigieg and the Interim Executive Director at Color Of Change.
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