What To Do Now: How Philanthropy Can Help Win the Fight for America’s Future

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on June 10, 2025.

It has now been seven months since Donald Trump won the election and nearly five months since his wrecking ball began to swing in Washington, taking aim at government agencies, civil society institutions, and democratic norms.  

Philanthropy has a huge stake in fighting back. Trump is not only rolling back many of the policies and social advances that funders have helped win over the past century; he’s also working to make it much harder going forward for funders to make progress on many of the problems they care about most. What’s more, grantmakers themselves could be targeted by the administration. “The threat is existential,” the CEO of one of the nation’s largest foundations recently told me. 

Yes, it is. But you wouldn’t know that by looking at philanthropy’s response so far. Funders don’t have a clear vision for how to fight back against Trump 2.0 and have yet to mobilize resources at a scale commensurate with the threat at hand. Instead, many are beset by deep uncertainty on how to move forward. They’re not confident that they or their grantees have the strategies to defuse right-wing authoritarianism and advance progressive priorities in a country tilting right. “I have no sense of how to turn this around,” a longtime grantmaker confessed, adding that they would never acknowledge that publicly. Because funders are uncertain about what will work, many are in a “wait-and-see” holding pattern, one marked by a high degree of fear that philanthropy will be next on the MAGA hit list. 

This is not to say that funders are doing nothing. They are doing a lot. Many rapid-response funds have emerged since January to respond to government cuts and attacks on vulnerable populations. Over 150 funders have publicly pledged to “meet the moment” by increasing grantmaking — with some doing so substantially — and taking other steps, such as providing more multi-year funding. In addition, dozens of funders and philanthropy-serving groups came together in early April to pledge to stay united “behind our First Amendment right to give.” Much else is happening behind the scenes as foundations share information, quietly support their grantees, and jump on opportunities, such as backing emergency litigation against Trump executive orders, to score wins where possible. A foundation president told me that the level of coordination they’re seeing among grantmakers right now is “unprecedented.” 

These steps are crucial, and we can expect more to come as funders find their footing in this volatile moment. But what’s still missing is a clear, overarching strategy to guide philanthropy in taking on two challenges: first, slowing or blocking the Trump agenda over the next few years. And second, building the long-term public support and political power needed to create a fairer, more inclusive and climate-resilient America.  

The first of these challenges is fairly straightforward. Funders have many ways to help thwart Trump’s policies between now and 2028 — if they are willing to invest substantially more resources into strategies of proven effectiveness. I lay out suggestions on how to do that below. 

The second challenge is another story. In numerous conversations across the sector in recent months, I’ve been struck by how many people are at sea when it comes to the bigger questions of how to shift power. Very few leaders feel confident about a set of funding priorities that can decisively change what’s possible in the U.S. over the next decade. “There is no grand plan. There is no map,” a top grantmaker told me. 

This sense of uncertainty is not surprising. The strategies that liberal philanthropy has been pursuing to achieve transformative change in America — which have heavily centered identity and rights — have hit a dead end. The left-of-center coalition is shrinking as more working-class Americans of all races exit its ranks or choose never to enter them. This trend is monumentally important. Eligible voters without a college degree constitute a strong majority of the electorate — a share that is even larger in some battleground states. 

The left-of-center coalition has lost working-class support as the perception has grown that Democrats and progressive groups aren’t interested in the economic concerns that preoccupy most Americans. Instead, they are seen as overly focused on cultural issues that are less important to most people and downright unpopular in some cases. At a core level, many working-class Americans don’t think Democrats and the left share their values or understand their needs. A Democratic Party dominated by college-educated voters is also seen as defending failing institutions at a moment when Americans are hungry for dramatic change and feel that their voices don’t matter. 

Philanthropy shares some of the blame for these deep weaknesses, as I argued in an article earlier this year exploring how we got here. For years, funders underinvested in work to address people’s material struggles at the root level and amplified voices who were well to the left of even the constituencies those voices purported to represent. The need to change course right now, with a keen, pragmatic eye on electoral realities, comes down to the same underlying political bottom line: Almost nothing that philanthropy hopes to achieve will be possible if the MAGA right is able to consolidate recent gains. And much of what it has previously achieved will be at risk. 

To turn things around, funders dedicated to social change must dial in on the public’s deep sense that America’s economy isn’t working and move this problem to the top of their agenda. The quest to create shared prosperity has historically been the strongest cornerstone of a majoritarian politics. Greater economic opportunity is also key to expanding social rights and strengthening democracy — a pattern that played out throughout the latter half of the 20th century, both in the U.S. and in other nations that prospered after World War II. Rising living standards tend to bring out the best in people, morally. Scarcity, as we’re now increasingly seeing, brings out the worst. 

Philanthropy should draw on these historical lessons to guide its long-term strategy, embracing shared prosperity as its new North Star. This broad pivot must be combined with a willingness to reform failing institutions, creative thinking to break the nation’s political stalemate, and historic new commitments to help people build civic power. I outline such a funding agenda below.

These strategy shifts will require letting go of key assumptions that now hold sway in philanthropy about how to advance change in U.S. society. And they will entail a major revamping of grantmaking priorities. None of this will be easy. But the alternative is unacceptable.

The short-term strategy: scale the opposition

Let’s start with the most immediate challenge: slowing down or blocking Trump policies over the next two to four years. 

Philanthropy has multiple ways to help do this. Funders have many strong options to scale proven strategies for impact, like legal work, organizing and advocacy. Much greater support for such efforts — including via perfectly legal 501c3 funding for voter engagement — could help accelerate the familiar cycles of U.S. politics by which first-term presidents steadily lose political capital, face mounting criticism for their policies, lose control of the House in midterms, and see key parts of their agenda blocked by judges. 

This is not wishful thinking. The concerted pushback against Trump’s agenda from 2017 to 2020 achieved significant successes, halting many administration policies in court and blocking repeal of the ACA, among other notable victories. Grassroots organizing also helped shift public opinion writ large, allowing Democrats to retake the House in 2018 and win back the presidency two years later. 

Today, the array of organizations that won those victories is bigger and more sophisticated than ever, with hundreds of groups working in all parts of the country to engage Americans in civic life. Many of these organizations receive both 501c3 and 501c4 support through national intermediaries alongside dozens of state donor tables, which direct funding and coordinate strategy. This ecosystem of middlemen makes it easy for foundations and major donors to quickly ramp up support for front-line groups. It also allows money to be moved anonymously if funders are worried about retaliation. 

States and localities are key arenas in the pushback against Trump. Groups operating here are best positioned to engage ordinary people, help shape public opinion, apply pressure on elected officials and mobilize voters during elections. This work is already well underway and fast gathering momentum. Leaders of intermediaries say that this infrastructure could absorb much more funding and deploy it effectively. “It’s completely expandable,” one pass-through funder told me, saying that their operation — which moves tens of millions annually to grassroots work — could easily invest far more in organizations with the capacity to use these funds wisely. In addition, new initiatives are sure to pop up that could scale much faster with nimble philanthropic support. 

Such opposition work is likely to find an increasingly receptive audience among the many Americans who are, or soon will be, suffering the consequences of Trump’s policies. That pain is being felt in red and blue states alike, creating openings for unusual coalitions to come together. 

While Trump is far more powerful than he was in his first term, and his blitz of funding cuts and policy shifts is more sweeping, none of that changes the enduring fact of his weak overall support or the usual laws of political gravity. Trump is already polling in the low 40s, and that seems unlikely to turn around. Many of the swing voters who supported him last year now disapprove of his performance by double-digit margins. 

The midterm elections offer philanthropy a pivotal opportunity to start turning things around. Through unprecedented investments in 501c3 civic participation work, funders can ensure that voters fully understand the effects of Trump policies and have the opportunity to be heard in the democratic process. Republicans lost 41 congressional seats in 2018. If they lose just six next year, Democrats will regain control of the House. 

In two years, assuming we still have a functioning democracy, Trump could be a lame-duck president leading a party that cannot pass further legislation in a divided Congress and faces a struggle to retain control of the White House in 2028. Four years from now, in 2029, a new president could be leading the work to repair the deep damage inflicted by Trump’s policies. 

Such an outcome is far from assured, of course. Republicans increased their House majority in 2002, midway through George W. Bush’s first term, and could potentially do the same next year. Still, a marked decline in Trump’s power is not hard to envision in our anti-incumbent era, when a deeply disgruntled electorate has little patience for presidents who can’t quickly deliver real change. That dynamic gives the forces of resistance a lot to work with — assuming they have the resources. 

What’s missing so far is an urgent commitment by funders to meet the moment. Few major foundations have fully mobilized to confront an authoritarian president who threatens all their achievements and possibly their own institutional survival. Most big funders are still funding the same balance of priorities they were a year ago, even as some have announced increased payout or surged limited funds into emergency work. Looking at the long list of business-as-usual awards going out the door at top foundations, you’d never know that these funders are staring down an existential threat. Everything has changed — except funding priorities. 

This complacency reflects a few things. First, as I wrote in my earlier piece, much of philanthropy has clung to an outdated, technocratic operating model while underestimating the threat posed by the extreme right. It’s been seemingly unable to imagine that a wholesale effort to destroy liberal America could ever materialize. Many remain disbelieving even as such an attack has materialized. “Some people get it, others don’t,” the leader of a key funding intermediary told me recently. Said another insider who advises foundations: “The number one response is denial.”

Second, like most institutions, foundations struggle to rapidly adapt to change. As one foundation CEO wrote in April: “We all have plans, programs, structures, habits, comfort zones, and multiple stakeholders with varied interests and risk temperaments that make big strategic pivots of the kind called for now daunting.” In this case, a big pivot requires that funders first jettison the illusion that they can continue to make progress in issue-specific silos, while paying little attention to growing political threats to everything they care about. A big pivot also means embracing a new set of priorities for contesting power and dramatically shifting funding to confront the crisis at hand. 

Moving quickly is essential. A clear takeaway from democratic backsliding worldwide is that civil society and other sectors often wait too long to push back against authoritarians. “The chorus of people who have lived through democratic ruin will all tell you the same thing: Do not make the mistake of assuming you still have time,” Adrienne LaFrance of The Atlantic wrote recently. These lessons inform a core recommendation of a recent report on how philanthropy should respond to rising authoritarianism by the Democracy Funders Network: “Effective funders prioritize the survival of liberal democracy” over such goals as preserving their endowments or even their tax-exempt status. “They take risks.”

Being willing to fight may not be enough, though. Funders must also have faith that if they fight, they can win. And right now, many aren’t convinced. They either don’t understand how scaling existing resistance tactics could help stop Trump policies, since such work is not what they normally fund, or they don’t believe that such investments would be effective. As one foundation CEO told me, “People keep yelling at us to give out more money, but for what?” Said another leader: “There’s no turnkey solution.” 

Funders need to get past such pessimism. When it comes to the short-term challenge — weakening public support for Trump policies and scoring wins in the courts and electoral arena — philanthropy does have a turnkey solution, as I’ve detailed above. But more funders need to step up with bigger commitments, overcoming their institutional limitations and fear of retaliation, to spend whatever it takes to scale opposition forces already in the field. 

To be clear, though, such defensive work will only get philanthropy so far in advancing its core priorities over the next decade or more. I turn next to the much harder challenge: breaking America’s political stalemate to create strong majority backing for the kind of society that many funders want to see.

The long-term strategy: embrace a new theory of power 

Any discussion of how to create long-term change must start with the elephant in the room: the slow but steady rightward drift of non-college-educated voters of all races.

If that trend continues, even by small degrees, liberals could be locked out of power in Washington for years to come, especially after the 2030 census, which will reallocate House seats and electoral votes to Texas, Florida and other red states. Liberal hopes won’t fare much better at the state level, where Republicans already have trifecta control in 23 capitals, a number that could easily increase.

To reverse this trajectory, philanthropy must help build a broader left-of-center coalition that commands much greater support among the working class. 

A first step in figuring out this puzzle is to set aside grand ambitions for mobilizing a “new American majority.” To the extent that funders have had a long-term strategy for transforming U.S. politics, such hopes have been at its center. This strategy has envisioned strong intersectional solidarity being forged among a diverse array of nonwhite Americans, which would anchor an ever-expanding coalition that also includes young people and progressive whites, especially unmarried women who believe in gender equity. In short, many funders have imagined that “demography is destiny,” and that smart grantmaking could speed the arrival of this progressive future.

It’s now clear that isn’t happening. Growing numbers of people of color are de-aligning from the Democratic Party, while young Americans have turned out to be far more ideologically fluid than many hoped, swinging from backing Joe Biden by a huge margin in 2020 to favoring Vice President Kamala Harris by a much smaller edge. 

Florida’s recent political trajectory offers an especially harsh reality check. This fast-diversifying state should be serving as a case study of how an emerging new American majority could usher in progressive gains. Instead, it offers the opposite lesson, moving from a swing state to a red state. Trump won there last fall by 13 points, the largest margin of any Republican presidential candidate in decades, powered to victory partly by winning Latino voters by a large margin. The story in Nevada, now a majority-minority state, has been similar: Democrats have steadily lost vote share as Nevada has grown more diverse, going from Obama’s +12 margin in 2008 to Trump’s solid 3-point victory last fall.

If you want to understand why so many people misjudged the “rising American electorate,” one good place to start is with pollster Patrick Ruffini’s book, “Party of the People: Inside the Populist Multiracial Coalition Remaking the GOP.” A key point that Ruffini makes is that the two fastest-growing groups in the electorate, non-college Latinos and Asian-Americans, are increasingly behaving like other immigrant groups before them, particularly Catholics. As their incomes rise and they assimilate into the mainstream, including by moving to the suburbs, they are voting less as ethnic blocs aligned with the Democrats and instead voting by ideology. Because many nonwhite Democrats are either moderate or conservative, it should be no surprise that so many are leaving the party. In turn, their defections reduce the stigma associated with voting Republican, leading to further defections — a “cascade effect” that could well accelerate. 

These shifts have happened even as Trump has campaigned as the most openly racist and xenophobic politician of our lifetime. And they’ve happened as much of the progressive left, including many funders, have naturally assumed that Trump’s toxic nativism would strengthen intersectional racial solidarity on the left. That assumption has often underpinned grantmaking strategies. Things are turning out very differently. Absent a major strategy shift, the Democratic Party is likely to keep losing voters of color.

While it’s not the role of nonpartisan grantmakers to try to directly influence the future of the Democratic Party, philanthropy plays a leading role in shaping the civil society arm of the left-of-center coalition. In turn, these unelected voices — “the groups” — strongly shape the perception of the Democratic Party, as well as its agenda in some cases. Although funders and grantees may take pains to make the distinction, the fact is that many Americans equate funder-backed progressive organizations with the party — just as they also lump the religious right, NRA and the Heritage Foundation together with Republicans — i.e., “the right.” 

Like it or not, the choices that philanthropy makes about what issues and viewpoints to elevate help set the terms of political competition. In my first article, I argued that these funders had made bad choices — neglecting economic concerns that are top priorities for people, especially working-class voters, while over-indexing on a long list of other causes that are less important to voters, or even unpopular. A recent Washington Post survey found that 69% of Americans thought that the Democratic Party was “out of touch” — with a solid majority of both young people and non-whites sharing this view. 

These uncomfortable realities must be top of mind as philanthropy plots a long-term strategy to shift who holds power and advance transformative change. Funders need to rethink both the issue areas they prioritize — the what — and the tactics they fund to drive change — the how.  

Let’s start with the issues. No problem bedevils Americans more than affording their lives. People are fed up with an economy that doesn’t work for them, and addressing that challenge should be at the heart of philanthropy’s social change work in coming years. This is imperative if the sector is to be responsive to people’s lived realities; it’s also a key to shifting power. Historically, the push to ensure economic opportunity for all has been the strongest cornerstone of a majoritarian politics. The further the left-of-center coalition has strayed from this focus, the more it has lost both public support broadly and working-class support specifically. 

Funders have a huge opening to help move ideas of shared prosperity back to the center of liberalism. While the affordability squeeze on U.S. households is most acute for low-income households, it doesn’t stop there. Even upper-middle-class professionals can find it hard to make ends meet in expensive metro areas and face new precarities as white-collar careers are disrupted by artificial intelligence. 

Today, most Americans worry about similar things — getting and keeping good jobs, finding an affordable place to live, and paying for necessities like healthcare, childcare, insurance and college tuition. Fears of inflation also loom large, reaching a political potency not seen in decades. Underlying people’s economic anxieties is a deep anger about concentrated corporate power and wealth that is shared across partisan lines. Many Americans feel the system is rigged against them, and they’re right. 

To address these deep problems in U.S. society, and also help forge a new majoritarian politics, philanthropy should dramatically scale up work to raise incomes and lower costs for U.S. households. Efforts to achieve these goals can take many forms, including organizing workers, building more housing, expanding labor protections, investing in key industries while protecting them with well-targeted tariffs, challenging monopolies, making healthcare more affordable, and shifting tax burdens upward. Managing the risks and opportunities around artificial intelligence is likely to be part of many such efforts. 

I discuss the types of approaches funders might support further below. What’s essential is that, taken together, such work is of sufficient magnitude that it could achieve the dramatic level of change needed to create an economy that works for everyone. These efforts cannot shrink from taking on powerful interests and reforming institutions, not just to tame a corporate sector with too much control over people’s lives, but to revive government as a trusted agent of progress.  

Pivoting to this North Star is the left-of-center coalition’s best chance of connecting with a strong majority of Americans. In turn, such public support is a precondition to building the kind of governing majority needed to address the whole waterfront of progressive priorities — including inequities around race and gender, the climate crisis, gun violence, and more. 

Historically, widely shared prosperity has led to greater social inclusion and stronger democracy. People are at their moral best when all boats are rising. In contrast, scarcity creates openings for scapegoating and reactionary politics. These insights should inform how philanthropy sets priorities. Nearly everything many funders hope to accomplish is contingent on ensuring economic security for all.

Invest in ideas

For all the talk of deepening polarization, America’s political future is very much up for grabs. 

An “exhausted majority” of Americans sees both ideological camps as out of touch with their concerns and unable to deliver real change. A far greater number of voters are now independents than belong to either party. As Yuvel Levin and Ruy Teixeira convincingly argued in a report last year, “Politics Without Winners,” neither coalition is likely to build a strong majority absent an ideological makeover that broadens its appeal. 

Philanthropy can help build a broader left-of-center coalition by moving economic opportunity to the center of its agenda. But that broad shift in priorities is only a start. As always, the devil lies in the details. While Americans are united in wanting a more affordable life, and also widely support checks on concentrated wealth and power, they are famously divided on government’s role in ensuring opportunity for all, as well as how much self-reliance should be expected of people. 

Many other issues that are part of a liberal agenda — starting with the important commitment to racial and gender equity — are even more divisive. A large swath of Americans is socially conservative or downright reactionary, and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon. 

These realities underscore the profound challenge of breaking out of today’s stalemate. The left-of-center coalition isn’t going to greatly expand its appeal simply by tweaking current positions and investing in more organizing and better messaging. To move beyond a 50-50 politics and connect with the many Americans who are politically up for grabs, it needs to embrace a larger ideological evolution.

Fresh ideas are essential here. New frameworks are needed that address people’s hunger for change in ways that sidestep, rather than reinforce, America’s ideological fault lines. 

It’s hard to say what future big ideas might help forge broad new coalitions and unlock majoritarian pathways to power. What we do know is that philanthropy has effective levers to pull in this area.

First, it can support long-range policy work. One way major change happens is when political movements seize an opening to push forward ideas they’ve been cooking up for years. We got a glimpse of that during the Biden administration, when critics of neoliberalism advanced a muscular vision of government’s role in managing the economy. This included advancing policies to curb monopolies, empower workers, support key industries and invest in infrastructure — all ideas with broad public support. 

Those policies emerged from philanthropy-backed work at organizations such as the Roosevelt Institute, the Economic Security Project and the American Economic Liberties Project. They emerged as well from a constellation of groups focused on the nexus between clean energy and the economy, with philanthropy playing a key role in catalyzing such work through initiatives like the Apollo Alliance, which launched in 2004.

Key thinkers in this space long labored on the fringes of mainstream policy, patiently working to shift paradigms and public opinion. These efforts were supported by funders who were willing to look over the horizon and be ready when the window of opportunity opened for large-scale change. Trump helped open that window during his first term, when he disrupted the bipartisan consensus around neoliberalism. By the time Biden took office, the stage was set for broader change, and progressive economic thinkers were ready to seize the moment. 

This opportunity wouldn’t be fully realized, as inflation swamped Biden’s presidency even as he signed historic legislation on infrastructure, clean energy and semiconductors, while standing up for workers and consumers like no president in memory. But the lessons of the episode are instructive for philanthropy: Investing in ideas can help shift paradigms and lay the groundwork for transformative change. A darker version of the same lesson can be seen today, as Trump officials make large parts of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 a reality, including ideas that right-wing donors helped develop over decades. 

Another way philanthropy can help shift what’s possible in America is by supporting “transpartisan” frameworks that bring together unusual allies. For example, in the criminal justice space, philanthropy helped catalyze an unusual coalition to support reform efforts. The right-wing libertarians in this mix, including the Charles Koch Foundation, have embraced reform as part of their opposition to an expansive state. Progressives in the mix, like the Ford Foundation, have hoped to roll back draconian policies that inflict huge damage on communities of color. This alliance helped shift national and state policies on criminal justice reform, although momentum in this area has lately slowed. 

There are many opportunities for philanthropy to scale transpartisan policy efforts. To take another example, there’s fast-rising support across the political spectrum for a broad push to open up more jobs to the majority of workers without college degrees. Both Democratic and Republican governors have recently signed legislation that drops the requirement of a four-year college degree for many government jobs. Likewise, progressives and libertarians agree on the need to reduce state licensing requirements that block people from becoming barbers or cosmeticians or entering other trades. And left and right can find much common ground in supporting high school graduates who want to pursue trades like plumbing.

Making it easier to build more housing is another area where unusual allies have found common cause. The YIMBY movement (“yes in my backyard”) has drawn support from the left, right and center. In turn, YIMBYism is one part of a broader “abundance” agenda to revive a “liberalism that builds” that is gaining traction with different constituencies. 

While abundance has been attacked by some progressives as a distraction from the far bigger problem of concentrated corporate power, these two agendas are not at odds. Quite the contrary. As long as the public sector is so dysfunctional — especially in Democrat-controlled cities — those who glorify can-do captains of industry and favor greater privatization will have the upper hand. Anyone who hopes to see government again become a dynamic agent of shared prosperity cannot sidestep the reality of its current sclerosis. 

The push against monopolies and oligarchy is complementary with abundance in another way: It’s backed by Americans across ideological divides, as are higher taxes on the wealthy. If philanthropy helps further scale work in this area, it will find a receptive audience. 

The progressives of the early 20th century gained wide public support by pursuing both government reform and efforts to break up big corporate trusts. A similar synthesis could work today. Indeed, embracing such full-spectrum populism is likely a precondition for the left-of-center coalition to greatly expand its appeal. Americans are disenchanted with all the powers that be, private and public. Any successful new liberal agenda must be correspondingly expansive. 

Whatever the exact formulations, creative new majoritarian frameworks for improving people’s lives could go a long way toward breaking today’s political deadlock. Still, there will be no avoiding the tough social issues that divide Americans. Here, too, philanthropy can help find a way forward by investing in ideas. 

A major wrong turn of the left-of-center coalition in the past decade has been to allow elements of an illiberal and censorious left to wield outsized influence in key debates over issues of race, gender and speech. Philanthropy has often either fueled this problem through its funding choices or stood by passively, cowed and unsure. 

To repair this damage, funders need to invest more in thinkers with liberal values who can help formulate arguments for social equity that draw wider support. Such grantmaking can help build the intellectual and narrative firepower needed to square progressive moral aspirations with core American values and political realities. 

To be clear: I’m not suggesting that funders abandon longstanding commitments to racial justice and gender equality. Right now, in fact, philanthropy needs to step up emergency support to grantees working to push back against attacks on reproductive freedom, LGBTQ rights, immigrant communities, and more — as many funders are already doing.  

But until the left does the hard work to figure out how to thread the needle on controversial social issues, it should welcome a broad shift in focus to improving people’s economic wellbeing. Philanthropy can help underwrite this pivot.

Invest in organizing

Embracing a new North Star of economic opportunity is the key to changing what philanthropy supports. But it also matters how civil society groups work to move America toward more shared prosperity. Remember, people aren’t just angry that they’re struggling to get by; they’re also angry that power is too concentrated, that institutions have failed them, and that their voices don’t matter. 

The best way to give people more confidence in our democracy is to help them build political power. When people see that they can concretely improve their lives through their civic actions, they’re more likely to feel that their voices matter and, in turn, engage even more in democratic life. Philanthropy can help foster this virtuous circle by making historic new investments in organizing groups. 

Grantmakers have long supported organizing work. But such funding has been very limited, a priority of foundations that tend to be smaller and quite far to the left. Organizing has never been a top grantmaking focus of a critical mass of major foundations and leading individual donors. At times, also, the funding that does flow to grassroots groups is problematic, with grantmakers turning these organizations into de facto vendors to help advance specific short-term goals. “It’s transactional,” said a funder with deep knowledge of this space, pointing to the tens of millions that are surged into groups during election cycles for voter outreach, only to evaporate after the ballots are counted. Said another: “A lot of power-building groups are fundamentally captured by what funders will pay for.”

Investing in organizing at scale, and in ways that can shift power, will require funders to change how they approach this work, placing more trust in their grantees and investing for the long haul. But the far bigger challenge is getting more grantmakers — including the sector’s biggest players — to back organizing in the first place. 

Grassroots groups in working-class communities often don’t feel like natural partners to foundations staffed by highly educated professionals. Many program officers are far removed from the day-to-day realities of economic hardship. “Everybody who works in philanthropy has fundamentally made it,” the executive director of a small foundation recently told me. Program staff tend to gravitate to nonprofit leaders like themselves and, as a result, heavily favor elite strategies such as litigation and research. 

Beyond this cultural disconnect, the tactics of organizing groups, which can be confrontational, may feel unnerving to funders, who tend to reflexively assume that organizers are too far to the left, or otherwise not “safe” bets. Philanthropy “wants control and order,” said the same executive director, whose foundation supports organizers but has often struggled to persuade peer grantmakers to join them.  

Foundations need to get past their skittishness about front-line work. The best organizing groups tend to be highly pragmatic and guided by input from the constituencies they represent. As one funder of grassroots work explained to me, the most effective groups are led by “constructive movement leaders who aren’t trying to play gotcha with language” or imposing ideological purity tests on politicians or making maximalist demands detached from what’s possible. Another funder, who works closely with top state-based groups, told me: “The woke stuff is not driving these organizations… They’re trying to build a majority political program.” Among other things, this means not making unrealistic ideological demands of elected officials. “We can’t afford to be absolutist when it comes to politicians,” the executive director of a leading national organizing group told me. 

Overall, it’s crucial that philanthropy not learn the wrong lessons from the “peak woke” era, which provoked a strong backlash that helped deliver Trump back to office. The lesson isn’t to starve grassroots organizers of resources. It’s that grantmakers must look much more closely at the groups they support, prioritizing organizations that truly represent the populations they claim to speak for and focus laser-like on people’s top everyday concerns. There are scores of organizations like this across America that are poised to scale substantially if philanthropy steps up. 

Many of these groups are part of a new labor movement that has grown rapidly over the past decade, helping fill the void left by declining labor unions. These groups operate around the country, focused on empowering people who work in care jobs, in warehouses, for “gig” delivery services, in restaurants and hotels, on farms, in nail salons, as day laborers, as office temps, and much more. Other groups are focused on easing specific pain points facing strapped Americans, including child care, housing, health insurance, prescription drugs, transportation and student debt. Meanwhile, many multi-issue organizations address economic challenges within a larger portfolio that also engages other lived concerns people have about issues like pollution, school quality, mass incarceration, access to reproductive care and more.

These organizing efforts have improved millions of lives and put billions of dollars of cash and benefits into people’s pockets. Over the past few decades, organizers have helped raise the minimum wage through ballot measures in 28 states, and enacted living wage ordinances in over 100 cities and counties. Thirteen states and the District of Columbia have also enacted mandatory paid family leave systems. Ten more states have voluntary systems that provide paid family leave through private insurance. In addition, organizers have also helped enact Medicaid expansion by ballot measure in nine states. 

Much organizing takes place in communities of color, which remain the most economically disenfranchised places in America. Black-led groups are a vital part of this ecosystem, and among the most underfunded. But a growing array of organizations also work in mostly white rural areas and “factory towns.” Still others focus on connecting with military veterans, small business owners, college students, families with disabled loved ones, people with medical debt, and seniors, inviting these constituencies into a broader left-of-center coalition that is speaking to their concerns. 

Many organizing groups build power by combining year-round 501c3 work to engage their constituencies with 501c4 electoral work to ensure that those people are heard in elections at all levels: local, state and federal. While such multi-entity operations can unnerve risk-averse funders, this combined approach is the best way to ensure that civic engagement leads to tangible change. “People need to see results,” a funder in this space told me. Without that payoff, and the sense of efficacy it instills, organizing can lose steam. For this and other reasons, funders should invest much more deeply in voter engagement work going forward, as I‘ve argued elsewhere. 

The opportunities to galvanize widespread civic action will likely grow as Trump policies hit red and blue communities alike. A powerful backlash against these polices could shape politics for years to come by finally discrediting a fake MAGA populism that, in practice, inflicts pain on working people. But this chance for a political pivot may be missed if philanthropy fails to rapidly scale organizing work to seize the moment.

Invest in media and narrative

While investing in organizing is a key to shifting power, this strategy has limits. “Community organizing methods alone aren’t enough,” a longtime veteran of grassroots campaigns told me. “You can’t reach enough people.” 

Related to that, organizing occurs downstream from larger narratives about politics and culture. Americans are spending large portions of their days on social media, watching television and videos on their phones, or listening to the radio or podcasts, where their views are being shaped by messengers who operate at a massive scale. A left-of-center coalition that can’t compete in this air war will struggle, even with better ideas and more boots on the ground. 

We’ve seen this clearly in recent years, as the right has built a far-reaching ecosystem of media outlets and influencers that now reaches at least 100 million people, three times more than comparable entities on the left. In the wake of the 2024 election, the profound challenge posed by this messaging machine is now widely recognized. Nobody I’ve spoken to in philanthropy disagrees that this is a first-order obstacle to advancing the sector’s priorities. There is also a dawning realization that AI-generated content is likely to dramatically compound the information challenges ahead. 

Yet admitting you have a problem is one thing. Trying to solve it, famously, is something else entirely. Liberal funders are decidedly behind in this arena. While donors on the right pour vast resources into entities like Prager University and Turning Point USA, which together raised $150 million in 2023, few entities on the left attract anything like that kind of money. Philanthropy’s idea of funding media is often to support outlets like ProPublica and local nonprofit news sites, which aim to fill the void left by the decline of newspapers. 

There is much to like in such grantmaking, including the ongoing Press Forward initiative to boost local news. By and large, though, this funding sidesteps the seminal information challenge of our time: reaching the tens of millions of Americans who don’t care about politics or the news. In a recent New York Times op-ed, Rob Flaherty, Kamala Harris’ deputy campaign manager, described these people as “opt-out” voters. They “generally don’t trust politicians or the mainstream media. Many assume the system is rigged, the media is biased and neither party is actually fighting for them.” 

But just because these people don’t follow politics doesn’t mean they don’t hear about it. They do hear political messages, and mainly from the right. Conservative outlets and influencers meet people where they’re at, on topics like sports and entertainment. “It’s culture, not news,” Flaherty writes. “A young dad scrolling Instagram for parenting tips stumbles across a clip about traditional family values. A small-business owner watching finance videos gets fed posts about why woke policies are destroying the economy. A 25-year-old gym enthusiast on TikTok starts seeing content about masculinity, personal responsibility and — soon enough — right-wing politics.”

The right’s capacity to reach a vast audience with this kind of approach has become a major source of its power. How it wields influence by capturing attention takes different forms, from shaping people’s worldviews over the long term to creating so-called “media weather events” that keep an issue in the news for days or weeks (e.g., migrant caravans), helping set political agendas. As the right’s messengers have gained a dominant upper hand in the battle for people’s attention and honed their influence strategies, they’ve increasingly shifted public opinion and politics their way.

Some Democratic donors have lately zeroed in on this problem, and various initiatives are afoot to help the left build its own network of influencers, including to reach men and boys who’ve been flocking to the right. But it remains to be seen if a critical mass of grantmakers will engage here at scale. While some funders are now scrambling to play catch-up, those foundations who care about the information landscape, such as the backers of Press Forward, are still mainly investing in what Flaherty describes as “opt-in media for an opt-out electorate.” He adds: “At a time when many Americans don’t trust the mainstream press or Hollywood, the left owns where voters used to be. The right owns where voters are going.” 

The good news is that media and cultural entrepreneurs are developing new ways to reach opt-out Americans that can be supported with 501c3 funds. One group in this space is Accelerate Change, which is developing “culturally resonant media properties centered on Americans’ interests in sports, entertainment, food, music, fashion, beauty, animals, nature, celebrity, art, comedy and more.” It then leverages these “trusted cultural relationships” to reach “far beyond the choir to educate Americans, counter right-wing propaganda, and drive civic engagement.” Accelerate Change’s multiple media properties now reach tens of millions of Americans. It has ambitious plans to reach even more people — if it can secure enough funding.  

Other groups like WorkMoney and Courier, both relatively new, have also been successful at building relationships with large numbers of people. WorkMoney is especially noteworthy. It’s laser-focused on offering practical information on how to save money and “live a better life.” But it leverages its relationships with users to push a broader message about ensuring that “hard-working Americans get a fair deal.” It also has a c4 arm that engages voters during elections. 

Other groups are also working to formulate narratives that can punch through partisan divides, including in deep red parts of the country. To better understand working-class people in rural America and beyond, the Rural Democracy Initiative created the Winning Jobs Narrative, a groundbreaking public opinion research project that produced a new “narrative architecture” for “talking about jobs, work and the economy.” Much more widespread adoption of this narrative, which centers working people and the value of work, could greatly increase the effectiveness of organizing, advocacy and political campaigns. But accomplishing that implementation at scale will require funders to step up in a major way. 

Meanwhile, groups like Galvanize USA and Red Wine & Blue are using research and message testing to connect with moderate white women and invite them into a broader left-of-center coalition. In addition, organizations and candidates still draw on insights from the Race-Class Narrative Project, which philanthropic funders backed a number of years ago, to talk more effectively about issues of race and class. 

Many other new media and narrative initiatives, including those related to AI, are emerging or could rapidly scale with greater philanthropic support. Such grantmaking will entail risk, but that is exactly what the moment requires. “We need experimentation,” one funder told me. “We need to try some things we’ve never tried before, including things that might fail.” 

Shifting major new resources to work on media and narrative will require funders to reorder their grantmaking priorities. Right now, relatively few foundations have programs in this area. Those that do, as I mentioned, mostly support news outlets. 

Here again is why foundations need to move beyond issue siloes. Funders will struggle to move forward on all their issues if the larger power landscape is hostile to those priorities. In turn, that landscape is heavily shaped by who gains narrative dominance. 

***

Right now, with crisis enveloping foundations and nonprofits, it can be hard to envision a brighter future. The dream of an America on track to far greater economic and social inclusion, along with forceful efforts to confront climate change, has been palpably slipping away over these past few months. 

Yet looking ahead, through the haze of discouragement, a pathway does exist to revive that dream. And philanthropy’s role is clear: First, bankroll the growing pushback to Trump’s agenda to slow the MAGA juggernaut by scaling tactics and organizations of proven effectiveness. Second, map out and then implement a long-term vision for shifting power and advancing transformative change. 

The vision I’ve laid out here — to prioritize economic issues with more universalist appeal and invest deeply in ideas, organizing, and media — is my own two cents of what’s required to succeed. Other people will offer different strategic visions. 

What matters is that funders rise to the challenge at hand. They must admit they are losing, take an unflinching look at why, and come up with credible ways to move forward — not to more narrow victories in a 50-50 America, but to a truly different majoritarian politics. Ultimately, too, philanthropy must be ready to spend whatever it takes to succeed. 

Scaling the strategies I’ve laid out above — while also bolstering grantees now under attack — would cost at least several billion dollars a year in additional funds and probably much more. Foundations can find that money by mothballing nonessential work until threats to democracy recede, and by substantially increasing payouts. These moves will require funders to embrace a crisis management mindset and get past their deep reflex to preserve endowment capital.  

Ultimately, though, the best chance of fully resourcing the work I’ve outlined is for top individual philanthropists to step forward with historic new funding commitments. This might include existing megadonors such as MacKenzie Scott or Laurene Powell Jobs — both of whom have vast, untapped resources — or deep-pocketed newcomers like, say, Christy Walton, who are worried about the fate of our democracy. 

The money is out there. The clock is ticking. Now is the time for funders to act.

Note: If you missed it, please read my earlier article: “How We Got Here: Six Reasons Liberal Philanthropy is Losing the Battle for America’s Future.” You can reach me with comments or ideas at davidc@insidephilanthropy.com. 

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