02/07/2025
A timely blog post from my respected colleague Alan Cantor.
"Fresh Hell Served Daily"
The writer Dorothy Parker had a unique way of answering the phone. Instead of saying hello, she would cry out, “What fresh hell is this?!”
I think of that on a daily basis as I hear about at the latest amalgam of cruelty, graft, chaos, mendacity, and inanity coming out of the Trump Administration and from the tweets and actions of Elon Musk.
Others are writing with greater authority about the new administration’s impact on the nation and the world. Here, I’ll take a shot at describing the impact on nonprofits – or, really, on the people who work at nonprofits.
I’ll give you fair warning that a lot of what follows is bleak. But you already knew that. And I do offer up a glimmer of hope at the end.
Worries about vulnerable clients, colleagues, and vendors
The reactions to Trump II fall into three categories: the personal, the institutional, and the philosophical.
The most common first reaction by nonprofit leaders after the election was to worry about the personal safety of those around them who are particularly vulnerable under the new regime, and those fears have only intensified since November.
People have been concerned about staff members, clients, family members, neighbors, and friends who are not straight, white, cis-gender, American-born Christians, and who are now subject to executive orders and bigoted attitudes implying that they are “other” and not “real Americans.” These vulnerable people are experiencing the casual abuse and derision that wells up when the nation’s top political leadership makes it clear that the old unwritten rules of civic behavior are no longer operable.
After all, when the most powerful person in the country refers to immigrants as “vermin” and “animals,” his followers fall in line. And then come the executive actions and potential new laws. When individuals are subjected to government restrictions about using bathrooms, marrying the person they love, keeping and exercising autonomy over their bodies, or simply living in the United States, the stress and fear turn into tragedy.
And many nonprofit leaders worry about their own situations. One gay friend, a longtime nonprofit staff member, is terrified that his marriage license will be revoked. Another nonprofit executive, adopted as a baby from Asia, broke down in tears as she confessed her worry that the paperwork to prove the legality of her adoption decades before would not pass the scrutiny of officials with an anti-Asian bias.
So, first off, we’re worrying about how the new administration will impact people we know and love.
Worries about their organizations
Along with the concerns for individuals, nonprofit leaders are beside themselves worrying about the sustainability of their organizations in this new, dark world.
Those organizations working directly with vulnerable populations, such as immigrants and LGBTQ youth, are already under direct attack from the new administration and its Congressional toadies. So too those working on issues such as civil rights, reproductive rights, voting rights, climate change, and clean energy that are now classified by Trump as “woke,” and therefore verboten.
But it’s not only these high-target organizations that have concerns. Last week’s unexpected, stunning, bizarre, and traumatizing “pause” in funding for, well, just about everything the federal government funds, made it clear that a wide swath of nonprofits may face existential threat. Most nonprofits operate on a narrow margin and have only small financial reserves, so any delay or halt in funding is a crisis. For a panicky few hours, the financial spigot even for staple organizations like Meals on Wheels was turned off. Head Start classrooms closed. All fifty states temporarily shut down their web portals to Medicaid, the program through which nearly one-fifth of Americans get their health care.
The Trump Administration revels in its capriciousness and cruelty, it thrives on chaos, and it apparently doesn’t give a damn if people go hungry or get sick, so long as the president can score a political point or two and accrue more power. Though the executive order pausing federal funding was rescinded, the scar tissue remains, and people are jumpy.
When the nonprofit world, and much of the nation, freaks out from the off-again/on-again funding stream, that all works to the advantage of the Trumpists. Intimidation is one of their core strategies. The Trump Administration knows that acting unpredictably and cold-bloodedly puts its rivals on edge, and seeing others panic reinforces their sense of power.
Meanwhile, cowed nonprofit leaders are quietly shutting down their DEI-related projects and committees – or searching for new names for these efforts. Many nonprofits are doing what Yale scholar Timothy Snyder warns against: “obeying in advance.” And, while I champion speaking truth to power and standing up to bullies, that’s easy enough for me to say. For nonprofits depending on federal funding and fearing harsh governmental oversight, it’s not so simple. They can’t meet their mission if they’re shut down.
Meanwhile, it’s fair to ask whether longtime major funding sources such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities will survive the budgetary clear-cutting in D.C. I wouldn’t bet on it, and neither are the nonprofits dependent on these sources.
Utter disregard.
But here’s the larger issue, and this is what nonprofit leaders are coming to realize: The president and his minions do not respect nonprofits one iota or consider their work to be important.
The charitable sector traditionally enjoyed strong bipartisan support. In 1989, George H.W. Bush, nobody’s model liberal, went so far as to make nonprofits the centerpiece of his inaugural address. He said:
I have spoken of a thousand points of light, of all the community organizations that are spread like stars throughout the nation, doing good. We will work hand in hand, encouraging, sometimes leading, sometimes being led…. We will work on this in the White House, in the cabinet agencies. I will go to the people and the programs that are the brighter points of light, and I will ask every member of my government to become involved. The old ideas are new again because they are not old, they are timeless: duty, sacrifice, commitment, and a patriotism that finds its expression in taking part and pitching in.
Critics at the time (with some cause) suggested that Bush, through this speech, was laying out the rationale for underfunding government programs and offloading federal responsibilities onto the nonprofit sector. But it’s also clear that Bush had a deep respect for charities.
It’s a completely different story with Donald Trump. It would never even cross Trump’s mind to praise values like “duty,” “sacrifice,” “commitment,” and “a patriotism that finds its expression in taking part and pitching in.” This is a man who called soldiers who died for the nation “suckers.” He surely has the same attitude toward underpaid social workers and childcare providers and, really, everyone in the nonprofit sector. Most people in the nonprofit world are driven at least to some degree by idealism. Idealism doesn’t register with Trump.
Donald Trump ran his private foundation so carelessly with so much self-interest that the State of New York shut down it down, fined Trump $2 million, and restricted him and his fellow-trustee children from serving on other charitable boards unless they underwent mandatory training.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk, Trump’s prized consigliere, or, arguably, his puppet master, has had a miserable record of his own as a philanthropist. As I wrote last year, the Musk Foundation had given away less money for charitable purposes than the minimum the federal government requires, and much of what the foundation did grant out went to self-serving causes, such as the tiny and exclusive private schools attended by Musk’s own children and those of his SpaceX executives. A recent New York Times investigation says the Musk Foundation fell fully $421 million short of distributing the required minimum in 2023 – not exactly a minor accounting error. Musk’s foundation will pay a fine, sure, and probably a big one, but there are no repercussions for Musk himself, and certainly not a claw-back of his original charitable deduction.
For Trump and Musk, their foundations and the entire charitable sector are a big joke. In the testosterone-drenched ethos of the new administration, compassion has no place, and helping the less advantaged is “woke” and weak: the only people deserving help, apparently, are fellow rich men demanding further tax cuts. Charity is typically based on empathy and caring, along with a sense that we’re all in this together. For the likes of Trump and Musk, those are utterly foreign concepts.
And, sadly, Trump and Musk are not alone in belittling the charitable sector. In the last twenty-five years, the percentage of Americans donating to charitable organizations has dropped from two-thirds of all households to fewer than half. Part of the reason, no doubt, is the financial precarity haunting a wide swath of the country, and it’s understandable that charitable giving is the first item struggling people eliminate from the family budget. But much of the turn away from charitable giving derives from a growing sense by more and more people that nonprofits are simply not worth supporting — even that nonprofits are actively undermining the nation’s values.
And Trump and his team are amplifying this kind of cynicism.
Nothing is inevitable
Without a doubt, the next four years will be a hellish time for nonprofits, for our most vulnerable neighbors, for the nation, and for the world. I won’t sugarcoat it, and that’s not my style. (A colleague on a Zoom call today said it would be hard to “out-pessimize” me. Yes. Afraid so.)
And yet…
The freeze in grant funding announced last week by the Office of Management and Budget was rescinded, and that wasn’t because the funding freeze was unconstitutional (though it clearly was). The administration backed down in reaction to the hue and cry from the public. Every member of Congress and every Senator, Democrat and Republican, felt the heat, as did the White House. By instituting the funding freeze, the administration’s rhetoric about the “deep state” and “woke ideology” suddenly transformed into tangible action that harmed people in the community. The freeze in funding took food away from homebound grandparents. It shut down childcare centers. It stopped clinical cancer trials. It all became very real, very fast. In response, the people spoke up, and the Trumpists backed down.
Nonprofits, so often averse to controversy, dove right in to express their vehement opposition to the spending freeze. So too did nonprofit associations at the national and state levels. Diane Yentel, the CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits, called the OMB order “a potential five-alarm fire.” And all of this very public and emotional dissent actually worked.
No doubt a recrafted set of dangerous executive orders will emerge in the coming days, weeks, and months. The relentless attack on democracy and human decency will continue. But let’s take heart in this victory — and let’s build on this small but real success. I encourage everyone to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and recognize their power at a perilous time. And we all need to follow the advice of Yale Professor Timothy Snyder. He writes, “Make sure you are talking to people and doing something. The logic of ‘move fast and break things,’ like the logic of all coups, is to gain quick dramatic successes that deter and demoralize and create the impression of inevitability. Nothing is inevitable. Do not be alone and do not be dismayed. Find someone who is doing something you admire and join them.”
See you on the barricades.
Copyright Alan Cantor 2025. All rights reserved.
