Nonprofits should resist politicization first

Public trust is their most precious commodity, and politics erodes it.

How do you solve a problem like Donald Trump? That question is on the minds of many nonprofit leaders these days.

There are good reasons why: According to the Urban Institute, in the wake of the Trump administration’s decision to cancel hundreds of federal grant agreements, one out of three nonprofits reported a government funding disruption in 2025. The administration’s opposition to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs, and the targeting of high-profile nonprofits like Harvard University, has sent shockwaves throughout the sector – no one wants to find themselves the subject of a civil rights investigation. Almost every month has brought a new shot across the bow, including last month’s federal indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center for alleged financial crimes.

The collective temperature of the nonprofit sector could safely be described as DEFCON 2. And it is safe to say that things could easily get even worse from here – despite a lot of menacing talk, the Trump administration has thus far not followed through on its threats to investigate George Soros’ philanthropy or to revoke the tax-exempt status of disfavored nonprofits.

But underneath all of the many problems that the Trump administration presents for the nonprofit sector, there is a deeper underlying crisis that also requires attention: declining public trust. The trap that Trump presents for nonprofit leaders is that, even as his public approval rating declines, direct opposition to the president is likely to hurt the nonprofit sector more than it hurts him.

Losing the war

In many respects the dilemma facing the nonprofit sector mirrors the factional schism that is currently roiling the Democratic Party, with progressives demanding confrontation while moderates urge the party to engage in self-critique as a first step towards rebirth.

For some in the nonprofit sector, the way forward is obvious: The bully must be confronted head-on. The troops must be rallied, and organizations must shed “nonprofit innocence” in order to embrace bolder advocacy and lobbying. And, because extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures, any reformist critique of the nonprofit sector or philanthropy must be suspended for fear of giving comfort to the enemy.

The ACLU exemplifies the combative approach. After Trump’s victory in 2024, the organization offered no grace note to the president-elect, just a stern warning: “We’re clear-eyed about the chaos and destruction a second Trump administration will cause to our nation. That’s why we’re done with handwringing, admiring the problem, or waiting anxiously to see which unlawful action President-elect Trump will take on Day One. We are ready to take action the minute Trump takes the oath of office.” The ACLU has lived up to its promise, filing dozens of lawsuits and issuing myriad press releases condemning the president.

While it is not a problem if a handful of progressive nonprofits follow the ACLU into full-throated opposition mode, the vast majority of nonprofits would be wise to resist this urge. There are numerous reasons why, but the most obvious is this: It didn’t work the last time.

Most of the organizations that embraced resistance the last time around ended up doing real long-term damage to the nonprofit sector.

When Trump was first elected in 2016, many organizations all but officially joined “the #Resistance.” This was justified, in part, because Trump had lost the popular vote and because other unusual circumstances, including allegations of Russian interference, made his election seem illegitimate to many observers.

The concerted nonprofit opposition to Trump, when combined with similar efforts by the media and civil servants, probably did have an impact, at least at the margins. During his first term, some Trump initiatives were delayed, at least for a time. Obstruction from federal workers succeeded in infuriating Trump, leading him to declare war on what he labeled “the deep state.” And the massive Women’s March and the Black Lives Matter protests demonstrated that there was a significant segment of the voting public who did not endorse Trump’s agenda.

But any battles that were won along the way did not add up to victory in the larger war of public opinion. Despite the best efforts of his opponents, Trump managed to increase his support, ultimately winning the presidential election in 2024 — and bringing with him Republican control of the House and the Senate.

Surveying the wreckage, Liam Kerr of The Welcome Party offered this assessment: “The first wave Resistance was fierce, energetic, and often righteously belligerent — a slash and burn approach to saving democracy. That may have made sense as an emotional reaction to Trumpism, but it did not win convincing majorities and does not appear poised to in the near future.”

Daniel Stid, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former program officer at the Hewlett Foundation, makes the case that philanthropists should not underwrite the Resistance this time around. According to Stid, doing so would provide “MAGA enthusiasts with nearly perfect foils — wealthy and unaccountable elites based in blue coastal enclaves financing efforts to counter the people’s will.” He also suggests that a renewed Resistance would only serve to accelerate polarization “by fomenting an apocalyptic, fear-based politics in which the population is starkly divided into friends and enemies, darkly mirroring the Manichaean worldview of the most vociferous populists.”

I would argue that many, if not all, of the organizations that embraced resistance the last time around ended up doing real long-term damage to the nonprofit sector by allowing themselves to be seen as explicitly political actors. Indeed, if a full-fledged battle for public support were to break out between Donald Trump and American nonprofits and foundations, Trump would be the likely winner.

The politicization trap

According to Yascha Mounk, the author of The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure, the key question for anybody who wants to preserve and protect American institutions is not “Why do they like him?” but “Why do they hate us?” As Mounk has written, “Until the Democratic Party—along with the wider world of the American Establishment with which it is now deeply associated in the minds of voters—is able to give (and act on) an honest answer to that question, every clever tactic for how to resist Trump is doomed to fail.”

In general, politicized organizations are distrusted institutions. This is a point underlined by a recent study that looked at the perceptions of American institutions. More than 3,000 survey respondents were asked their opinions about a variety of institutions — business, the media, the Army, etc. Findings from the study suggest that “higher perceived politicization of institutions consistently predicted lower trust, often with large effect sizes. Similar patterns were observed between institutions, such that the institutions perceived as the most politicized were also the least trusted.”

Provocatively, the research team found lower levels of trust in politicized institutions even among those who shared the political slant of the institution in question. Progressives were less willing to trust left-leaning institutions that appeared more politicized. The same was true among conservatives. The researchers’ conclusion was simple: “Even when ideologies align, people distrust politicized institutions.”

This is a truth that Ira Glasser knows well. Glasser, who led the ACLU for more than twenty years, has become a vocal critic of the organization, arguing that it has strayed away from its traditional, content-neutral support for free speech in order to become an all-purpose progressive advocacy group. According to Glasser, “Whether you’re the ACLU or (rival civil liberties organization) FIRE, if you’re going to hold Trump accountable when he exceeds the limits of his power, you cannot be in a position of being seen as anti-Trump or of having campaigned against him politically. Otherwise, you will have no credibility, and you will not be effective.”

Trump’s win in 2024 is itself an indicator of depressingly low levels of confidence in American institutions — clearly, concerns about the damage Trump might wreak were insufficient to motivate most voters to pull the lever for Kamala Harris.

Because the nonprofit sector is so diverse, encompassing everything from organizations that are run by volunteers and focused exclusively on a single neighborhood to hospitals with thousands of employees and billions of dollars in operating revenue, it is difficult to get an accurate read of how the sector is viewed by the public. But a recent poll found that, after four years of decline, public trust in nonprofits has inched upwards, with 57 percent of respondents expressing trust in the sector. That’s better than many American institutions, but hardly cause for a ticker tape parade. Delving deeper into the numbers, there are plenty of reasons for nonprofits to be concerned — only 24 percent of respondents trusted nonprofits to avoid partisan politics, for example. More ominously, there are signs that the number of Americans donating to charity is falling. Nonprofits would be well-advised to pay attention to these warning signals.

Back to basics

Restoring public faith in civil society and the nonprofit sector is not going to happen overnight. But it will never happen unless nonprofit leaders make an effort to distance themselves, as much as possible, from the culture wars. Going forward, it is essential that these institutions attempt to speak to all Americans, not just those who are already ideologically simpatico with them.

We should seek to avoid a future where nonprofits are divided into those that serve conservatives and those that serve progressives. But in our over-politicized era, all too many nonprofits are effectively performing exactly this kind of sorting with the kind of language they use to describe their work.

Pick a few nonprofits at random and take a look at their mission statements. If you see words like “freedom” and “prosperity” and “opportunity,” you’ll know that you are looking at an organization that is attempting to signal its conservative bona fides. Words like “equity,” “BIPOC,” and “structural racism” perform the same work in the opposite direction. The idea of persuasion seems to have fallen out of favor — many organizations aren’t even trying to speak to people who don’t already agree with them.

Another problem that nonprofits must confront is mission creep. Too many nonprofits have chosen to weigh in on contentious issues with little apparent connection to their core work. (The Sierra Club offers a well-publicized case in point.) Nonprofits would be well-advised to embrace greater organizational discipline. Less can be more: By remaining focused on their core mission rather than being dragged into controversies beyond their ken, nonprofits can reduce the chances that they will be viewed as politicized actors.

Ultimately, the best way for nonprofits to address the corrosive problem of declining public trust is to do an outstanding job of whatever their core work may be — serving the needy, educating young people, building housing, etc. The real, long-term enemy is not Trump — it’s public cynicism. Unless that enemy is defeated, we are likely to see more presidential results like the one in 2024 in the years ahead.

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Greg Berman is the co-editor of Vital City and the author of The Nonprofit Crisis: Leadership Through the Culture Wars (Oxford), from which this piece is adapted.