Depoliticizing Charity
American philanthropy has come under heightened scrutiny in recent months following incidents of tragedy and gross malfeasance. After conservative activist Charlie Kirk was killed last September, Utah governor Spencer Cox said evidence suggested that the accused shooter, Tyler Robinson, was immersed in "radical left ideology." Despite being raised in a conservative middle-class American family, Robinson was influenced by "anti-fascist" activist groups. The Trump administration accused progressive grant-makers such as George Soros's Open Society Foundations and the Southern Poverty Law Center of fomenting a partisan atmosphere that could lead to violence. Administration officials further announced they would seek to stop extremism fueled by donor funding.
Another startling episode occurred in Minnesota, where it was recently revealed that non-profits had defrauded the state's taxpayers of more than $1 billion. In response to the gush of welfare spending disbursed during the Covid-19 pandemic, some Somali immigrants in the state set up fake benevolent programs claiming to feed, house, or otherwise assist refugees and children, including kids with autism and people with disabilities. The money was actually funneled into luxury vehicles, real estate, and other enrichments for the "philanthropic" organizers. When whistleblowers warned state officials that sham charities were manipulating the system, the non-profit fraudsters claimed they were being subjected to racial discrimination. It was only after federal investigators indicted more than 75 individuals that the full scope of the scandal was recognized.
As these events demonstrate, bad actors can misuse and manipulate America's laudable charitable impulse. Regulators should react when this happens. The law grants charities tax and legal protections because they are understood to aid the disadvantaged and to form good citizens. Their donations are not supposed to benefit partisan causes or contribute to overt political activism, personal enrichment of their staff, or violence. If people are exploiting charitable gifts this way, legal and even law-enforcement responses are necessary.
Political leaders must be careful, however, not to undermine the immense good that American philanthropies do. The vast majority of charities are not partisan and perform vital work for our democracy. Charitable and associational activity is one of the most distinctive features of the American character, allowing citizens to shape their own communities and fostering habits necessary for pluralism and self-government. Reforming charitable giving, not driving it out of existence, is the best means of ending its politicization.
CRITICS OF PRIVATE GIVING
Even before the Kirk assassination, concern about the politicization of donor-funded organizations led to calls for federal investigations and countermeasures. Some conservatives in Congress, for instance, introduced the Litigation Transparency Act of 2025. This legislation would alter the traditional option of anonymity when donating to some non-profits, exposing the donor funding behind public-interest lawsuits in particular.
And it is not only those on the political right who have become wary of donor-driven activism. A range of observers have expressed concern that a comparatively small number of checkbooks are manipulating our society and culture. Americans may disagree about what constitutes "good charity" versus "bad charity," but a growing chorus is bemoaning a kind of force-feeding of social transformation via philanthropy.
Progressives, who tend to favor state-driven change, have been more willing to squeeze and shape charitable giving for political ends. During the Obama administration, the IRS inspector general found that the national tax agency was inappropriately discriminating against conservative groups when they applied for tax-exempt status as charities. When Kamala Harris was attorney general of California, she tried to force all charities to report their donors to government regulators. More recently Zohran Mamdani, before he was New York City's mayor, sponsored the "Not on Our Dime Act" as a state assemblyman, which aimed to revoke the tax-exempt status of and cut off donations to Israeli charities that he accused of genocide.
Left-wing efforts to discredit private giving and slap controls on private donations date back two decades. Critics such as the New Yorker's Jane Mayer, Stanford professor Rob Reich, former NPR CEO Ken Stern, and journalists Anand Giridharadas and Edgar Villanueva have excoriated prominent donors and attacked charitable giving as a social practice, treating wealthy right-leaning philanthropists such as the Kochs, the Huntsmans, and the Waltons as punching bags for ideological reasons.
But left-leaning donors such as Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and Robert Smith have also been pilloried for practicing philanthropy. Gates's massive donations to public health, education, and other causes earned him accusations of being everything from a rank amateur to a manipulating megalomaniac. The Broad Museum in Los Angeles was picketed and its patron savaged for his gifts to charter schools. Paying off $34 million of loans for Morehouse College students earned Smith opprobrium for having made money in private equity. "[A] gift like his can make people believe that billionaires are taking care of our problems, and distract us from the ways in which others in finance are working to cause problems," wrote Giridharadas in one condemnation. His book endlessly repeating such assaults received praise in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and NPR for exposing charitable giving as an "elite charade." In reality, these critics charge, charity is a tool of injustice in a rigged system, a means of suppressing dissent, and a practice that does more harm than good.
These criticisms of charity on the left and right commit a massive misdiagnosis, however. They paint U.S. philanthropy as primarily a game of national-scale political activism played by the wealthiest Americans. The facts are quite different. According to the latest national-giving statistics from 2024, only 19% of all annual charity in the United States comes in the form of foundation grants, and the vast majority of even those foundations are small local entities. Corporations contributed just 7% of the total funds donated in America. Fully 66% of the $600 billion donated in America every year comes from individuals. And the bulk of that comes from everyday givers — at an annual rate of about $3,000 per household.
The regions where Americans are most active philanthropically (measured in annual donating as a percentage of income) are not metropolitan bastions populated by wealthy elites, such as San Francisco, New York City, or Boston, but rather the Midwest and South. For example, though there are about the same number of people in the progressive county of San Francisco and the rural, religious state of South Dakota, South Dakotans give away about 75% more of their annual income on a household-to-household comparison. In addition, 76 million American citizens volunteer their time and labor in any given year. This broad generosity powers some 1.5 million independent non-profits all across the country.
The billionaires who attract all the attention from critics and the press are thus small potatoes in American philanthropy. The main branch of charity in America comprises giving by more than a hundred million generous and sensible everyday citizens. Most of their donating is invisible and unappreciated because it takes place out of sight, beyond the media glare, in small gifts. That's middle America in action, and its influence is much more significant than ideological billionaires' and corporations' attempted capture of the culture.
The modest donations of ordinary citizens cumulate in a mighty river whose tributaries water American communities in countless ways: through children's hospitals, Rotary scholarships, town fireworks, church-organized handyman services, donated parks, and more. Every day, in localities from Alaskan bush villages to lower Manhattan, these unflashy dollops of micro-philanthropy make our daily existences safer, sweeter, healthier, and more interesting. The sheer density of our popular, small-scale donations, and the intimate ways in which they are delivered, leave deep imprints on every corner of life in the United States.
SOLVING PROBLEMS TOGETHER
Critics of philanthropy also ignore how deeply rooted charitable giving and associations are in America's culture and character. Astute observers of the United States have long been impressed by the country's mass giving and ecosystem of charitable entities. U.S. charities don't wield government's coercive authority, and they are also not driven by the profit incentives of the commercial sector. They exist in a third sphere — what some people call "civil society" — acting between those two poles of social action, fixing problems where neither power nor money are adequate to the task.
America's independent, voluntary, non-profit, and charitable organizations set us apart from other countries. Many date back hundreds of years, while others were just recently born. They are extraordinarily numerous, operating at between twice and 15 times the rate seen in peer nations such as Britain, Canada, France, Germany, and Japan.
Perhaps the most famous early observer of the United States, Alexis de Tocqueville, considered our tradition of spontaneous citizen action to improve communities — without resort to impersonal, bureaucratic, and coercive mechanisms of government — to be the most original aspect of the American experiment. Because of the non-governmental, non-commercial nature of U.S. civil society, American citizens aren't just objects of authority — they can be wielders of authority, through their giving and participation in local civic activities.
The first president of Stanford University, David Jordan, placed the voluntary sector and its reliance on decentralized organs of social governance at the core of what it means to be American:
Imagine, if you can, a catastrophe which might remove from the United States every representative of coercive power, every official of whatever rank — from the President to the last notary public, every representative of army, navy, school, church, police. Such a loss might create widespread bewilderment or profound sorrow, but it would not result in anarchy....All the functions of national life would go on....One by one, communities would come together.
The author and columnist David Brooks has noted that grassroots voluntary action is "the central feature of American life" — yet the media "barely cover" it. Many journalists refuse to "define local social repair and community-building as news," he adds: It appears "too goody-goody, too ‘worthy,' too sincere." Our national narrative, Brooks warns, is controlled by people who are obsessed with politics, while "the 90% of our lives" dependent on community organizations and local initiative is blacked out.
This blind spot causes all kinds of missed stories and misunderstandings. How many New York Times readers are aware that many institutions central to their daily lives are charities rather than government entities? Central Park, for instance, is run by a donor-funded conservancy that rescued it from decay in 1980. The New York Public Library has operated as a charity since its founding 130 years ago. The best public schools serving needy children in New York City are donor-powered charter academies. Quietly effective philanthropies may not receive much credit from journalists, academics, or politicians, but they provide crucial services and alleviate pressing public problems.
One reason many progressives are so hostile to private giving is that government and charity are often competitors. They function in many of the same areas and sometimes seek to solve the same problems, albeit in different ways. Critics of philanthropy argue that it is disruptive, even illegitimate, for civil-society groups to compete with the state. Public-employee unions, agency officials, and other activists for government intervention protest when social authority and resources migrate from state bureaus into independent organizations such as charter schools, churches, medical charities, and philanthropic job trainers of the poor. That's why progressive commentators and political candidates call for cuts to the charitable deduction, erosion of tax protections for churches and other charities, the taxing down of personal fortunes, and new regimes in which government becomes the sole ministrant of societal needs.
What progressive critics miss is that America's highly decentralized philanthropy is crucial to our pluralistic and democratic society. Philanthropy disperses authority, giving citizens direct opportunities to change their communities together. It affords non-mainstream alternatives their day in the sun.
THE RISE OF PARTISAN CHARITY
Philanthropy and charitable associations are an essential element of American democracy in action. In fact, ordinary citizens support the vast majority of private giving and works nationwide. It remains true, however, that some philanthropic endeavors involving major donors have lost their way. Partisan affiliation has become a more important determinant for grants than the good charitable works might do.
Much of this began in the last couple decades as billionaires, particularly progressive ones, became more interested in using charitable giving to further political goals. Major left-leaning philanthropists such as George Soros ($32 billion donated in recent decades) and MacKenzie Scott ($26 billion in the last several years) have focused their sizeable gifts on progressive causes like diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); drug legalization; anti-police and anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agitation; LGBT and abortion rights; climate alarmism; anti-Israel organizing; and so forth. As far back as 2004, Soros was using his charitable gifts to promote the idea that non-progressives such as George W. Bush were fascists and existential threats to the nation. More recently, Soros has combined his philanthropic grants with tens of millions of direct political contributions from his political-action committees. That mix of funds made Soros the biggest financial backer of the 2025 campaign to gerrymander California's voting districts, for instance.
Other progressive donors such as Pierre Omidyar, Hansjorg Wyss, Tom Steyer, Jeff Skoll, Tim Gill, Jared Polis, the Stryker heirs, and contributors to Arabella Advisors have likewise aggressively built charities focused on "social change." Corporations, too, such as Apple, Meta, and Salesforce, have helped financially bolster politicized non-profits like the Southern Poverty Law Center, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Planned Parenthood.
Perhaps no issue has animated progressive donors more in recent years than criminal-justice reform — which, in their view, entails reduced funding for police and prisons, more lenient prosecution and sentencing, drug legalization, and more. Jeremy Travis, who oversaw criminal-justice giving for the multi-billion-dollar philanthropy Arnold Ventures, summarized their priorities this way: "No new jails. No more money for police. Abolish ICE. Abolish prisons." A philanthropically funded movement known as Cut50 demanded the release of 50% of the U.S. prison population. In New York City, a donor-funded campaign sought to close the Rikers Island jail, shrink the city's total prison capacity by 75%, and cut $2 billion from the budget of the NYC Department of Correction.
One of the most consequential donor-fueled efforts to undermine law enforcement was the campaign in big cities to install progressive district attorneys — with the understanding that they would decline to prosecute many crimes. Soros and others donated millions to elect DAs such as Chesa Boudin (San Francisco), George Gascon (Los Angeles), Alvin Bragg (Manhattan), Larry Krasner (Philadelphia), Kim Foxx (Chicago), Rachael Rollins (Boston), and Marilyn Mosby (Baltimore). Many of these officials were eventually rejected or recalled by voters, but only after presiding over damaging crime spikes in their cities.
Some philanthropists also promoted legislation and rule changes to end requirements for bail, eliminate probation, shield teenagers from all criminal responsibility, move violent crimes committed by minors to family courts, legalize drugs ranging from marijuana to psychotropic mushrooms, and set up "safe zones" for narcotic use, all while simultaneously backing officeholders who prosecute more police officers, storekeepers who shot at burglars, bystanders who intervened in subway crimes, and so forth. When Andrew Cuomo ran for mayor of New York City, he portrayed the progressive orthodoxy on crime this way: "Defund the police." "End prisons and jails." "End all misdemeanor offenses." "Decriminalize sex work and the drug trade."
It should be noted that progressives weren't the only philanthropists to promote the idea that the United States was too tough on crime. The Koch brothers and other libertarian donors also insisted that the nation was "over-incarcerating," and that policies such as legalizing drug use, closing prisons, reducing immigration enforcement, and eliminating many criminal statutes were just what the country needed.
Conservative billionaires, of course, have not been idle, either. They have donated actively to other causes and charities that carry political implications — the Federalist Society, the Alliance Defending Freedom, Americans for Prosperity, Turning Point USA, etc. Most of these conservative charities, however, have been more cautious about blurring the lines separating civil-society organizing from partisan action. And as a simple matter of math, the amount of money steered to the right has been vastly smaller than the gush of funding devoted to progressive non-profits in the last two decades.
Why has the politicization of philanthropy not drawn more scrutiny? The rise of aggressive identity politics and sympathetic media allowed progressive charities to dominate public discourse. From the beginning of Barack Obama's presidency, progressivism shaped the national narrative on topics like critical race theory, DEI, gender activism, law enforcement, and so forth. Their preferred language of "white supremacy," "Islamophobia," "Christian nationalism," "land acknowledgement," "decolonization," "genocide," etc. swept the field. The cultural dominance of left-leaning groups resulted in non-progressive individuals and associations being banished from Twitter and Facebook, their books pulled from Amazon, their search results manipulated by Google, their videos down-ranked on YouTube, their organizations de-banked, and federal law-enforcement agencies harassing them.
This lack of balance has had troubling consequences. Consider what happened when, after George Floyd's death in 2020, the Black Lives Matter Foundation and related groups began receiving huge charitable donations from billionaires, corporations, and foundations. This included large gifts from financiers like eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and multi-million-dollar pledges from companies such as Amazon, Cisco, Google, and others eager to signal their anti-racist bona fides. Most of this money was offered without any accountability whatsoever.
This rush to donate ended badly. One BLM founder purchased four expensive homes. Another activist was sentenced to prison for wire fraud and money laundering. The Biden administration opened a probe of the non-profit for fraud and misuse of donated funds. In 2025, a BLM director was indicted on 25 counts for using $3 million of donations for personal shopping sprees, Caribbean vacations, a private vehicle, $50,000 worth of food delivered to her home, and six pieces of real estate.
Another example of charitable efforts being mismanaged for ideological reasons occurred after wildfires burned several Los Angeles neighborhoods in early 2025. In response to the disaster, the FireAid charity raised more than $100 million to help victims. The Annenberg Foundation, an established national philanthropy, was enlisted to administer the funds. But foundation staff ended up giving almost none of the cash to actual fire victims. Instead, they offered grants to activist-oriented non-profits such as FreeFrom, the Alliance for a Better Community, and the California Native Vote Project.
A PROFESSIONAL PROTEST INDUSTRY
Another significant development in the politicization of charity has been the generational transformation that occurred at many large foundations. Once known for their centrist charitable activity, these foundations have become active in progressive cause-building. New directors and a surge of young progressive staffers have pushed numerous endowments to the left.
That created new allies for other foundations that have pushed left-wing causes for decades. Progressive non-profits such as the Tides Foundation, the Weingart Foundation, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) funded much of the pro-Palestinian activism that roiled many college campuses in 2024 and 2025. CAIR held dedicated fundraisers so it could present $1,000 checks to student protestors who incurred penalties for leading anti-Israel demonstrations.
Many of the individuals police arrested after violent acts on college campuses were not enrolled students, but rather habitual agitators supported by non-profits. Vanderbilt University chancellor Daniel Diermeier told a Washington, D.C., audience that the protestors on his campus were clearly coordinated; they used a "playbook" brought in by "organized networks" that were also active at Columbia University and other schools. Syracuse University chancellor Kent Syverud agreed that national and perhaps international organizations were likewise driving anti-Israel encampments at his college. Washington University chancellor Andrew Martin reported that "[t]hree quarters" of those arrested on his campus were outside organizers who "had nothing to do with the university."
Philanthropic assistance has also been offered to other troubling individuals. University student Patrick McClintock was arrested for disturbing the peace after yelling anti-Semitic slurs and other taunts at a film crew. Almost immediately, a crowdfunded charitable account was set up at the tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization GiveSendGo, which raised over $43,000 to support him. At that same philanthropic site, 40,000 individuals donated $1.4 million (as of February 2026) to defend Luigi Mangione — who became a left-wing darling after he was charged with murdering health-care CEO Brian Thompson on the streets of New York City.
The No Kings protests orchestrated by progressive non-profits in dozens of cities during the fall of 2025 were heavily funded by activist philanthropies. The organizing groups included close to 80 different 501(c)(3) charities, which IRS rules forbid from participation in partisan and political work. These groups focus their organizing on anti-Israel activity, anti-racism, LGBT issues, and similar centerpieces of identity politics.
Another 100 No Kings protest sponsors were 501(c)(4) social-welfare non-profits, which are allowed only partial involvement in political activity. And 24 more were 501(c)(5) union non-profits, which are likewise prohibited from extensive partisan involvement.
Several of the charities behind No Kings were also the militant drivers of the fall 2025 government shutdown, and were subsequently involved in attacking senators who voted to reopen federal operations. The aggressive non-profit Indivisible, for instance, funded with millions of dollars from Soros and other donors, pushed hard for a shutdown. Indivisible demanded that Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer step down for "capitulation to the Trump regime," encouraged gerrymandering of congressional districts that would advantage progressive candidates, and routinely describes its opponents as "fascists." The non-profit also organizes many local anti-ICE and anti-police gatherings as well as anti-Israel agitation.
As researcher Jennica Pounds concluded, No Kings has "built...an empire of tax-exempt organizations doing the Democratic Party's work on the taxpayer's dime." A professional protest industry is essentially being operated with charitable dollars. This is not only socially divisive; it violates tax and non-profit laws.
Progressive non-profits' professionalization of protests further contributes to a charged partisan atmosphere, carrying the real threat of more violence. Multiple "anti-fascist" organizations have taken to swarming the homes of political bogeymen. Several members of the Trump administration were forced to move their families into military housing in 2025 in the face of threats and aggressive picketing at their private residences by self-proclaimed anti-fascist groups. Across the country, Antifa entities have fomented protests and attacks that have injured law-enforcement officers, released the home addresses of government officials, bloodied journalists, blocked campus speakers, thwarted immigration enforcement, put conservative groups in physical danger, burned police cars, vandalized public buildings, and more.
Amid the street turmoil of 2020, an arm of the Tides Center, among other groups, announced online that they would provide bail money for any rioters who were arrested. That certainly sounds like support for criminal activity — which tax law flatly forbids any charity from undertaking.
REFORMING CHARITABLE GIVING
As the numerous examples above demonstrate, the politicization of philanthropy in recent years by a progressive network of donors, corporations, foundations, and non-profits has caused real damage to American society. This network has used the shield of tax and legal protection to conduct political activity, fanned the flames of social and political polarization, undermined the reputation of philanthropy in general, and even created the conditions for criminal activity and violence. To begin to eliminate these abuses, Congress needs to consider new laws, and agencies like the IRS need to improve their enforcement.
A good place to start would be cutting off the surge of foreign philanthropy that has helped politicize American charities. The Quadrature Climate Foundation, a British organization that promotes climate alarmism, has donated $520 million to 41 U.S. groups since 2020. The Oak Foundation, another European group, has been one of the main backers of anti-Trump protests in Washington, D.C. Foreign billionaires such as Hansjörg Wyss and Christopher Hohn have also deployed charitable donations to influence American policy debates. A report from Americans for Public Trust found that five large foreign charities operating in the United States recently poured almost $2 billion into political advocacy by domestic non-profits.
Existing federal laws prohibit foreign nationals from directly or indirectly influencing U.S. elections. These, and perhaps new regulations, should be applied to bar foreign manipulation of our civil society.
Some tax-exempt activities also deserve a closer look. Many 501(c)(3) charities have recently involved themselves in "voter registration" efforts that veer into politicking. This should be stopped. Likewise, 501(c)(3)s should not be involved in ballot initiatives, as some currently are. These groups shouldn't be allowed to take donations and re-grant them to politically involved 501(c)(4)s. Additionally, the tax-law language that currently enables 501(c)(4)s to pursue political engagement so long as it is not their "primary activity" should be tightened and specified.
New IRS rules should be enacted to ban charities from devoting more than, say, 10-20% of their total spending to executive salaries. Some charities have been set up merely to provision a radical activist or two, with no pretense of granting real resources to charitable activity. For instance, the Wayfinder Foundation of Minneapolis, funded by the Walton Family Foundation and the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, officially reported $0 of spending on "program services" over the last six years — putting almost all of its budget instead into large six-figure salaries for the two women who led the anti-ICE church-service invasion in Minneapolis in January.
Members of Congress interested in depoliticizing charity should consider placing time limits on foundations. The longer a foundation lingers as a bureaucracy, the likelier it is to be taken over by politicized staffers, and to stray from the principles of the wealth creator who launched the organization.
Relatedly, foundations could be required to distribute into society every year a much larger fraction of their endowment. Currently they have to donate only 5% of their funds annually. If Congress raised this to, say, 10% or 12%, foundations would do more good for the nation every year — and would have less incentive to coast as permanent bureaucracies offering convenient perches to activist staffers.
These sensible reforms could make America's impressive philanthropy engine even better. But lawmakers and their constituents must not lose sight of a crucial reality: Large donations that seek to manipulate politics and culture are far from the norm. The politicized giving that has attracted our attention of late is but a tiny fraction of overall U.S. charitable activity.
Regulatory efforts to reduce politicized charity must therefore be applied cautiously. Overly restrictive measures could destroy invaluable local philanthropy just to stop a few national ideologues. Some Trump supporters, for example, have recently joined their progressive opponents in broadly assailing philanthropy as a "billionaire boys' club." Crusaders for philanthropic reform must be careful not to undermine one of America's most distinctive and precious cultural advantages — the decentralized private donating and organizing that allows us to solve serious social problems without government coercion or commercial manipulation, relying instead on spontaneous, voluntary, grassroots action.
