How Philanthropic Is the Trump Cabinet?
January 11, 2017
(Brad Smith is president of Foundation Center.)
Here are the facts, decide for yourself. That may sound like a radical proposition in what some–after a bitter election season dominated by spin, lies and fake news–are calling a "post-truth world," but it is what we do at Foundation Center. In releasing "Eye on the Trump Cabinet" as the newest feature of Foundation Center's Glasspockets website, our goal is track the charitable giving related to Cabinet nominees and their nonprofit Board service.
Eye on the Trump Cabinet shows that, taken as a whole, the Cabinet nominees are by no means strangers to philanthropy.
There has been a lot of speculation among philanthropic foundations about what the new Administration might mean for the sector. Will lower tax rates reduce charitable giving? If government retreats from social programs will foundations be expected to take up the slack? Will new regulations be introduced to somehow influence the kinds of priorities foundations support? At the extremes I have heard people assert: "these people (the new Administration) don't know anything about philanthropy," and fielded a question from a Danish reporter who wanted to know if the controversy over the Clinton and Trump foundations would lead to the end of transparency in the sector. But what do the data tell us?
"Eye on the Trump Cabinet" shows that, taken as a whole, the Cabinet nominees are by no means strangers to philanthropy. Between them, they are related to 25 different foundations. By "related" we mean foundations run by cabinet nominees or family members, in addition to ones in which they might have been affiliated or served as Board members. To learn more about those foundations, click on the links to their profiles in Foundation Directory Online and their 990 tax returns to learn about their operating expenses, specific grants and investments. Similarly, the data show that Cabinet nominees have served on the boards of nearly 50 nonprofit organizations focusing on education, veterans' affairs, health, and children, to mention a few.
Through this lens, perhaps most notable among the Cabinet nominees is Betsy DeVos, someone who comes from a strong family tradition of philanthropy and has a significant foundation (the Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation) together with her husband. Moreover, until recently, she served as Board Chair for the Philanthropy Roundtable, a membership organization of foundations and donors that is a critical part of the infrastructure that upholds institutional philanthropy. Among the core beliefs of the Roundtable are that philanthropic freedom is essential to a free society and that voluntary private action offers solutions for many of society's most pressing challenges.
Foundations and nonprofits cannot (and should not) take the place of government primarily because their resources, while significant, are dwarfed by federal and state budgets in addition to those of the business sector. On the contrary, their limited resources are valuable precisely because it is their non-profit, independent status that gives them the freedom to innovate, take risks, support controversial causes, stick with tough challenges for the long term, and provide core support to critical societal institutions.
The relationship between government and the philanthropic sector can be one of collaboration, disagreement, or both, but it has been part of the fabric of American democracy for more than 100 years. Foundation Center, itself a nonprofit, was born in 1956 out of McCarthy-era hearings accusing foundations of supporting un-American activities. The sector's response was to create Foundation Center as a trusted public information service that could prove it had nothing to hide. We believe that transparency will, in the long run, always prove its value. How philanthropic is the new Administration? Explore Eye on the Trump Cabinet, come to your own conclusions, wait, watch, and, above all, participate.
-- Brad Smith
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