How do you break polarization’s stranglehold on the country? Americans believe philanthropy has answers.
That’s according to results from a poll released Monday documenting the public’s deep concern that the country can’t come together to tackle its most challenging problems. Nearly nine out of ten of individuals surveyed believe people who disagree must find ways to work together before the bitter deadlock can be broken. And large numbers see philanthropy as key to brokering peace and forging partnerships between opposing sides.
In the poll results, philanthropic organizations rank among institutions as the second-best choice to foster collaborations that advance change. Nearly 60 percent of respondents gave their vote of confidence to small-business owners, while 48 percent tapped mission-driven organizations. The share that expressed trust in philanthropy topped that for religious organizations (40 percent) and local elected officials and community leaders (35 percent).
Philanthropy is one of the few actors in the public sphere seen as focused on the common good, says Kristen Soltis Anderson, founder of Echelon Insights, which conducted the poll with the Benenson Strategy Group.
“People are very skeptical of motives these days,” Anderson says. Big business and politicians are perceived as acting out of self-interest, while philanthropy leaders are seen as “more willing to do the hard work of putting their own interests aside.”
Anderson was surprised that philanthropy scored the highest among Generation Z respondents on a question about who best provides ways for people to connect and work together. More than two-thirds of people ages 18 to 26 cited philanthropic organizations; among Millennials (ages 27 to 42), the share was 58 percent.
“Gen Z harbors plenty of distrust for lots of institutions,” Anderson said. “But the philanthropic sector does seem to have the edge” with them.
She cautioned that the poll numbers indicate that “people are more interested in collaboration and change coming from the local level," where partners in collaboration are more likely known to one another.
The survey was commissioned by the Walton Family Foundation. “Philanthropy has a critical role to play when it comes to bringing people together,” executive director Stephanie Cornell said in a statement. “To drive lasting change, we need to be ambitious and look for ideas everywhere.”
(The Walton Family Foundation is a financial supporter of the Chronicle of Philanthropy.)
Although the poll intended to gauge opinion about foundations, some respondents may have offered their views of nonprofits more broadly. The favorable results roughly align with the high regard that Americans express for nonprofits in an annual poll conducted by Edelman Data & Intelligence and Independent Sector, a membership organization of nonprofits and grant makers. That poll shows nonprofits are the second-most trusted institutions behind small businesses, with foundations farther down the list.
The survey offers little prescription for how philanthropy should build collaborations and spark change. But a large share of respondents endorsed listening to voices on the ground before making grants (76 percent); bringing together leaders from business, philanthropy, and government (73 percent); and funding different potential solutions to problems (69 percent).
Donors should not read the survey as a mandate to eliminate polarization root and branch, says Kristen Cambell, CEO of Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement. “Democracy actually requires us to have different and sometimes polarized opinions. It’s how we debate things. It’s how we make difficult decisions. It’s how we live up to our values as a diverse society where we’re saying, ‘Not everybody has to be the same, do the same things.’”
Bridge-building in pursuit of consensus is likely to backfire, particularly if participants aren’t confident about their place in society, says Chris Bullivant, who leads the Social Capital Campaign, a policy-advocacy effort to improve civil society. “If you feel economically insecure and perceive yourself to be marginalized, feeling forced to agree with something you disagree with may only make you feel more powerless and disconnected.”
$9 Billion Toward Democracy
Philanthropy’s interest in bridge-building and civic engagement has grown since the mid-2010s and gained credibility as “a legitimate theory of change,” Cambell says. But momentum has slowed amid criticism that quests for common ground blunt the bold action needed to correct hundreds of years of racial discrimination.
“The big questions that we tend to see and hear from philanthropy tend to revolve around whether or not cohesion and pluralism are antithetical or in tension with racial justice and racial equity,” Cambell says.
Many foundations and individual donors target polarization through a broad array of programs to strengthen democracy. These include efforts to increase voter access, ensure fair elections, promote leaders from disadvantaged groups, fight misinformation, and bolster government institutions.
Philanthropy invested $9.4 billion to promote democracy from 2016 through 2020, more than twice the total from the previous five years, according to an analysis by the Bridgespan Group. Large philanthropies such as the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative are big players, but strengthening democracy is a top priority for many donor collaboratives as well.
“There’s a whole set of donors that are thinking about what it’s going to take over the long term to strengthen democracy so that we’re not in the alarm cycle we’ve been in since 2016,” says Laura Lanzerotti, a Bridgespan partner.
Others see strengthening the family as critical to repairing the country’s torn social fabric. The Social Capital Campaign promotes a mix of conservative and liberal ideas, including paid family leave, a “super” child tax credit, promotion of marriage, and an enhanced role for faith-based groups in providing for children.
Declines in family stability and affordability correlate with diminished social connection and increasing polarization, Bullivant says. “We’re looking at what federal policy can do to help or hinder the growth of those things that happen outside of government” to strengthen civil society.
