Despite the tumultuous events of the past year, the results of the presidential election look very similar to four years ago — with a significant difference. This time, the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, who appears to have won the Electoral College with slim margins in a handful of states, will become the next president of the United States. President Trump will undoubtedly contest the outcome. But, barring a reversal of the results, his time in office will soon be over, and his influence will steadily wane.
For much of the philanthropic world, Donald Trump’s defeat is the culmination of four years of opposition, known loosely as “the resistance.” On a host of issues, the Trump administration took positions deeply at odds with those held by many nonprofit groups. Through lobbying, protesting, publishing, suing, registering voters, and other means, they fought back, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. Organizations at the forefront of this opposition such as the American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood, and the Environmental Defense Fund saw their revenues soar.
With the Trump administration now on the way out, the specific threats it represented will come to an end. These include its policies toward immigrants, its efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, regulations affecting the environment and worker safety, and proposed cutbacks in a variety of discretionary grant programs. But philanthropy will still face considerable challenges, even after Biden takes office.
One reason is that it will be difficult to undo some Trump administration measures that the nonprofit world especially dislikes. Consider, for example, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provision doubling the standard federal income-tax deduction to $24,000 for married couples and $12,000 for single people. The change was roundly denounced by philanthropic organizations. They argued that by substantially increasing the number of mostly low- and moderate-income taxpayers who would find it advantageous to switch to the higher standard deduction, the tax bill would eliminate their ability to lower their taxes by itemizing deductible expenses like donations — and thereby reduce the amount they give to charity.
As a candidate, Biden said he would repeal the law, but he also promised not to raise taxes for anyone whose income is below $400,000. Reducing the new standard deduction would violate that pledge. Nonprofit advocates could try to persuade Congress to create a new deduction for giving, available to all taxpayers. But aside from a temporary provision in the Cares Act, that’s been tried for many years without success. As a result, on the most significant issue affecting giving, the outcome of the election is not likely to make any difference.
Nonprofits also may not get much help from the new administration when it comes to solving a host of difficult problems growing out of the pandemic. Some of these involve services that were overextended, eliminated, or drastically altered by the spread of the coronavirus and now need to be overhauled. Among them: health care, nursing homes, food banks, child-care centers, counseling, and youth recreation programs. Others are related to the financial strains and employment losses facing many nonprofits. And still others stem from the urgent need to address traditional philanthropic concerns exacerbated by the pandemic, including poverty, joblessness, mental illness, racial equity, and education.
Nonprofits will look for more assistance from the Biden administration to deal with these challenges. But the federal government’s own staggering fiscal problems will limit the amount of help it can provide. Although the election results will create a more welcoming environment for nonprofits in the nation’s capital, the burdens of dealing with the consequences of the worst public health crisis in a century will still fall heavily on philanthropy.
Perhaps most significantly, the election did nothing to change the balance of power in Congress. Republicans will likely retain control of the Senate, while Democrats will hold a reduced majority in the House of Representatives. The political gulf between the two chambers will continue to make it difficult to enact coronavirus relief legislation and to address issues such as immigration and health care. While Biden has more experience and skill at building coalitions than his predecessor, the nonprofit world will also need to work across partisan and ideological lines to achieve its goals.
That may not be easy. In recent years, philanthropy has increasingly aligned itself more with progressive than conservative causes. “The resistance” reflected the view that Trump’s election was not only a fluke due to his opponent’s vulnerabilities, Russian meddling, and other factors but an assault on “nonprofit values and missions” and a challenge to democracy. But the results of this year’s election cast doubt on that thinking, unless we are to believe that close to half of Americans support such an assault. Indeed, in the highest turnout election in a century, Trump won more votes losing than he did winning four years ago.
The Message, Not the Messenger
Like other populists, Trump’s appeal actually rested on his ability to reach out to voters who believed national leaders had overlooked their concerns. Compared with the rest of the electorate, his supporters were more likely to be white, rural, less educated, working class, and religious. They suffered from a variety of problems, including substance abuse, chronic unemployment, and obstacles to social and economic mobility. Yet they often lived in places lacking both government and philanthropic services. They certainly weren’t folks who visited foundation board rooms.
Rather than looking for feasible ways to respond to the concerns of Trump’s red-state supporters, many nonprofits took the easier route of opposing Donald Trump himself. With Joe Biden in the White House and a Congress that remains divided, a different approach will be necessary — one that focuses more on the message than the messenger.
Still, for all the worries expressed in the past four years about threats to American democracy, it is surely notable that 160 million Americans have just cast ballots to elect a new government. And they mostly did so peacefully and honestly, despite fears of riotous protests and threats from armed white nationalists. With the prospect of receding threats from the Trump administration, the philanthropic world can stop resisting the man in the White House and devote more attention to the challenges facing all of American society.
