SPEAKER_00 0:12

You're listening to the Philanthropy podcast with Roger Games.

SPEAKER_02 0:37

Hello, you're listening to the Philanthropisms Podcast. This is the podcast where we try to put philanthropy in context. I'm your host, Rodri Davis, and this week I am in conversation with Daniel Stid. Now, Daniel is the executive director of Lyceum Labs, which is a 501c3 nonprofit in the US that's focused on uh improving the quality of political leadership and party politics uh in the US. Uh he also was from 2013 to 2022 the inaugural director of uh the US Democracy Program at the Hewlett Foundation. Um and before that, earlier in his career, he also did various things, including working at Bridgeband Group with a non-profit uh consultancy organization. Um and I sat down with Daniel uh just before Christmas, it should be said, um, to record a conversation where we talked about philanthropy and pluralism and the role that philanthropy plays in a democracy. Um and we thought that you know a good idea in terms of bringing this out would be to coincide it with the inauguration of President Trump um for his second term in office, um partly because that's something we discuss in the course of the conversation, as you'll hear, but also because it feels as though the questions of the role of philanthropy, its relationship to democracy, and our ideas about plurality feel more pertinent than ever. Um so in the conversation uh we talked about all kinds of uh things around those topics. So we talked about the idea of pluralism and how it applies to philanthropy in civil society. Why it was perhaps that the long-standing consensus that pluralism is an inherent good when it comes to civil society um seems to have been lost or challenged more in recent years. Um we also talked about whether there's a danger of naivety sometimes in uh taking a kind of idealized version of pluralism as a positive good rather than accepting the reality that um, you know, in the real world pluralism you know often doesn't exist in the forms that we would like it to. We also talked about whether even if you accept arguments for pluralism, there need to be boundaries to that and what those boundaries might be and who gets to draw them. Um and we talked about whether you know the acceptance of the idea of pluralism necessarily implies that you have to agree with everybody, which you know, spoiler alert, it doesn't. That's not really what pluralism means. We also talked about a related uh issue, another P polarisation. Um we talked a bit about why it is perhaps that public discourse has become so polarized in recent years, and also whether this is genuinely something new, or whether actually it reflects a kind of reality of political discourse that's been apparent many other times throughout history, um, or is it just that it's more acute at a mo at the moment as a result of things like um social media and the way that kind of political narratives have gone? Um there's also an interesting question we discussed about whether sometimes the concerns about uh polarisation are slightly overstated because those at either side of the argument expressing the more extreme versions of views tend to have the loudest voices and to dominate the debate. And is the reality actually that there's a vast body of people who most of the time sit kind of more in that middle ground and are a lot more kind of nuanced and towards the centre? Um we then talked about uh Daniel's ideas around what responsible pluralism might look like for philanthropy and particularly for foundations, and and then we talked about what role the various different roles, I guess, that philanthropy can play in supporting democracy, whether that's specifically funding democracy building initiatives, whether it's supporting grassroots organizations and movements of various kinds to kind of renew civic life in that way, whether it's the kind of Tocquevillian idea of promoting association um as an inherent good and allowing people to kind of build uh skills of of civic engagement in that way. Um and then we we talked um finally, as I said, a bit at the end about what the second Trump term might look like for US nonprofits and civil society and what perhaps the response of philanthropic funders and donors uh might be to some of the potential challenges. So without further ado, let's get into it. I will be back at the end for the usual bit of housekeeping.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

Okay, great. Well, I'm here with Daniel Stead. Hi there, Daniel.

SPEAKER_03 5:07

Hi there, Rodri. Really good to uh be with you, as we say in American Sports Talk Radio. I'm a longtime listener, first-time caller.

SPEAKER_02 5:15

So well, delighted. I'm really, really looking forward to this conversation. And for those listening uh who've already had all the background filled in, should just say Daniel does a lot of things, um, but he is the executive director of Lyceum Labs, just a non-profit that sort of focuses on issues around philanthropy and democracy, and also the author of a great blog called The Art of Association, amongst many, many other hats that he wears. Um, and we're here to have a conversation all about that intersection of philanthropy and democracy, and particularly some of the debates around pluralism and also what's going on in the context of uh US politics at the moment and how that'll impact philanthropy. Um, but maybe the best place to start is just for you to tell everybody a bit in your own words about where your interest in that intersection between philanthropy and democracy comes from.

SPEAKER_03 6:00

Sure. I I think it starts really. I'm a I'm a lapsed political scientist. So I got my start in life as an academic political scientist, thinking kind of broadly about democracy in America and how it could be strengthened. And then, you know, I over time migrated into the world of management consulting and ended up working as a partner with the Bridge Bank Group, which is the kind of global nonprofit consultancy. I was working with it uh in the mid-2000s when it was a bit more of a startup. And there we were working quite extensively with a number of foundation leaders and also grantees. So that I think awakened me to the both the opportunity of getting that relationship between funders and grantees rights uh right, and then also uh the challenges uh of optimizing that relationship. Um, and then um from the Rich Bank group, I went to the Hewlett Foundation, where uh the new president of the foundation, this was 2013, um Larry Kramer, uh had uh was very interested in having Hewlett start up a program uh to figure out whether and how uh the the foundation could help strengthen U.S. democracy in a time of polarization. And he and I uh talked pretty extensively, and he said, why don't you come and help me get this program started? So I uh worked with Larry. We developed the strategy and then I directed the team that uh administered it for uh, I guess eight years. Hewlett has term limits for all grantmakers. My standard joke is term limits are a bad idea for lawmakers because elections provide the term limits, but they're a good idea for grantmakers. Um and, you know, leading that work at Hewlett, uh, and we started it, it's important to note, uh, in 2013, 2014. So before any of the tumult, uh, you know, uh two or three years before uh the President-elect Trump came down, first came down the escalator. So it was something we undertook uh uh recognizing that the way that American democracy was functioning was even then not optimal. And uh certainly the all the things that have unfolded since then have underscored that. If anything, I think we underestimated the gravity of the challenges it was facing. So I came to the end of my term at Hewlett um uh almost three years ago now, and since then I've been wearing a few different hats. I've been focused on what it would take to kind of revitalize political leadership at the local and state levels of of uh US democracy. I've also been doing some writing on philanthropy and its interplay with democracy and then advising uh uh foundations and individual donors. So I kind of have remained in this field uh from a slightly different uh uh vantage point.

SPEAKER_02 8:48

Yeah, really, really interesting stuff. And a huge amount to to uh pick up on and kind of get into. And I I mean a lot of what I want to talk to you about is what you've written and said about pluralism within philanthropy and kind of how that sits within some of the debates that are going on at the moment. But maybe it's um before we do that, I'd pick up on another word that you mentioned there, which is polarization, actually as a kind of prior uh concept. Because obviously, as you said, you started work on this back in 2013 and you know it was recognised as an issue then and it still is now. In in terms of just framing that conversation, why is it do you think that it feels as though um the polarization within society is is at kind of unprecedented levels? I mean, it first of all, is that perception right, or are we just in danger of seeing things through the lens of the present and actually there's always been polarization, or are there factors in play now that mean we should be particularly concerned about the way that that society is polarized on particular topics?

SPEAKER_03 9:45

Uh sure, very good question. And I'll speak here with reference primarily to the US, uh, but obviously the US isn't the only society in the world at present that is polarized, and I know you you have a global audience here. Um uh I I do think that um, well, let me back up. Polarization has waxed and waned in the US over the course of our history. At times, it you know, I think in particular with the eruption of the Civil War in the 1860s, it has totally uh overwhelmed our system. Uh, but apart from that, uh uh uh you know, kind of very tragic and brutal episode, um uh it is uh more or less stayed within bounds. It surged in the late 1800s, uh early 1900s, uh, dissipated a bit in the uh progressive era at the start of the 20th century. I think over the past 30 to 40 years, really going back to the mid-1970s, it has uh steadily worsened. And I think we are now at uh some of the most pernicious um uh kind of dimensions of polarization that we've seen in certainly the past 150 years. And I think there's a couple of things that contribute to that. It is has less to do with differences about of opinion about what government should do and how it should do it, and is really resting more in a kind of underlying and fundamental antipathy uh that that many Americans have come to harbor, especially at the elite level, have come to harbor towards their political opponents. And uh there is a uh a German political theorist who kind of served as the in-house uh philosopher for the Nazis as they were taking power, named Carl Schmidt. And he talked about um, you know, politics as ultimately being about friends and enemies. And the idea was you have friends, and your job in politics is to dominate and subordinate your enemies. And that is increasingly, I think, the perspective that to a critical mass of elites here and now some of their followers are taking to think about uh politics. And that is completely incompatible with the diversity of viewpoints and perspectives and opinions that were kind of intentionally built into the US system of government. So there's an incompatibility between this prevailing philosophy of politics is about friends and enemies and the underlying nature of our society.

SPEAKER_02 12:17

Yeah, that's really helpful. And I think it's a couple of things I want to come back to in a moment about what that the implications of that are for philanthropy. But maybe at this point, if we move on to um the the idea of pluralism, and maybe just say a bit for people listening. I mean, I think a lot of people listening will know what we mean by pluralism, particularly if they've listened to this podcast before, because I talk about it all the time. Um, but uh, you know, what is it that we mean in the context of philanthropy and civil society when we talk about pluralism as an ideal?

SPEAKER_03 12:44

Sure. I I think of pluralism is both a set of facts and a set of values. And the facts of pluralism are just the the presence of multiple uh uh and overlapping and cross-cutting dimensions of difference on the basis of religion, on the basis of race, on the basis of region, um, you know, on the basis of class, um, uh, on the basis of party and faction. And and the the facts of pluralism, I think, in the United States are pretty hard to deny, but pluralism is also a set of values around, well, how do we uh live together more or less peaceably in the face of those differences? And the values are um uh things like uh a belief in the the need uh forbearance and toleration and persuasion, and in a politics of reciprocity, the notion that you're not going to get everything you want for your particular viewpoint, given you're living in a society with a lot of other people who think uh you know differently. And so, how do you how do we all live together in the face of that difference? And and and perhaps also appreciate that I think in the US context, it's the source of a lot of our economic and social dynamism, that it's not simply a cross to bear, but actually something that uh, you know, if we interact with it appropriately, uh, can be a source of of dynamism in our society.

SPEAKER_02 14:08

And and on just following on from that, one thing I wanted to ask you, maybe it's taking things slightly theoretical, but to to what extent do you think when we think of pluralism as as a um a feature of civil society that that we're thinking descriptively or normatively in the sense of is it something that just kind of naturally arises because if you allow people to have free individual choice over where they give the money or where they give their time, the natural thing that happens is everybody chooses to do different things. And so at an aggregate level, it looks very pluralistic. Or is it a value above and beyond that that even if it didn't naturally occur, we should try to instill or to foster in some other way?

SPEAKER_03 14:49

Very good question. I I think the the it is something that needs to be kind of intentionally supported and maintained. And those virtues of forbearance and toleration uh and reciprocity, those are uh uh those are active uh uh behaviors on the part some certainly of individuals, but I think also of institutions. And you know, a criticism I've had of uh I would say over the past two or three years, beginning with a really prominent manifesto that we might drop into the show notes that a kind of a cross-ideological set of foundation leaders and foundations association um uh leaders shared in kind of defending the notion of philanthropic pluralism. And I think there was a lot that that was a much maligned piece to my mind, it really spoke to an important need. So I generally felt like it was a stroke in the right direction. But my one uh uh uh basic criticism of it is that it it talked about the way that philanthropists can support pluralism is to pursue their vision of the good life for society in an unfettered way. And my argument is that that um that that conception of pluralism, uh, people have been letting it rip. And I think that has produced what, in my view, is a tragedy of the commons, that you've got a bunch of rational actors pursuing, you know, in an unfettered way their own particular conceptions without recognizing the cost that they're imposing on the system as a whole. As you underwrite all this high octane advocacy and activism in a system uh that isn't in a position to absorb everything, sooner or later that system starts to falter, break down, and you end up spurring antagonisms that a healthy political regime finds a way to uh uh uh uh constrain rather than enable.

SPEAKER_02 16:43

Yeah, no, I mean I completely agree on that analysis. I thought there was, you know, sort of the the slight Ayn Rand kind of version of, you know, everybody should just be free to do whatever they want and follow their own self-interest, and we just hope for the best that it will produce these results is slightly smacks of magical thinking that doesn't tend to be to be borne out. Um I want to talk in a moment about some of your ideas about the the prescriptions we could follow that might sort of um recapture or or save a version of pluralism that actually answers some of those those um challenges. But maybe first I just wanted to unpick a little bit more. You know, why is it do you think that the what seems to have been for a long time a reasonable level of consensus on the value of philanthropic pluralism, in some cases enthusiastic, in other cases slightly more grudging, but it does seem to have been a consensus. It feels as though that consensus is breaking down a bit, and there are an increasing number of people saying, no, we don't actually think it is a value worth holding on to, and some things are good and some things are bad, and we should, you know, distinguish between those. What is it that you think's been driving that in recent years?

SPEAKER_03 17:47

Yeah, I think there's I would three factors, and let me start with the the the surface level and get down to the depths. I think at the surface level, one thing that has happened in the past uh uh couple of decades has been the development of new uh technologies uh that have uh both disintegrated and bifurcated and really messed with the public sphere that a healthy civil society needs to kind of support and maintain and flourish. And and I, you know, one of the things when I was at the Hewlett Foundation uh with the help of a of one of my teammates, Kelly Bourne, we it right after Brexit and the 2016 election here in the US, we really came to appreciate how these new, both the new technologies and the patterns of social networking uh that kind of arose around them were kind of hacking the you know our our ability as human societies to hang together. And um and I will say what what's really interesting is I've just seen this play out in my own life because I had going back to probably 29, 2010, when I was at BridgePan, I had gone on uh Twitter and and was, I would say, a pretty active participant in Twitter and Facebook. And and once I started to realize um just at an intellectual level, the way in which these companies were quite intentionally uh uh developing their algorithms to spur these these strong emotions of fear and anger and antipathy uh that kept you engaged on their site. You know, I basically over a two or three year period retreated completely for social media, and I was just struck without really, you know, uh an intellectual decision led to frankly much more psychological flourishing on my own part because I was suddenly relieved of a lot of things that it inadvertently uh just got caught up in. So I think the social media uh and the technological developments, and I think with artificial intelligence, those are those are going to exponentially increase. So that's one development. I think here in the US and perhaps also elsewhere, uh there was a I think a substantial shift in leadership culture uh in the 1990s um in particular, um, where you, you know, uh this this will sound paradoxical. I, you know, we think of democracy as a bottom-up system of government, and at one level it is, and that the people vote for who who who rules, but it's also a top-down system in which leaders set the the expectations and norms about what's acceptable and what's not. And I think uh there was a couple of really pernicious developments. I think uh uh in the Republican Party um uh uh here in the US, uh Newt Gingrich in particular, quite intentionally shifted to this politics of friends and enemies, and really that, you know, in ways that undermined the notion of a legitimate opposition. Uh and I think that has now, uh, you know, over the past 30 years, really colored our political system. I think there was also a shift around expectations, at least of public-facing character, that occurred with all of the peccadillos of Bill Clinton. And you had a lot of people coming to his defense, you know, saying, in effect, character in our leaders is much less important than we think it is. And and and I think that also in a slightly different way came to undermine the standards and expectations that we least hold our leaders to publicly. I actually think Bill Clinton was a remarkable politician and have written as much in terms of his leadership, but I think there was something that shifted there that, you know, um uh it makes it harder, for example, to argue today about uh people being fit or unfit for office in a moral sense. So that's the second dimension. The third dimension is really the underlying culture of US democracy, and there's a really powerful. Book, probably a book more so than in the past decade or two. Any book I've read has impacted me by James Davison Hunter, who is a sociologist at the University of Virginia. He kind of coined the phrase the culture wars in the 1990s, and he recently wrote a book called Democracy and Solidarity. And he writes as a cultural sociologist, and his basic premise is that for most of American history, we had at the deep cultural level a set of shared dispositions and assumptions that enabled us to live together as a very diverse and always quarrelsome and disputatious people. But that cultural set of cultural resources, because it had a number of contradictions, in particular around initially race and slavery, but also around who was being included in a number of other dimensions, that as we have, and this is his phrase, worked through these contradictions, we have steadily depleted that shared pool of, in effect, a cultural resource that enabled our democracy to flourish to the point where it has now basically been exhausted and fundamentally is in need of renewal. And so he would make the case that we are polarized, um, you know, not because we are disagreeing necessarily in new and different ways, but because the central tendencies that are kind of based in our culture, those foundations have been depleted. And so I think that's another very big part of the story.

SPEAKER_02 23:35

Yeah, I mean, really interesting to see those three different threads. Um I want to come back um a little bit later to some of the potential challenges to the idea of pluralism in the context of philanthropy, because I think they're quite interesting to consider as well. But before we do that, in I mentioned before that in your own work, you've kind of identified some potential ways in which we could develop what you call um a new form of responsible pluralism that that kind of seeks to address some of the challenges with the way that things currently work. Maybe you could say a bit about what some of the ideas and actions that underpin that idea are.

SPEAKER_03 24:10

Yeah, and I think the idea of responsible pluralism, as I put it forward, really I would say uh builds on but seeks to at the same time to uh you know kind of shift and salvage this notion of philanthropic pluralism, this balloon that was floated in this trial balloon that was floated in this manifesto, which I think drew a lot of sharp criticism kind of across the board, left, right, and center. And the the idea of responsible pluralism, and it's really something that uh is meant for philanthropists to practice. And it has two underlying premises. The first is that philanthropists have been uh extended tremendous um uh opportunities and authorities by the the democratic system to ply their trade, if you will. And as such, they simply have both the opportunity and a profound obligation to ensure that that system of government that enables a diverse people to hang together is is no less worse for the wear for their having used it to advance their own agenda. So that the idea is that philanthropy has a stake in the health of liberal democracy in the U.S. And the idea that you can simply let or rip uh uh uh is problematic. The second dimension of this is um, and this is a is a critique that I think has really been sharpened here in the U.S., yes, in recent years by people like Rob Reich at Stanford, and in particular, I think there's a very powerful book written by Emma Saunders Hastings uh at Ohio State University that calls into question the extent to which philanthropic activity, certainly as it's being practiced here in the U.S., can be reconciled with conceptions of democracy. And and and you know, I think certainly she would argue that uh it really can't be. I uh, from uh the standpoint of pluralism feel that it can be provided it follows this responsible notion. So, in effect, what I'm trying to do is to salvage the idea of a of a democratically justifiable form of philanthropy. So that's the the backdrop. Now, in terms of how to practice it, I think a key thing in my argument is not that people need to, uh philanthropists need to start funding some things and not others. So it's not so much what philanthropists are funding. In fact, it is it's neutral with respect to that. It's more about how they're going about it. And this notion of the the method of philanthropy is really uh uh critical to this notion of responsibility. So I think the first thing is is the most important, the easiest, but in some ways the hardest one, which is just admitting that there is a problem that our society is fraying at the seams, and that philanthropy has, you know, especially insofar as they've helped create this mess, has an obligation to help us uh as a society deal with it. And then beyond that, there's four particular steps of how philanthropists are going about their work. The next step would be um really building in uh uh viewpoint diversity within the team, whether it's at a foundation, the program staff, or uh with an individual or family donor, the advisors, um, so that you've got something not in complete proportion, but that is, you know, that incorporates the range of viewpoints at large in the republic. And I think what you've seen in recent years is tremendous and needed progress on especially dimensions of racial and democracy and ethnic diversity uh within the program staffs of foundations and philanthropic advisors, uh, which has been, I think, a clear uh uh important uh constructive step. But that has coincided with the the almost like the epistemic closure, and you have these kind of monocultures of thought occurring in these institutions. And it's the that's kind of on the center and progressive side of things. There's also monocultures of thought on the right. So I think wherever you're looking for uh at philanthropy, um, you have you don't have a lot of diversity of political, ideological, cultural opinion. And I think that in a diverse society sets them up for failure. So at Hewlett, for example, you know, this wasn't the criteria for hiring, but we in the program I led, uh, we had you know pretty different viewpoints. So we had, you know, people who are coming from different parts of the political spectrum, and that I think proved to be a real strength and enabled us to engage with a broader um coalition, which brings me to this other, the next step, which is really rather than uh funding one particular point of view uh uh uh for advocates or activists, the idea in the United States to bring about policy and systems changes, you need not 50% plus one in a coalition, but you need a broad and enduring coalition of 60, 70%, you know, kind of the broad swaths of the country believing in something. And you are the especially the way things are now in our polarized society, you're not gonna find a coalition of that breadth and depth and simply one side of the political spectrum. So you need to, as funders, you know, if you care about a particular issue, be broadening the support for that issue. And in broadening the support, almost always that entails a certain moderation. That doesn't mean that you have to fund moderates or the people you disagree with, but if you're only finding people who are 100% lockstep with your point of view, you're probably resigning that point of view to permanent minority status. Um, I think beyond expanding the coalitions, I think it's really critical from a standpoint of pluralism for um uh philanthropic funders to extend the initiative alongside the funding to grant uh not just money, but the freedom of these groups to kind of pursue their strategies as their see fit, as they see fit. And this is really about uh the importance of unrestricted funding, in particular general operating support, which I think you know serves pluralism by by taking one particular point of view that the foundation might hold and effectively distributing that to the many points of view that their grantees may hold. And even the nuanced differences there, I think, can be really important. Whereas, but if you if foundations are tightly restricting funding, I think you just collapse pluralism and again go about perpetuating monocultures. And then a final step that I argue all foundations who are working on policy and systems change can take is really to think in terms of decades versus years. And there's a couple of things to this. One is if you're building these broader and diverse coalitions, um, that takes time. And uh that's not the sort of thing that can be done in one or two years. I think the other advantage of that is it it lifts philanthropic uh perspectives up and bow, over and above the the confines of a two-year electoral cycle of the sort that we have here in the US. And I think that is a very healthy shift simply because in the near term, in the next one or two years, it you know, it's really easy for philanthropists to overestimate how much change they can make the closer they are to the political fray. But really, I think where philanthropy is comparatively advantaged as a means of fostering and cultivating social change, it's over a 10, 20, 30, 40 year time horizon. And so I think those longer-term perspectives are really critical. Now, beyond those steps, I think it is helpful for a subset of funders like the program I led at Hewlett to say, and we're gonna over and above those various uh hows of working differently, ways of working differently, we are going to quite intentionally try and strengthen democracy and pluralism. And that's okay. But I think, you know, if if if only a subset are doing that and everyone else is letting it rip on those first few dimensions, it's not gonna make a difference. So it really I think philanthropy as a whole needs to shift, whatever the particular domains people are funding in.

SPEAKER_02 32:23

And I think, yeah, I think there that distinction between the the subset of funders for whom promotion of democracy and democracy building initiatives are part of their core mission, and you know, the wider long tail of foundations that don't see that as part of their mission is really interesting. And it reminds me of some of the debates going on about what philanthropy should be doing with respect to climate at the moment. Because again, you know, there is a subset of funders for whom that is front and centre part of what they do, but that always will just be a subset. I guess the the much bigger prize is to influence the thinking and the way that the operations of that much longer tale so that all foundations are thinking, you know, how do we apply climate as a lens to all of the other things that we're doing? And I guess you're saying the same thing about uh these ideas of pluralism democracy. It's not that you need to stop funding, you know, in the children's services area or healthcare, it's that you need to think the way in which we do this needs to reflect these wider values of pluralism and and a kind of respect for the health of democracy. Do you think that's a a slightly challenging ask to get across to people? I always find it's sort of just to make that kind of case for people to think outside of what they see as their lane in terms of their cause area can be quite tricky.

SPEAKER_03 33:41

Yes, I I I think it is, and there's this is an aside, uh, but uh it's an anecdote that that brings out the point. Uh Adlai Stevenson, who is this kind of uh a very uh uh you know, highly educated, very sophisticated uh uh presidential senator and then presidential candidate, he ran twice for the presidency and lost, but at one point, but he always excited enthusiasm among a passionate and devoted set of intellectual supporters. And at one point, at the end of a rally, one of them said, you know, Senator Stevenson, you have the vote of every thinking American. And he kind of responded drolly, well, thank you, but I actually need a majority. And so the idea that I think one of the focus on the purity of the cause overlooks the fact that, you know, for whether it's reproductive rights and freedoms or uh fundamental shifts in climate change to occur, you need broad and enduring majorities of people to support those efforts. And that is likely going to require kind of shifts in the point of view and perspective of the coalition behind it that can encompass that that breadth of opinion. And so on the climate example, you know, here the I think there's a lot of challenges we have now in the US where you know there probably is a coalition uh that would uh transform our energy sector um uh in a in a holistic way that would point us towards reductions in climate change. But that would include, for example, a lot of investment in next generation nuclear. It would include, for example, fundamental reforms and infrastructure permitting to enable all sorts of shifts in our grid and in the ways of kind of linking renewables up to them to occur. It probably would occur in some places the replacement of coal plants with natural gas plants. You know, but on each of those sorts of issues, uh oftentimes you have environmentalists uh you know staking out a much more unstinting, uncompromising position that presents, prevents the kind of coalition that could mitigate climate change from occurring. So that's the I think the the practice we need to kind of rediscover uh as a democracy here in the US.

SPEAKER_02 36:06

And and is there something as well, I was really keen to ask your thoughts on the sort of the Tocquevillian idea that that voluntary activity or the nonprofit sphere can can essentially be a sort of nursery of democracy because regardless of what cause area you're pursuing, the very act of engaging and volunteering and participating makes people part of a democracy and teachers and the ideals of sort of civic participation. Do you do you hold sway with that idea? Because I know people sort of have views about you know the extent to which it holds. And I guess in practical terms, does that skew uh things towards particular types of organizations? Does it, for instance, place more emphasis on kind of grassroots organizations that can call on a large membership and have participation as part of their model rather than maybe more formalized, professionalized?

SPEAKER_03 36:57

Very good question. So I am uh fundamentally a Tocquevillian, and and for readers of Tocqueville will know that the phrase the art association, which is the title of my blog, is really taken from his reflections on what he called civil associations. And so I I think uh absolutely I think the the the the logic he laid out for uh uh and it was one that he shared with a number of other advocates of pluralism, including uh in your country his kind of friend and correspondent John Stuart Mill. Um there's a couple of things that uh the idea that people develop capacities as citizens and the ability to work together with people who see things differently in their kind of associational lives. I think there's a couple of parts of Tocqueville's thesis that have been lost and one kind of almost like inversion of his logic. So he was really talking about this at a human scale in particular places. He talked a lot about, you know, the association of the township and the further decision making and government got away from the communities in which people live, the harder it was for these dynamics to take place. I think he was also talking about a wide variety of, almost like I might call them everyday associations, which aren't necessarily advocates that have all the theories of change worked out for their particular strategies. Um, Hari Hahn, who's a social scientist at Johns Hopkins University, talks about what she calls collective settings, this notion of whether it's in a religious group or you know, kind of clubs or associations, where you know they give people the opportunity to develop plans together, pursue them, try them, experiment. Does this work? Does that work? That that that's really where this capacity building on the part of citizens occur. And as you, as you likely know, um uh, and as Robert Putnam and Teta Scotchbull and others have pointed out, that kind of local, those colloquial collective settings have really dissipated. I'd commend for your US listeners, I don't know if it's available on Netflix elsewhere, there's a terrific film made by a brother and sister team, Pete and Rebecca Davis called Join or Die, which takes the the ideas and political science of Robert Putnam and um you know kind of brings them to life in a very powerful way that highlights the challenge, but also the opportunity of kind of renewing our associational lives, which I think would, to your question, get more Americans back with the wherewithal and inclination to you know coexist peaceably with in a in a diverse society. Uh I want to mention one of the things you said, which is the kind of professionalization of our associational lives. And this was a pattern that uh Tita Scotchpole in a terrific book called Um Diminished Democracy highlights. And she notes that starting roughly about the same period where Putnam tracks the growing isolation and civic disengagement, which is really a demand side analysis that Americans were engaging in these associations less and less, Scotchpole brings more of a supply side perspective and looking at how you know organizations and the opportunities that they were offering to people as associations to engage really shifted. And so it used to be that you had, you know, you know, she talks about federated organizations. So you'd have like, I was growing up, I was in the 4-H club. And so we had a local chapter and a state organization and uh and uh a national chapter. My father was in the farm bureau, so there was again a local and state and federal. And so, and and whether it's the Grange, the Grand Army of the Republic, labor unions like the AFL, CIO, social clubs like the Oddfellows and the Lions Clubs, um uh the Moose Lodge, you you had in bowling leagues, you had, you know, uh uh these associations that provided opportunities for people to lead and kind of provided some training, and you had multiple levels at which they could engage and progress through the organization. Uh uh and you also fundamentally, this is a key part, had people coming together across class boundaries. So there was a cross-class dimension to that. For a variety of reasons, uh, those organizations started to dissipate uh starting in the in the 50s and 60s, and uh they were increasingly kind of supplanted or displaced in our associational lives by by kind of professional advocacy groups that relied on professional staff here in Washington that were lobbying and advocating to a newly expanded federal government in the 60s and 70s. And the membership of these organizations was, I'm using my teenage daughter's air quotes here, was really uh much more passive. There was, it was, these were basically mailing lists, and the managers here in Washington would solicit funds. So a number of the so-called citizens' groups, like for example, Common Cause, many of the environmental groups, the moral majority, that they had a broad but extremely thin and very passive membership that wasn't really developing these capacities in citizens. That's a long, you you you clearly got me riled up there. That's a long time.

SPEAKER_02 42:33

It's a really interesting one. And actually, picking up on that final point, I hadn't really thought about this before, but another thing that I'm I'm interested in and love to ask you about is do you think that that that shift is in part um an explanation for why there's a sudden seeming appetite for more participation from certainly from a younger generation in the form of kind of new digitally enabled social movements? Because there's there's clearly a lot of hand-wringing in the traditional non-profit sector about why they're they're losing out on support or or you know activism to you know Me Too and Black Lives Matter and and climate justice movements. Is that in part a reflection of this desire to want to participate?

SPEAKER_03 43:12

Yes, I think there is a hunger to connect in ways that feel uh edifying and encouraging. And going back to Tocqueville, he you know, I think I think sometimes there is a uh uh, especially among policy advocates, systems change, there is a almost like a um uh paternalistic, you know, you need to do this because it's good for you. It's like this notion of this is what you're obliged to do to be a good citizen. And you know, it's hard for to get people to you know really invest in something that they feel like they should do it versus what they want to do versus wanting to do it. And Tocqueville, uh, to go back to him, talk with this idea of self interest rightly understood. And so the associational lives. That he noticed as flourishing in these small communities did involve people coming together and solving problems and learning, you know, as a byproduct of that, how to be better democratic citizens. But they also came together because they either needed to solve a problem in their particular community, they needed a library, they needed a school, they needed a hospital, andor they were having fun. They, it was like, you know, there wasn't a lot to do, and you know, kind of coming together with your with your neighbors to uh, you know, there was kind of almost a social dimension of this. So I think one of the things that's been lost with the professionalization of our associational lives and the fact that, you know, the people who are doing more and more of the work day to day are paid staff and professionals, is this notion that this can, you know, that our associational lives can be an expression of our enlightened self-interest or our desire for social engagement with our neighbors. And I think in a lot of the more vibrant uh communities, including many who are online, it they're providing that. They're meeting that that hunger and thirst for kind of association that somehow feels edifying and is meeting people's needs for a connection.

SPEAKER_02 45:14

So yeah, absolutely. Um I'm aware that that we're in danger of, well, we're not running out of time yet, but I've got other things I want to ask you. In particular, I want to ask you a bit about kind of recent developments um on the political side in the US that might affect nonprofits. But just before I come on to that, um, one thing I really wanted to ask was just briefly about some of the the challenges that occasionally presented to the to the idea of of pluralism and as I as an ideal. Uh one thing I wanted to ask was: do you think there are limits that we should place on the idea of pluralism, um, above and beyond those that are that are set by the law or by what is available in terms of tax exempt status? Or are those the only limits? Anything that is allowable within those frameworks is fine and a reflection of pluralism, or can we draw the boundaries somewhere differently? And if so, on what basis?

SPEAKER_03 46:04

Yeah, no, very good question. And I think this this longer white paper that we've alluded to earlier, taking democracy for granted, argues that the the the taking full advantage of the freedoms that the law allows is is really insufficient. That actually to be responsible stewards of the of the of the degrees of freedom that society has granted them, that philanthropists, whether they're institutions or individuals, really need to uh figure out how they can operate in ways that that strengthen the commons, if you will. And going back to this notion of the tragedy of the commons, I think the it's clear that the just the simple bare minimum legal framework has not prevented uh a tragedy of the commons with the the the shared resource that we've dissipated is our capacity to uh solve problems together in the way that we need to uh as a country. And so absolutely, I think there's a need for for more.

SPEAKER_02 47:01

And the other thing I wanted to ask as well is sometimes there is a challenge that's framed in terms of seeing pluralism as an ideal that that's in danger of being slightly naive, in that the theory is it would be wonderful, you know, let a thousand flowers bloom, and there'll be overall a kind of balance of things on all sides of the political spectrum and all sides of issues. But in reality, and perhaps this is in part due to the presence of philanthropy there skewing things, actually, it tends to be that resources flow more to one side of the political spectrum or the other. Um, I mean, the complicating factor is each side of the political spectrum seems to suggest that the money is going to the other side. Um, I wondered what your sense was of that argument.

SPEAKER_03 47:44

Yeah, no, I think it's a very valid one. And I think it is, you know, the as the as the great American political scientist E. E. Schatznyder, the problem with the pluralist heaven is that the choir sings with an upper class accent. Um so I think that is, again, part of the stewardship and the importance of broadening coalitions, of endeavoring to have these broad enduring coalitions tries to speak to the need to broaden the range of interests that pluralism is engaging in perspectives that pluralism is engaging and supporting. And I think there, and I think right now there is a really problematic skewing. Um, I actually think with this idea of a horseshoe theory, that the skew is not so much to one side or the other of the political spectrum, but to the highly politically engaged and ideologically uh uh zealous uh uh interest on the right and the left, which tend to be have deeper pockets uh to be better educated. And the the view that is not really being articulated is the view of uh, especially working class Americans, people who tend to have more moderate and disparate and kind of pragmatic views. They're a little bit all over the map, and so it's not like they don't have strong views on any particular issue, but in aggregate, they they net out um to something that falls in between these two ideological camps. I'm I chair the board of a US nonprofit called More in Common, and we have this idea of what we call the exhausted majority, which is roughly about two-thirds of the American public uh fall in between the ideological right and the ideological left. And but the the adjective there exhausted indicates these are people who are focused on things other than politics, and partly because they don't see how politics they can impact it. They also are really busy trying to make ends meet. And so this, you know, the preoccupations with uh understandable with kind of their economic situation, their family situation just leads a lot of people to focus much more on things other than politics. At one level, there's something healthy about that, but I think it has led to an underrepresentation of that that that kind of broad swath of the population.

SPEAKER_02 50:02

Yeah, absolutely. And and I just wanted to come on to to ask your thoughts on some of what we've been seeing very recently. So, particularly, I mean, as we record this, um uh a bill that's been uh proposed, HR uh 9495, um, which I know follows on from some earlier proposed legislation, is currently making its way. Um it's been through the House of Representatives. I think it's just gone to the Senate. But for anyone listening who doesn't know, essentially it kind of proposes that there would be new powers or um uh kind of that those powers would be situated differently uh in terms of the ability to decide that certain organisations can be designated as terrorist supporting organizations and stripped of their nonprofit status. Um, I mean, this has sparked, I think, sort of real fears that there will be a wider attempt with the the um incoming Trump administration to kind of crack down on civil society freedoms or to target particular groups and organizations. I mean, first of all, what is your sense of how concerned people should be about that or or whether actually there's a danger of kind of getting slightly uh carried away with some of these fears?

SPEAKER_03 51:09

Yeah. So I think the emergency powers that we re reside in the American executive branch are a real problem and hard to reconcile with basic notions of a democratic republic. Um when I was at Hewlett, we supported a number of groups that were working to try and clean up this kind of accumulated underbrush of emergency powers, where for your for your international audiences, listeners, basically over time, uh Congress has granted the president you know tremendous emergency powers uh to kind of do what needs to be done in a particular instance. And it often then doesn't go back and and take back those powers uh you know once the emergency has subsided. Um unfortunately, and I think this is, you know, there was an opportunity in the in the Biden administration early on, we thought, to make some progress. There was a bipartisan coalition that had flagged this. Uh, you know, for whatever reason, uh this was not a priority once uh uh Donald Trump was no longer in the White House um for the coalition. And um now that he's coming back into it, suddenly people are concerned again. I would say a couple of things about this particular bill, which which passed the House, uh uh is is not likely to pass the Senate. And that would the what it would effectively do would be to strip uh uh uh enable the Secretary of the Treasury to strip the uh tax exempt status, which would simply mean that people, donations coming into a nonprofit that was seen to be uh designated by the secretary as supporting terrorism would would no longer be eligible for tax exempt contributions. Um, a couple of things I'll say. One is uh this is a power that actually, you know, I think on a more or less subjective reading now, is already available to the executive branch under uh AIPA, and I'm just using an acronym there, I think, which is the International Economic Emergency Powers Act. Don't quote me on that, but it's it basically is a broad grant of authority, uh, and a lot of uh the uh the tariff setting that that presidents have done uh has come under this that enables this sort of thing. So I think this new bill is more, it's not something that's fundamentally new. Um I think it would be uh really unfortunate and problematic if um uh you know the the presidential administration start designating and stripping away this tax exemption. Um it's it's you know, whether that will happen, you know, whether it passes, whether that'll happen, you know, over and above what could happen now, I think remains to be seen. The one thing I'll say is, you know, just as great journalistic outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post have seen their business fortunes surge under Donald Trump, it's not obvious to me that a nonprofit so designated would suddenly find itself bereft of resources because you have a lot of people, uh a lot of especially high net worth individuals, not foundations, but high net worth individuals who have who have not put their money into these tax exempt structures precisely to maintain the freedom to support the groups they run. So again, I think it would be really unfortunate uh to suddenly have this kind of arbitrary uh uh and and kind of isolated attacks on civil society. Um whether that will occur and the exact effects of it, I think are a little bit of an open question.

SPEAKER_02 54:44

Yeah, and it I mean, based on experience here in the UK and other places, there's there's always I mean, there's just the two sides to this. Sometimes there's the practical implications, which are actually less than they're sometimes painted, but then there's the narrative and the messaging, and and that's often the bit that that ends up being more problematic if it sets a tone where everybody feels as though there's you know uh it's in opposition to civil society. On on which note, I know one of the things you wrote an op-ed um recently for the Chronicle of Philanthropy that I thought was really interesting, where in a broader sense you were kind of uh exploring the idea amongst you know the non-profit um world in the US that they should, you know, lots of organizations immediately in the aftermath of uh Trump's election sort of positioning themselves as a resistance to Trump. And you were actually warning against this and saying that's not necessarily a good thing, either in pragmatic terms, because it just you know doesn't seem to have worked last time round, but also in terms of what we've been talking about um in terms of pluralism, it you know, it could fundamentally undermine that. Maybe you could say a bit more about that.

SPEAKER_03 55:48

Sure, sure. I I think what so the um you know, I was kind of uh present and in the midst of the response of philanthropy and civil society to the first Trump administration, and uh where the this idea of joining and forming the resistance was really you know preeminent on the part of a number of institutions, not the program I led at Hewlett, although many of our grantees would, I think if you ask them, have described themselves in that mode. And, you know, I think there are, you know, one is, you know, there's probably been several billion dollars spent on the you know, looking across a range of different issue areas spent on the resistance to to Donald Trump and the MAGA Republican Party um uh uh by philanthropy. And, you know, uh this party is now resurgent and stronger than ever. So on the face of it, it doesn't seem to be working. I actually think there are just some fundamental uh uh uh challenges with it. And and to be really clear, the reason I think the resistance strategy is not the one that should be followed is not because I endorse the um uh the agenda of the incoming administration uh or and the way in which it's going to operate, but rather because I think there are better ways to support pluralism and democracy in the U.S. So I think the first problem with the resistance strategy is that it gives, if the story of populism in the US and elsewhere is that you have these uh insulated, unaccountable elites, often in in the US, we call them blue coastal enclaves that are checking the will of the people. The idea that philanthropy, uh, which is a very wealthy and unaccountable elite, uh large-scale philanthropist, should lead the charge here, kind of gives almost perfect foils to the populace. So that's I think the uh the first thing. The second thing is I think that resistance mentality uh almost like reifies the politics of friends and enemies that we were talking about earlier, um, and just overlooks the fact that you know people are in different places on different issues, and you need to form coalitions with uh a broad swath of people. You can't permanently write off, certainly 50% uh of the electorate. I think it also brings philanthropy uh into the near-term political freight, where again, I don't think it is advantaged as a mechanism for change and distracts it from the longer-run work in civic culture and civic infrastructure where it can make a really uh profound difference. And I it also it it it kind of absolves philanthropy from dealing with some of the illiberalism that it has given rise to itself, especially on the progressive left, but certainly on the progressive right. Um and and also the the going back to what I was talking about earlier, the tragedy of the comments, the fact that that if all we're doing is going full bore in articulating our viewpoints, the resistance mentality doesn't, you know, uh suggest that people need to question the efficacy of what they're doing and whether it's climate or racial justice or these other areas. It rather suggests they should simply double down and do it harder. And I and again, I don't I don't think that is gonna get our democracy to a place where we are in a position to live more peaceably with each other.

SPEAKER_02 59:17

Yeah, which I would absolutely be the concern. But I mean, I I I would guess having said that, it's gonna be a challenging few years for US civil society. So certainly, you know, we'll keep a watch on that. But just remain to say thanks ever so much, Daniel, for coming on the podcast. A really fascinating conversation. There was a huge amount more, I'm sure we could have talked about, but really, really good to get your thoughts on some of what's going on now and some of those kind of bigger picture, longer-term questions about pluralism. Um, I'll put links in the show notes to places where people can find you and some of the work that we've referenced uh in the conversation. Um, and you know, hopefully at some point further down the line, I might be able to twist your arm and get you to come back on and we can pick up on some of the things we didn't get a chance to talk about.

SPEAKER_03 59:57

I look forward to that very much. I really kind of appreciate, and especially as someone based here in the US, the kind of global lens you bring to this and looking at at the challenges and opportunities of philanthropy in other societies, I think is really a great resource for those of us working on these same issues here in the US. So thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:24

Okay, great. Well, my thanks again to Daniel for finding some time to come on the podcast. It was really great uh to have a chance to talk to him, it was a really fascinating conversation, and I hope you all enjoyed it. As ever, I will put links in the show notes to places where you can find Daniel's work and uh where you can find some of the things that we referenced in the course of the conversation. Uh if you're interested more broadly in issues around philanthropy and democracy and all kinds of other things, obviously uh I would encourage you to check out my website at whyphilanthropymatters.com where there are lots of uh relevant uh bits of writing and back episodes of this podcast that you can look through to your heart's content. If you want updates on things that I'm doing or just sort of more general thoughts on what's going on in the philanthropy world, do follow me on social media. I'm active on LinkedIn and Blue Sky these days. Um if you've got ideas for people that I could talk to on the podcast or topics that I could cover, uh do drop me an email. You can find the contact details uh at the website. And you know, as I say, I genuinely do follow through on many of those and they've led to some great episodes, so please do keep them coming. Um other than that, it just remains to say like, subscribe, do tell all your friends. Um leave us a nice review wherever you get your podcasts if you've got the time and inclination to do that, because it definitely helps. Uh, and I will see you next time. Bye.