How modern nonprofit politics undermine the very donor class that makes philanthropy possible
Modern fundraising depends on a donor class whose values many fundraisers openly reject. That contradiction sits at the center of American philanthropy—and it’s long overdue for examination. It isn’t a trick question. It’s the central tension of the profession, and nobody wants to talk about it. This essay is not an argument for political alignment, but an examination of professional reality.The Numbers Don’t Lie
In 2006, Arthur C. Brooks published Who Really Cares, a data-driven study that shattered comfortable assumptions about generosity in America. Its conclusions were inconvenient then—and remain so now:- Conservatives give approximately 30% more to charity than liberals, even after controlling for income
- Religious households give nearly four times more than secular households
- Self-employed individuals out-give employees at comparable income levels
- People who favor personal responsibility over government redistribution give more—both in total dollars and as a percentage of income
Follow the Advertising
If you want to understand who has money and spends it, watch the commercials. Media consumption patterns don’t indicate virtue or intelligence—only audience composition. Turn on Fox News during primetime: private jet charters, metal building construction, Viking ocean cruises, wealth management firms. These are B2B and high-net-worth advertisements targeting decision-makers with capital—business owners, entrepreneurs, retirees sitting on seven figures. Turn on CNN: consumer packaged goods, pharmaceuticals, brand campaigns from Fortune 500 companies trying to seem respectable. It’s an employee audience. People who consume, not people who deploy capital. The advertising industry isn’t ideological. It follows the money. And the money is watching Fox News. This isn’t a political argument. It’s a market signal.The Donors You Depend On
Let’s build a profile of your best planned giving prospect:
- Self-employed or owns a business
- 65+ years old (peak wealth accumulation)
- Religiously observant
- Believes in personal responsibility
- Skeptical of government solutions
- Wants control over where their assets go
Now be honest: does this sound like someone who shares the dominant politics of the nonprofit sector?
Your major gift officers spend their days cultivating relationships with people who built businesses, accumulated assets, minimized taxes legally, and want to create a legacy on their own terms. These are not people who believe billionaires are immoral. These are not people who think the government should take more. These are people who believe they earned it and they get to decide what happens to it.
That instinct—my wealth, my choice—is the foundation of planned giving. And it’s a fundamentally conservative instinct, even when the donor occasionally votes Democrat. Political inconsistency doesn’t negate behavioral reality—and philanthropy is about behavior, not ideology. They distrust ideology.
My wealth, my choice, is the foundation of planned giving.
The Policies You Support Would End Your Career
This is where it gets uncomfortable.
The progressive policy wish list includes:
- Dramatically increased estate taxes (Some proposed structures have approached or exceeded 70%)
- Elimination of stepped-up basis
- Wealth taxes on unrealized gains
- Reduced or eliminated charitable deductions for high earners
- Increased capital gains taxes
Every single one of these policies would shrink the donor pool you depend on and reduce the incentives for planned giving.
If the estate tax consumed 70% of assets at death, there would be nothing left to bequeath to your university. If the charitable deduction disappeared for high earners, your hospital would lose its biggest donors. If wealth taxes forced the liquidation of family businesses, your community foundation would stop receiving stock gifts.
You are professionally dependent on a tax and economic system that much of the sector’s political posture would significantly weaken.
The Redefinition Game
Here’s where the cognitive dissonance gets managed: the left has quietly redefined what “generosity” means.
Under this new definition:
- Voting for higher taxes on others = giving
- Attending a benefit concert where proceeds go somewhere = philanthropy
- Buying a product with a cause-marketing ribbon = charitable
- Supporting government redistribution = generosity
Notice what’s missing? Personal sacrifice. Direct, voluntary transfer of your own resources to a cause you chose.
Brooks found this in the data: people who support government redistribution give less of their own money. They’ve outsourced generosity to the state. The box is checked. The conscience is clear.
But the state doesn’t endow scholarships with your name on them. The state doesn’t fund the new wing of your alma mater. The state doesn’t make planned gifts.
Donors do. And your donors are not like you.
What’s Missing? Skin in the Game.
The Silence at the Conference
Walk into any fundraising association conference. Look around. The room skews urban, credentialed, and progressive. It’s a culture that will spend the morning learning how to cultivate major donors and the afternoon condemning the very wealth that makes the work possible.
Nobody mentions the contradiction. It would be impolite.
Instead, there’s a quiet compartmentalization. Work is work. Politics is politics. The wealthy donor is treated as a resource to be extracted, not a person whose values might have something to teach.
But here’s the thing: your donors aren’t stupid. They know when they’re being tolerated rather than respected. They can sense when their success is seen as a problem to be solved rather than a story to be honored.
And they have options. They can give to organizations that actually share their values. They can create private foundations and control every dollar. They can skip your nonprofit entirely and leave it to their church, their alma mater, or their kids.
No wonder donor exodus has been on the rise. You need them more than they need you.
None of this requires agreement with donors’ politics—only acknowledgment of the system that makes voluntary philanthropy possible.
The Uncomfortable Truth
Philanthropy in America is largely funded by people who built businesses, accumulated assets through risk and discipline, and believe they have the right to decide where their wealth goes. These are not abstractions or caricatures. They are the donors who fund endowments, underwrite scholarships, and make planned giving possible in the first place. Their generosity hasn’t vanished — confidence has.
The nonprofit sector depends on them—financially, structurally, and existentially—while increasingly adopting a political posture that treats their success as a moral problem to be corrected rather than a contribution to be stewarded.
Many of America’s great colleges, universities, and charitable institutions were founded and funded by industrialists, entrepreneurs, and business owners who believed in private initiative, personal responsibility, and long-term stewardship. Today, many of those same donors believe the institutions they helped build have drifted away from those values. Whether that perception is fair or not is almost beside the point. In philanthropy, perception shapes behavior—and behavior determines funding.
Which leaves one unavoidable question.
Why are you asking wealthy people for money while supporting policies designed to take it from them?
That question isn’t ideological.
It’s professional.
And it deserves an honest answer.
*Brooks’s findings have been validated repeatedly. A 2021 meta-analysis in Social Science Research synthesized 421 effect sizes from 31 empirical studies and confirmed that political conservatives are significantly more charitable than liberals at an overall level (Yang & Liu, 2021).
IRS county-level data analyzed by the Chronicle of Philanthropy found that the states ranking highest in charitable giving all voted Republican in the 2012 presidential election. Among high earners ($200K+), the correlation between conservative voting patterns and charitable deductions becomes even more pronounced (Institute for Family Studies, 2017). Most striking: 31 percent of Republican households give $1,000 or more annually to charity, versus 17 percent of Democrats (Philanthropy Roundtable, 2023). The gap isn’t explained by income—liberal families actually earn approximately 6 percent more than conservative families on average.
Why the disparity? Researchers at the University of Memphis and University of Pennsylvania found that conservatives don’t give more because they oppose government redistribution—they give more because they attend church more frequently. But for many on the left, the substitution runs the other direction: support for higher taxes is their charity. They’ve donated other people’s money and consider the obligation fulfilled. The check to the IRS is the tithe. The vote is the volunteer shift. Compassion, outsourced.
