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Reimagining Philanthropy explores transformative and decolonized approaches to philanthropy that can shift our sector from traditional top-down models toward more equitable, community-centered practices. In community, we explore how philanthropic organizations can share power authentically, center affected communities in decision-making, and build truly reciprocal relationships.

The world of philanthropy must take political education seriously if it wants to halt the spiral of ineffective funding strategies that misdiagnose the problem and instead address the root causes of the social challenges of our time.

“Many of our [funders] are removed from the lived experience of those who are suffering the greatest from these federal cuts that have happened.” This statement comes directly from a recent survey of funders and nonprofit leaders, where 93 percent of nonprofit leaders expressed dissatisfaction with foundations’ responses to the current context. The data reveal a major dissonance, as over 90 percent of foundation leaders believe their institution’s response has been effective in understanding grantee challenges.

The world of philanthropy must take political education seriously if it wants to halt the spiral of ineffective funding strategies that misdiagnose the problem.

“Traditional philanthropy has historically been removed from the issues everyday people face and thus from the solutions and connections needed to solve those problems,” wrote NPQ contributor Janet Hernández. “As our nation and the world deepen into democratic backsliding, philanthropic leaders must listen and establish real and honest relationships that build trust and create a genuine understanding of the issues facing our communities so that together, philanthropy and community can meet the current moment with courage and decisiveness.”

While philanthropy may not be able to walk in the shoes of those most impacted, political education provides a foundation for understanding the mechanisms that create the deep power imbalances and social harms affecting the communities it serves.

The Case for Political Education

Political education is the ongoing study of the role of power and its relationship to collective struggles—such as civil rights organizing, labor fights, and anticolonial movements—to inform a critical analysis of the political landscape. It illuminates the root of an issue as well as its potential solutions—examining how power works in society and the ways to engage, influence, or disrupt it. And, for those in the business of advancing social change through grantmaking, it is an essential component for resourcing effective and impactful work.

This work is urgent. The political moment we have found ourselves in is illuminating how so many philanthropic funding strategies and their accompanying communications messaging have missed the mark. Nonprofit leaders consistently rate funders’ understanding—and responsiveness to—grantee challenges 30 to 40 percent lower than funders’ self-assessments. This signals a need for philanthropy to fundamentally change the way it approaches the root causes of the issues it seeks to address. Meaningful change cannot be achieved without being led by—and supportive of—movements and communities in visioning and building what comes next.

There is much we can learn from the world of organizing. As labor activist, lawyer, and former director of the Freedom Schools, Staughton Lynd, observed, “In the absence of a theory to explain what is going on economically, the best-intentioned, most grassroots and democratic sort of movement is likely to flounder.”

The best organizers know that focused and powerful strategy cannot happen without engaging in political education—namely, without engaging in a practice of developing a shared political and socioeconomic analysis, language, and vision around the dynamics of power related to a particular social challenge and possible solutions.

Political education is the foundation for nurturing the multiracial democracy our sector is striving for. Groups cannot articulate their positions clearly or mobilize their bases around them without some level of education work. Further, funders cannot develop good strategies in alignment with the communities they are serving if they do not understand the forces and dynamics they are dealing with.

When the Lack of Political Education Becomes Moral Incoherence

We are likely all familiar with the inherent tension of philanthropy emerging from capitalism to address many of the societal ills created and exacerbated by capitalism. This tension, along with politically agnostic attempts to develop strategic solutions, weakens philanthropy’s effectiveness to meaningfully improve social challenges. Political agnosticism is the primary issue here, particularly in the world of liberal and progressive philanthropy. When funding strategies are not informed by a rigorous political analysis of power, capitalism, and race, they are undermined.

When funders stay vague about power, race, capitalism, and state violence, they leave movements to absorb all the political risk while foundations linger in a comfortable “neutral” zone.

We saw this with the retreat of funding to racial justice organizations after the height of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020. Many funders recoiled in response to the increasing number of conservative groups filing lawsuits or threatening to do so. This includes the current administration targeting organizations that named DEI as a value or stated racial equity as a goal.

We saw this, too, in the conflict between Israel and Palestine beginning on October 7, 2023. Many nonprofits who signed on to ceasefire letters against the genocide in Gaza, or stood in solidarity with Palestinian liberation, reported funders rescinding support. Surprisingly, this retrenchment was predominantly from funders who identify as liberal or progressive, demonstrating a profound lack of political education on the relationship between Palestine, Zionism, and US democracy. Funders found themselves wholly unequipped to explain how they on one hand could champion democracy, antiracism, and the fight against authoritarianism, and on the other support an apartheid ethnostate that has been ethnically cleansing Palestine for decades. One can cite many reasons for this political and moral incoherence, but a significant one is a lack of political education.

In the present moment, we see funding pouring in to support nonviolent protests against ICE. This is a worthy cause, but we must ask: What could be different if institutional philanthropy invested in the movement against the expansion of private prisons and immigration detention?

Even in a liberal democracy, many funders feel deeply uncomfortable with supporting the idea of abolitionism, although for many racial justice groups it remains a central goal. Further, abolitionism is a key concept to understand the context of ICE raids, since it theorizes the relationship between the carceral state, law enforcement, US militarism, and immigration detention.

The Myth of Neutrality

Philanthropy has many reasons for its trepidation in adopting anything that could remotely be considered “political,” some of which are founded in risk and reputation management, or to preserve legitimacy and access. However, in reality no social issue can be addressed apolitically.

Foundations routinely influence public policy and governance based on who, what, and how they fund. Being honest that every grantmaking choice is a political choice opens the door to more intentional, principled strategies instead of defaulting to language and strategic solutions that are least controversial in a boardroom. Choosing not to name power is also a decision about power. Not naming policing, borders, or genocide as political questions does not keep philanthropy neutral.

This is not a call for philanthropy to become partisan; it is a call for philanthropy to develop a deep political analysis. Reducing the political struggle to Republicans versus Democrats obscures the deeper questions underneath: Who holds power? How is wealth produced and distributed? Whose lives are considered disposable?

When philanthropy sees political education as partisanship, they narrow their own horizons and sidestep the structural fights that movements are waging—against criminalization, extraction, and racial capitalism.

Meaningful change cannot be achieved without being led by—and supportive of—movements and communities in visioning and building what comes next.

Further, having political education does not mean philanthropy should dictate movement ideology, pick candidates, or funnel money into PACs. Engaging in political education signifies a commitment to cultivate shared language, analysis, and a clear point of view about what the core problem is and what future they are investing in.

When funders stay vague about power, race, capitalism, and state violence, they leave movements to absorb all the political risk while foundations linger in a comfortable “neutral” zone. This political agnosticism results in investments in Band-Aid solutions that do not address the underlying power dynamics that create and exacerbate social challenges.

The Allure of Technocratic Solutions

When institutions deny their political nature and ignore the need for political education, they can fall into the trap of reframing social problems as technical challenges to “fix” rather than conflicts over power. In these cases, foundations end up prioritizing solutions developed and implemented by subject matter experts, driven by the belief that social change is just a matter of the right programmatic design, and that injustices could be addressed with a series of “evidence-based” technical solutions.

What comes to the forefront for implementing these solutions are support for capacity building, service delivery, strategic communications, metrics, and evaluation. This is often to the detriment of investment in organizing, narrative strategy, community care and networks, confrontational strategy and action, and structural redistribution—strategies that are essential for sustaining movements.

Political education can help philanthropy understand the limits of technocratic solutions by showing how the problems of inequity were created. With this understanding, the sector can embrace broader or wholly different strategies that are aligned with the lived experiences of those most impacted by the societal challenges at hand.

What Political Education Makes Possible

If funders engaged in deep, ongoing political education about power, race, capitalism, and organizing traditions, they might not all suddenly become abolitionists or aligned on Palestinian liberation. However, the work of learning could unlock the courage to say where they stand and why. That grounding of political education would make it easier to fund long-term strategies that challenge existing institutions, such as abolition, landback, and reproductive justice. Political education would also normalize disagreement and make it possible to hold tension with grantees instead of punishing them when their analysis outpaces philanthropy’s comfort.

Without grounding in political education, philanthropic staff tend to default to their class position, institutional training, and dominant knowledge frameworks. The result is that philanthropy may unintentionally redirect movements toward moderate, institutional pathways and away from more disruptive challenges to power. In the absence of explicit analysis of power and history, they fall back on personal assumptions and framing around problems and solutions. In this way, philanthropy risks reproducing social inequalities.

However, with sharper political education, funders can be capable of taking strong stances in alignment with grantees while acknowledging risk, backlash, and the reality of nonlinear progress. This can signal a willingness to absorb some of the political heat that currently falls disproportionately on grantees.

Political education can further a shared understanding that the role of philanthropy is to redistribute resources and power toward communities most harmed by current systems.

This vision acknowledges that philanthropic wealth is entangled with histories of extraction, and that the sector’s legitimacy depends on how it shows up in the fights of the present. When philanthropic staff and the consultants that support them share deep analysis of power, they can align their grantmaking, endowments, and public voice in ways that reinforce—rather than fragment—movement work.