Four Ways Philanthropy Can Support the Movement for a Third Reconstruction

This article is the fifth in NPQ’s series Toward a Third Reconstruction, co-produced with Dēmos. Authors in this series articulate why we need bold, courageous action to bring a Third Reconstruction within reach—and offer strategies for systemic change that can help us get there.

The Trump administration’s attacks on hard-won US freedoms pose a devastating threat. The administration has bullied independent institutions to limit free speech, ignored people’s rights to due process and equal protection under the law, and slashed the nation’s social safety net that provides people access to healthcare and economic opportunity. As unprecedented as this may feel, we have been here before.

The fight for freedom and justice in our country has never been linear or easy. Periods of advancement have routinely triggered vicious backlash. In the post–Civil War Reconstruction era, Black people made transformative political and economic gains. But much of this progress was short-lived, as White supremacists responded with violence and racist policies that undid many civil rights gains.

Foundations should…support communities to build and sustain a more equitable, just, and resilient Third Reconstruction.

Over the following century, courageous grassroots organizing laid the foundation for what became the civil rights movement, also known as the Second Reconstruction. Black-led movements fought for and won voting rights, legal protection, and increased access to higher education.

Those in the halls of power retaliated by passing policies to suppress voting, encourage mass incarceration, and divest from universal public goods like clean drinking water, clean air, public parks, swimming pools, libraries, and education. This is a predictable cycle—but the whiplash is painful, nonetheless.

Today, foundations should use the full weight of their philanthropic resources—from money to public platforms—to support communities to build and sustain a more equitable, just, and resilient Third Reconstruction.

This would be a world where healthcare is a right, where equality is a reality, where everyone has the resources to thrive, and where public dollars are used for the public good. For people in philanthropy, fighting for this future demands the courage to tell the truth about and learn from history (including our own), to be in right relationship with partners, and to align work across the foundation to support a future where democracy, justice, and equity prevail.

The Courage to Learn from History

The good news is we have historical examples of brave leaders and organizations who modeled what this could look like. In the Jim Crow South, some of the earliest foundations supported Black educational institutions. In the Civil Rights era, freedom funders supported Black-led organizations that played a central role in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Funders provided critical financial resources to social movements committed to improving all our lives, and to leaders and organizations who understood Dr. Martin Luther King’s vision in his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech:

Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

While we have these important examples, unfortunately, far too many in philanthropy failed to support and sustain the bold change that communities took great risks for during both of these periods.

We are dangerously close to…“movement capture”—a moment where funders pressure grant recipients to moderate or divert their agendas.

During the first Reconstruction, foundations supported eugenics research and promoted its racist theories. As Maribel Morey chronicled in her book, White Philanthropy, philanthropist Andrew Carnegie’s commitment to White supremacy informed how many Black communities were able to access, or not, educational opportunity.

There are similar examples during the civil rights movement. As political scientist Megan Ming Francis has examined at length, during this period, philanthropy sidetracked the agendas of social movements. For instance, Francis detailed how the Garland Fund steered the NAACP away from its focus on countering anti-Black lynching to concentrate instead on the more widely acceptable goal of educational equality.

We are dangerously close to entering yet another moment of “movement capture”—a moment where funders pressure grant recipients to moderate or divert their agendas. This persists because of philanthropy’s aversion to risk, unbalanced commitment to self-preservation over collective wellbeing, and lack of accountability. Philanthropy’s intentions are irrelevant if the outcome is harm. This moment demands deep introspection, humility, and accountability, without which foundations are doomed to slow the wheels of progressive change.

The Courage to Self-Correct and Repair

In this moment of deadly backlash, foundations cannot operate under the faulty assumption that philanthropic institutions have been consistent in serving the public good, when history proves otherwise. To play a constructive role in advancing a positive vision of a Third Reconstruction, funders must confront and self-correct the harms the sector has committed, not least because these legacies often persist today. This work demands a systematic examination of the origins of the wealth stewarded, the impact of past grantmaking, and the ways internal culture and practices have perpetuated harm within and beyond foundation walls.

Foundations in the United States hold a staggering amount of combined wealth. As of September 30, 2025, the value of foundation assets totaled $1.757 trillion.

That foundation wealth, in many cases, has been amassed by causing harm to people and the planet. By digging deep into the origins of philanthropic wealth and how that wealth may have influenced giving, philanthropy can be a force for justice, even if it was born from injustice.

Truth, Repair, and Transformation

We are both proud to be part of a process at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) that strives to do this work. In 2023, RWJF launched a Truth, Repair, and Transformation (TRT) initiative to acknowledge and address past harms and develop a plan to do better in the future. Through this process, RWJF is learning about how our work has at times aligned with the interests of powerful corporate, academic, government, and medical sectors in ways that did not serve, or actively worked against, the interests of communities facing the greatest barriers to health.

This process involves active engagement with a Wisdom Council, on which Rojas sits with 12 other experts and advocates. This group will review historical findings, inform public listening sessions, and offer recommendations to inform RWJF’s approach to repair and transformation in service to positive change.

While still in its early stages, this process is designed to transform RWJF’s work to prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion. And it has made some early gains. Shining a spotlight on RWJF’s underresourcing of community-led grassroots organizing has helped us begin to intentionally increase funding to this still-nascent area of work. Understanding moments when RWJF aligned with powerful interests has sharpened the Foundation’s focus on challenging harmful, discriminatory systems that affect health, and revealed where we have more work to do.

RWJF is also working to ensure that its internal practices and processes reflect the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion. This truth-telling, repair, and transformation is central to the organization’s ability to support grantees and partners in service of building a future where health is no longer a privilege, but a right.

Marguerite Casey Foundation (MCF) has embedded this work into its mission, funding model, and endowment investments, with a priority set on transforming government, which has the scale, resources, and obligation to ensure a quality of life for all. Organized people are the best bet for transforming government to be accountable to communities and delivering on the unfulfilled promise of a vibrant, multiracial democracy and a livable planet, which is why MCF funds community organizing.

The majority of MCF grants support grassroots organizing groups nationwide, providing 25 percent of their operating budget for five years. And because impactful philanthropy moves money at the pace of the need, the foundation is forwarding 70 percent of each grant within the first year.

Foundation trustees recognized that every dollar invested in conflict with its philanthropic values undermined trust, exposing the foundation to reputational, legal, and systemic risks.

It would be a grave mistake to allow today’s backlash to stall collective work for equity.

Based on this recognition, the foundation has committed to aligning the full weight of its endowment with its mission, so that all foundation resources can put wind in the sails of social change.

Ultimately, trustees didn’t have to decide between returns and ethics, but rather between short-term gains and long-term institutional integrity. By law, foundations must allocate at least 5 percent of their endowments each year toward charitable giving. While that should be the floor, it is often mistaken for a ceiling. We know that if 95 percent of endowment resources are invested in entities working against the foundation’s mission, then philanthropy is effectively subsidizing harm to fund marginal good.

The Courage to Imagine and Act

It would be a grave mistake to allow today’s backlash to stall collective work for equity or to misunderstand this moment as one requiring the suppression of racial and economic justice ambitions. Regardless of different funders’ unique missions, strategies, or generational goals, philanthropy must unite around a shared belief in democratic practice, the dignity of all human life, and the need to support and sustain collective freedom.

Specifically, we call on our fellow leaders in philanthropy to:

1. Speak up—loudly, boldly, and often. Silence is not a shield. Philanthropy must match the courage of grant recipients and speak out in unison in defense of fundamental US civil liberties and values of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
2. Act with the full weight of institutional resources. Philanthropy exists within authoritarian regimes in many places around the globe. But that must not be the fate of philanthropy in the United States. Funders must get experienced at taking risks because this moment is not about preserving philanthropy, but about fighting for a common future.
3. Fund community organizing. People come together every day and organize for better lives for themselves, their families, and their communities. At its best, foundation resources help create a more even terrain in that fight.
4. Support a vision of the future we all deserve and fund like you want to make it real. Authoritarian governments thrive on people’s deep dissatisfaction with broken systems and economic inequality. There is a strong need for real examples of what a multiracial society that uplifts everyone looks like. Philanthropy must partner with communities to build a roadmap to get there faster, and together.

The question philanthropy faces today is not whether it plays a role in advancing the movement for a Third Reconstruction, but how.

With the fortitude to confront its own missteps and the courage to act in alignment with and accountability to the public good, philanthropy can bring the nation closer to delivering on long-overdue promises.