“Charitable” political advice from the Century Foundation?

Officially, charitable organizations under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code are forbidden from “directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.” Sometimes, drawing that line is easy: The IRS revoked charitable status from a purported charity for extensive activities supporting a local political candidate who happened to be the purported charity’s president in mid-2025.

Blurred lines

More often, that line is very blurry. Charitable educational groups interested in public policy issues typically have an ideological interest of some kind, and since 1994 the major American political parties have become more ideological in character. (Grant unto the liberal Rockefeller Republicans and Conservative Coalition southern Democrats eternal rest, O Lord.) Groups like the Heritage Foundation or America First Policy Institute on the political right or the Center for American Progress or Century Foundation on the left function as de-facto “shadow cabinets,” keeping would-be senior government officials on the political payroll when their ideological faction is out of government.

Today, we get another example of this very blurry line. Semafor reports that four Senate Democrats (led by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), reported paramour of Courier Newsroom founder and Democratic operative Tara McGowan) wrote a letter to their caucus-mates encouraging the party to take an aggressive economically leftist line to win the midterm elections.

Leftist Century

That in itself is nothing terribly interesting: Politicians asking other politicians to do things so they can win elections is what politicians do. More interesting comes from the letter itself, which relies heavily on public opinion research by the aforementioned Century Foundation, a charitable organization. Century Foundation conducted surveys using a Democratic polling firm (GQR Research, formerly known as Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research) that showed that Century Foundation’s aggressively leftist economics are extremely popular.

Issue polling is a highly sketchy enterprise at the best of times. (Queue the famous “Yes, Prime Minister” bit on leading questions.) But there is something extremely rich in a “nonpartisan” institution forbidden by law from intervening in elections leaving an issue poll on the table for politicians to pick up as fuel for their election campaigns. (Century Foundation is not alone in this, by the way. The political right does it too.)

It’s worth remembering that the Century Foundation is not the typical foundation. It is a major force on the political left’s policy-development ‘team,’ as I have written before:

But Century does not look like it plans to let CAP have the field all to itself. Since President Joe Biden left office in 2025, numerous former administration officials have joined Century’s roster, none more prominent than former Deputy Secretary of Labor Julie Su. She is a critical race theory practitioner and activist for organized labor whom Biden deemed Acting Secretary of Labor for almost two years after it became clear the United States Senate would not confirm her to the post of Secretary.

In 2025, Zuckerman stepped down as the Foundation’s president. He was succeeded by Julie Margetta Morgan, an alumna of the Biden administration Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Department of Education. Morgan previously worked for the left-wing Roosevelt Institute, the presidential campaign of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), the Gates Foundation, and CAP.

The Biden administration is not the only source of Century Foundation scholar-activists. In August, former chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) Gerardo Bonilla Chavez joined Century’s government affairs division as director. In 2021, a former chief of staff to California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) joined as a nonresident fellow.

The spree of hiring from prominent liberal political shops shows that the Century Foundation intends to increase its profile in developing and pushing forward left-wing policy. The group may well see increased influence in future Democratic state and federal administrations.

Century Foundation is a serious player in liberal politics. That its public opinion research might drive Democratic strategy may bend the principles of charitable status, but should not be surprising to watchers of policy influence.