A conversation with presidential historian Tevi Troy (Part 2 of 2)

Editorial note: this essay originally appeared at The Giving Review.

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Tevi Troy understands and enjoys policy and politics—and appreciates historical context. He has knowledge and wisdom, and affably imparts both. A senior fellow at the Ronald Reagan Institute and a senior scholar at Yeshiva University’s Straus Center, Troy was a deputy secretary of the Department Health and Human Services and White House domestic-policy aide during President George W. Bush’s administration. He’s also been a Capitol Hill policy staffer.

He has studied and written widely on particular presidents and themes surrounding the presidency in general, as well, including in his most-recent book The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes Between American Titans of Industry and Commanders in Chief. Among other things, the book well-covers the contentious relationship between John D. Rockefeller, Sr., and President Theodore Roosevelt.

Last month, in response to a Wall Street Journal column by Barton Swaim bringing to light and lamenting “the Byzantine network of activist nonprofits created and fostered over the past decade and a half by liberal foundations and progressive billionaires,” Troy penned a letter to the editor underscoring Swaim’s point, though noting “it’s important to point out that the problem long predates his flashpoint date of 2010.”

Troy was kind enough to join me for a recorded conversation last week. In the first part of our discussion, which is here, we talk about left’s nonprofit problem and its history, origins, and effects, and how the right should consider doing something about it.

The just more than 11-minute, edited video below is the second part, during which we further discuss how to best respond to problems caused by the left’s close intermingling with and reliance on politicized nonprofits.

Joseph “Schumpeter talked about this problem of capitalists funding their own destruction, and that was what 75 years ago or 80 years ago,” Troy tells me.

So this is not a new problem, and it is part of the system. I think the question we need to ask is, “What’s the alternative, and how can we reform the system without losing these great things that we do get out of philanthropy?” … I don’t like the naked partisanship of the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, these other foundations—and I think there has to be a fix, but I have not yet identified what the fixes that will not redound more problematically on the conservative side.

Addressing some attempted and contemplated policy change in this area, Troy says,

Right now, we have a Republican administration, and maybe it’s better to do those rules administratively while you have an administration that is perhaps so inclined to do it. This administration uses a meat axe or a cleaver, when sometimes the scalpel would be appropriate—but again, I’d rather have them writing the rules than, let’s say, the Kamala Harris Administration writing rules on this particular subject.

Acknowledging there’s partisan-driven philanthropy on the right, as well, he says that’s objectionable, too. There are “rules against partisanship in philanthropy, and I don’t think you should use philanthropic dollars, which are tax-protected dollars” for those purposes. “They should not go to partisan political purposes. I don’t want to support the Democratic Party with those tax payments, just like someone else doesn’t want to support the Republican Party with those dollars.

“But we do agree as a society that philanthropy is a good thing,” Troy continues, “and we should be out there supporting foundations that promote education and health care” and other charitable purposes. “All those are good things, and there’s a reason why we, unlike many other nations, have this charitable culture. I think it hurts everyone when those dollars are used for partisan political purposes.”

He believes public accountability and, if and when necessary, outside pressure should be brought to bear on philanthropy, of and from both the right and left. “We should raise public voices in ways that put pressure on these organizations to make them better.”

And Troy urges continued attention on the right to preserving and protecting donor intent. “If you are so inclined as to give money to a foundation, you had better make sure that they don’t move” away from your intent,” he concludes. “You can do it a.) by hiring the right people to begin with, but b.) you want to create bylaws and restrictions that make sure that your money goes to something that you approve of even after you are long gone. I think that’s another part of the equation.”