It’s far too early to say what a Vice President (and potential President) J.D. Vance would mean for the philanthropic sector. Still, his past statements indicate that he’s unlikely to be a friend.
Vance has been on the vanguard of an ongoing and escalating wave of GOP criticism against philanthropy — left-leaning philanthropy, to be exact. Those attacks have ramped up significantly in Congress over the past year, and while Vance hasn’t been as vocal a critic of liberal philanthropy lately as in previous years, it’s worth remembering that he’s long had the sector in his sights.
In 2021, at a conference called “What to do about Woke Capital” held by the conservative Claremont Institute Center for the American Way of Life, Vance blasted large, nonprofit foundations, calling them “social-justice hedge funds.” The Ohio senator singled out the Ford Foundation in particular, slamming it for backing critical race theory. “They’re investing in the racial division all across our country, they’re investing in all of the progressive social causes of the moment,” he said. He called Ford “one of the biggest investors in the Black Lives Matter movement that destroyed many of our towns and cities last summer.”
Vance also hammered Harvard University for sitting on a big endowment and backing progressive causes. Harvard “funds some of the most destructive ideologies all across our country, [and] literally trains the next generation of priests in the woke seminary that’s dominating our professional class,” Vance said.
Later that same year, in a Newsweek op-ed, Vance continued his attack on Ford and included the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation in his critique, suggesting that the government should “tax the assets of these foundations, and shrink their size over time… Here’s a simple proposal: Any charitable organization with an endowment over $100 million must spend 20% of its endowment each year, or else it loses its 501(c)(3) status and the preferential treatment of its income.”
The conservative Philanthropy Roundtable didn’t much like Vance’s plan. A 2022 policy primer argued that the plan wouldn’t work; it also called Vance’s desire to use government power to stifle activity he doesn’t like “odious.”
This reflects a dynamic that could end up softening potential populist conservative attacks on “elite” liberal philanthropy. That is, GOP politicians like Vance may find it worthwhile to inveigh against the likes of Ford, Gates, Soros and Wyss, but it’s hard to imagine right-leaning stakeholders within the philanthrosphere faltering in their support for the principle of “philanthropic freedom” or supporting increased regulation of the sector.
In any case, Vance’s proposal did get a thumbs-up from Craig Kennedy, a senior fellow at the Giving Review and former foundation leader. Writing in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Kennedy applauded the concept of reining in some of the vast wealth held by many foundations and universities. Kennedy didn’t address the obviously ideological bent of Vance’s proposal. It is unclear if Vance’s policies would also be directed at wealthy 501(c)(3) institutions whose positions he supports, like the Heritage Foundation or Hillsdale College.
Vance appears to have moved on to other issues after joining the Senate, and will be busy on a larger stage as Trump’s VP pick. For now, at least, he isn’t actively targeting philanthropy and 501(c)(3)s — but that could always change.
Big ambitions
One reason why Vance may well renew his attacks on 501(c)(3) philanthropy and nonprofits is the fact that he has his own experience in this space. When Vance started his own nonprofit in 2017, he wasn’t averse to receiving the tax-advantaged treatment he would decry just a few years later. Back then, Vance had just left Silicon Valley, where he was working in venture capital, and returned to his home state of Ohio to start a nonprofit called Our Ohio Renewal. The goal of the organization, as he wrote in a New York Times op-ed at the time, was “to combat Ohio’s opioid epidemic.”
Fighting the opioid epidemic is a worthy cause, of course, and Ohio, in particular, has been hard hit by the drugs and their fallout. It’s also an issue with which Vance had personal experience. His own mother was addicted to opioids, as he wrote in his celebrated 2016 book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” a memoir of his impoverished and unstable childhood.
But Vance’s nonprofit didn’t do much to combat the opioid crisis — it didn’t do much of anything, for that matter. It only raised about $220,000 in 2017; its staff dwindled the following year and it closed its doors for good in 2021.
In fact, Our Ohio Renewal appears to have been a vehicle to promote Vance’s political career, not to help those with substance use disorder. An in-depth investigation by Business Insider revealed that Our Ohio Renewal spent more on “management services” than on programmatic work. Those management services were provided by the group’s executive director, who was also Vance’s top political advisor. Vance’s organization never joined a large coalition of groups, the Ohio Opioid Education Alliance, a public-private partnership to prevent opioid use. “A spokeswoman for Ohio’s largest anti-opioid coalition told Insider that she hadn’t heard of Vance’s organization,” according to the report.
What did Our Ohio Renewal do during its brief lifespan? The group claimed that it launched a survey to explore the needs of Ohio residents, but it never revealed the survey results. It also hired Sally Satel, a psychiatrist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has written articles disputing the role of prescription painkillers (and their overprescribing by doctors) in the U.S. opioid crisis. An investigation by ProPublica, in collaboration with STAT, found that AEI received regular donations from Purdue Pharma, which manufactured the opioid painkiller OxyContin. According to that report, Satel’s articles cited Purdue-funded studies and doctors, and she shared drafts with Purdue staff before publication.
More recently, Vance appeared to have turned his back on the opioid issue altogether. In April, he voted against the FEND Off Fentanyl Act, a bill he cosponsored with Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, that aimed to ramp up efforts to address the crisis. Vance voted against his own bill because it was tied to funding for Ukraine, which he has joined Trump in loudly opposing. A columnist for the Ohio Capital Journal posed the question: “So does that mean that it was more important to Vance to oppose supporting Ukraine than it was to fight fentanyl in opioid-ravaged states like Ohio?”
What does J.D. believe?
Would a Vice President Vance resume his attacks on philanthropic institutions and universities that he believes promote ideas he doesn’t like? It’s too early to say, but if we’ve learned anything about Vance since he shot onto the scene with “Hillbilly Elegy,” it’s that we shouldn’t expect consistency.
Vance has repeatedly changed his views to fit the latest political fashion. He famously struck a complete 180 on his opinion of his current running mate, whipsawing from harsh Trump critic to MAGA fanboy. He has also gone from tech investor to tech critic, all while receiving the enthusiastic backing of some of technology’s biggest names, including PayPal founder Peter Thiel, who has been a consistent supporter, and Elon Musk. In the past, he opposed abortion without apparent exceptions, but is now rapidly backpedaling on the issue; he removed his anti-abortion message from his Senate campaign website when he was picked for the VP spot, according to the Daily Beast.
Atlantic writer David Frum, who worked with Vance when the latter wrote for his website, FrumForum, called Vance “a man of extraordinary intellectual and moral flexibility — to put it mildly.”
Still, Vance’s meteoric career trajectory pegs him as a man of political talent and luck, and that doesn’t bode well for the philanthropic status quo. Even if he hasn’t been attacking Ford, Gates and company lately, an opportunistic populist like Vance must surely recognize that elite grantmakers make great political targets. And as a former nonprofit founder (and Yale Law grad), he’s familiar with how all of this works. If Trump returns to the White House, philanthropy stakeholders may have to hold onto the hope that their institutions are far enough from the public eye that Vance and other populist GOP leaders will bypass them for other, more familiar targets.
