Obama's Message for Nonprofits

From senior editor Drew Lindsay: Barack Obama burst onto the political scene with his 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention imploring Americans to lean into what they share in common, not what divides them: “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America — there's the United States of America.”

Twenty years later, the former president is still at it — with important lessons for nonprofits, says Eboo Patel , head of Interfaith America and columnist for the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Patel attended the Obama Foundation Democracy Forum last week and was struck by Obama’s remarks, particularly his call to lay aside cancel culture and purity tests and embrace coalitions built across divides. Patel writes:??

“We are undergoing a paradigm shift in the nonprofit world. The ‘us and them’ approach has failed. Obama is shining the light on a different path — cooperation across differences to lift everyone up. The nonprofit sector has an opportunity not just to follow, but to lead. We should take it.”

Read Patel’s essay and his argument that Obama is “a Tocquevillian at heart.”

NEXT WEEK! The Commons in Conversation

In our last interview of the year for our Commons in Conversation series, we bring in an expert on how to bridge political divides in your workplace and your family — skills you might need over the holidays.??

Journalist and nonprofit leader Monica Guzman joins Chronicle Editor-in-Chief Andrew Simon for the discussion. Guzmán, the founder and CEO of Reclaim Curiosity, is the author of I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times.?

She is also a senior fellow for public practice at Braver Angels , a nonprofit working to depolarize America, and host of A Braver Way, a podcast to help people bridge political divides in their everyday lives.

?? Join the conversation! The event is free on LinkedIn. ?? Registration is required.

Of the Moment

News and other noteworthy items:

• Voters in “overwhelming” numbers say the 2024 elections nationally and in their communities were run well, and they express confidence in the vote counts, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Nearly 90 percent of voters say that elections were administered at least somewhat well, up from 59 percent of voters in 2020.
• In the Center for Effective Philanthropy podcast Giving Right, Rockefeller Brothers Fund CEO Stephen Heintz talks about community-based work to encourage civic engagement and bolster democracy. He also addresses concerns that nonprofits are deepening divides in the country: “I do think that some nonprofit groups, including some foundations, have contributed to the sense of polarization in our country.”
• The Atlantic’s Russell Berman examines why proposals for structural election change — including ranked-choice voting and open primaries — “failed nearly everywhere they were on the ballot” this year. Advocates haven’t done a good job selling “possible solutions to core problems that voters repeatedly tell pollsters they want addressed,” Berman concludes. One told him: “We have totally failed at the marketing.”