It's amazing to me, that a time when the nonprofit and philanthropic sector in the USA should be running around screaming "house on fire" (very bad metaphor for a Californian), most seem to to be just plodding along. I am hopeful that they're being digitally savvy; shifting to encrypted platforms, scrubbing their websites of information that will enable doxxing of volunteers, constituents, staff and boar; red-teaming their governance policies and crossing every T; dotting every i on their financial statements; meeting with lawyers; raising funds for legal defense.
They must not only worry about the official US government under Trusk. Worry about #KingMusk himself. And his minions. And his berserk followers. And his allies in the Russian and Chinese hacking communities. Want to know what harassment of your organization might look like? Look at what's happening with Wikipedia/Wikimedia Foundation.
The Heritage Foundation (home to Project Esther and Project 2025) is preparing to use facial recognition and online sources to dox contributors to Wikipedia. They claim this has something to do with antisemitism. BS. They'll go after Jewish and Palestinian issues first but they're really trying to take down THE site that the global public turns to when disaster, war, corruption strike. They've also gone after The Internet Archive, home to the Wayback Machine, which is the oft-cited "backup" of the internet. Lawsuits are one strategy (see Internet Archive). Doxxing and harassment are another strategy (See Heritage and Wikimedia)
Public Citizen has been on the offensive, opposing OpenAI's efforts to abandon its nonprofit status without returning to the public the value of its tax exempt status to date (an estimated $30 Billion). Thank goodness for that, because letting tech entrepreneurs have free rein over the nonprofit tax exemption is a nightmare I'd rather not consider.
But what about suing Heritage for violating tax laws or reckless endangerment? What about pulling the old trick that I love watching backfire on Texas - pass a law banning sexual content in books in schools, only to discover you must now remove the Bible. With the low quality of expected appointees to places like the IRS, the FTC, and the FEC, smart lawyers on the center - left ought to be able to find gaps in their legislation big enough to drive a truck (or the Heritage Foundation itself) through.
What about offense? 48.3 percent of voters didn't vote for this coming nightmare. Basically 1 in 2 of us. Rally us. Mobilize us. Listen to us, we are civil society.
The #Blueprint Series - (#16 launches on January 15 - get your free copy here) - has been tracking, commenting on, jumping up and down about the steady deliberate corruption of democratic norms undertaken by the #GOP for the last decade and a half, preceding even the Citizens United debacle. I can only hope people have read it and responded by taking their digital security (and physical security of volunteers, staff, boards, and constituents) seriously. Partnering with similar organizations to build a legal defense fund. Getting good legal advice. Workshopping messages about the importance of a diverse, pluralistic, fragmented and abundant nonprofit sector (What we have at the start of 2025. Who knows what will be left by 2028).
Donors and philanthropists - you're not safe in this, so don't sit back and watch. Foundations will be interrogated. Donors will be doxxed. Some philanthropists will cave, if they haven't already while wearing their CEO hat (see Bezos, Zuckerberg, etc.). Some will be targeted and made boogeyman in ways worse than the decades of lies the GOP has trafficked about George Soros. Women donors and networks? I'd expect little good and lots of bad from the misogynists-in-chief.
The Democracy Funders Network is out with some more preparatory guidelines - access those here.
Both Wikimedia and the Internet Archive are well-established, cornerstone organizations of civil society. They were at the forefront of our collective conversion to digital civil society. We need both of them to survive.
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