The Philanthropic Retreat

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative recently announced it was cutting 70 jobs — roughly 8 percent of its workforce — to refocus on AI-powered biomedical research. The press coverage has been characteristically credulous: a pivot to science, a doubling down on disease, a bold new chapter.

But this isn’t a pivot. It’s a purge.

Over the past year, CZI has systematically dismantled every part of its operation that touches the work this country needs most. It eliminated its Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility team. It scrubbed housing affordability and economic inclusion from its website. It gutted funding for criminal justice reform and immigration advocacy. It shuttered The Primary School, the tuition-free school Priscilla Chan herself co-founded in East Palo Alto, leaving parents scrambling. And it informed community partners across San Mateo County — many of them serving immigrant families and communities of color — that their grants would not be renewed.

CZI’s general counsel reportedly told staff the organization had become a “political target” and was “doing what we have to to avoid being sued.” A former employee put it more plainly: “They are making sure to cut anything that would sound or even be construed as DEI-esque.”

This is not a story about boldly investing in science. It is a story about cowardice dressed up as innovation.

The CZI layoffs are not separate from Meta’s corporate strategy. They are its philanthropic extension. And the Zuckerbergs are not alone. Across Silicon Valley and beyond, as the titans of industry have repositioned themselves to curry favor with the Trump administration, their philanthropic priorities and messaging have shifted to match. The rebranding is already underway. CZI was founded with the stated mission of building “a more inclusive, just, and healthy future for everyone.” That language has been removed from its website.

Across the philanthropic landscape, too many of the largest foundations and wealthiest individuals in the country are responding to the current political crisis with a posture that should alarm anyone who cares about what’s at stake. They are going quiet. They are rebranding equity work under palatable new names or shelving it entirely. They are protecting their assets and their access.

The structural incentives of American philanthropy make this retreat almost inevitable — because the structure was never really designed to move money to the people who need it. It was designed to shelter wealth and purchase social capital, while claiming the language of public good. Private foundations are required by law to distribute just 5 percent of their assets annually; even that modest threshold can be met through administrative expenses, not just grants. Private foundation assets in the United States grew twice as fast as GDP between 1985 and 2020. The Institute for Policy Studies calls them, accurately, “wealth warehousing vehicles.” That’s not a bug. That’s the product.

The largest foundations in this country increasingly operate like investment banks that happen to make grants. Their endowments grow. Their portfolios diversify. Their boards professionalize. And their actual grantmaking — the money that reaches the people and organizations doing the work — represents a shrinking fraction of their total wealth. The 5 percent floor has become a ceiling.

It is worth remembering how we got here. While there are many examples from around the world of civil society and philanthropy offering a counterweight to concentrated power, American “philanthropy” was forged by concentrated power to preserve itself. Carnegie — whose company’s private security force killed striking steelworkers at Homestead — poured his fortune into a foundation to rebuild his name. Rockefeller created his in the wake of the Standard Oil antitrust case that broke up his monopoly. In 1915, Congress convened the Walsh Commission to investigate whether these new foundations were themselves a threat to democracy — unaccountable concentrations of wealth shaping public life without public consent.

The foundations survived that scrutiny and, over time, rewrote a more flattering origin story. Some did consequential work — the Ford Foundation funded civil rights litigation when few others would. But the underlying architecture never changed: private wealth, deployed at the discretion of the wealthy, accountable to no one, and structured to grow in perpetuity.

What we are witnessing now is the architecture working as designed.

The wealthiest philanthropists in history have more resources than ever and less willingness to deploy them when it counts. They will fund what advances their business interests. What they will not fund, increasingly, is the work that puts them at odds with power.

The inaction of major philanthropy in this moment is a form of complicity.

As the dignity, rights, and lives of people are being trampled on in our communities, the most powerful foundations in the country offer the equivalent of “thoughts and prayers.” They release carefully worded statements. They convene listening sessions. They express concern. And then they turn every community tragedy into a fundraising opportunity — for themselves. They grow their donor rolls off the crisis while the frontline organizations actually responding scramble for visibility and resources without any corresponding increase in unrestricted, long-term support.

The measure of a philanthropic institution is not its endowment or its AI strategy or its Nobel laureate advisory board. It is what it does when the question is not about left and right, but about right and wrong.

By that measure, we are witnessing a historic failure — not of resources, but of courage.

Disclosure: mBOLDen Change (formerly My New Red Shoes) has been a CZI grant recipient.