If the trend Daniel Schuman identifies in “Open-Government Nonprofits Are Dying Off Just When They’re Needed Most,” the answer is a clear if frightening NO (here). Schuman, Executive Director of the American Governance Institute, ticks of a list of U.S. watchdogs closing their doors or drastically cutting staff thanks to multiple funding crises.
Those now on the block include: OpenSecrets, which for years has shown which politicians get money from what special interests; OMB Watch, a pioneer in unearthing hard-to-find data on government spending; and the Center for Public Integrity, the scourge of those officials who have never seen an ethical line they can’t cross.
Why, just when more eyes are needed on Trump and cronies, are those with 20-20 vision finding it so hard to raise money? Schulman puts it off to the polarization now infecting the American body politic. The foundations and high-net-worth individuals that have traditionally backed organizations dedicated to “public-informing, community-building work” have, he writes, become “auxiliaries for the parties in their trench warfare over political power.”
Bad enough the funding drought coincides with the return of an Administration likely to make Grant’s second term seem a model of probity. Many of those on the ropes have done much to advance the global war on corruption, from serving as models for citizens of other nations to providing critical technical assistance to anticorruption NGOs around the globe. The fight against corruption in the U.S. is entering a critical phase with the outcome likely to affect the fight in other nations. The stakes couldn’t be higher. Will donors please reconsider their decisions?
Thanks to TheBulwark, an indispensable source for what’s happening in the U.S., for publishing Schuman’s story.
