Nonprofits are America’s antidote to its own rampant individualism.
An interesting and pivotal change took place over the last century in the way philanthropy was practiced in America. In the 18th and 19th centuries, philanthropy was inherently communal. If you wanted to help orphans or ban the sale of alcohol, you would associate yourself with others in your township of the same mindset. You didn’t wait around for someone else to step in. Instead, you found others who shared your beliefs, congregated together in person, and deliberated on a plan of action. All association was local. It wasn’t until the dawn of the telecommunication age that this began to change.
What was great about the so-called American Experiment was that America both welcomed diversity (of thought, beliefs, ethnicities) and conferred on its citizens freedom to take their unique cares and concerns into the public square and associate with one another. Associations gave citizens the opportunity to lobby and persuade other individuals to join their particular vision for how society ought to be. Far from being a cacophony of comprehensive visions that touched every aspect of life, the force of associational life in America gained its power from a diversity of associations pursuing local and more focused visions (such as homelessness, the construction of a school, or the paving of a road). Associational life was greater than the sum of the associations themselves.
It’s hard to think of a world where this mentality of association doesn’t exist. Indeed, what was once a curiosity in the world at the time has been exported around the globe and integrated into the fabric of society in countries from Spain to South Korea. Associational life is so ubiquitous today that we forget just how radical this mindset of association was at the time of America’s founding. It is truly the product of democracy, of the world’s first successful democracy, the United States.
Today associations have been formalized: we know them as nonprofits, or non-governmental organizations (“NGOs”) abroad. Unfortunately, the special tax designation that governments give to associations blinds us to the underlying mindset that perpetuates them. Today we tend to think of nonprofits more as entities that are the product of governmental legislation rather than a diverse gathering of committed individuals around a common cause; a mindset that animates ordinary citizens to voluntarily associate themselves with one another for a particular purpose. We would do well to remind ourselves that before there was §501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code, there were associations.
To be sure, this mindset is a crucial ingredient to the long-term success of a democracy. Alexis de Tocqueville, the renowned 19th century French social critic and author of the celebrated work Democracy in America, noted the potent force that associations had in early America during his first visit in 1831. His observations on their prevalence in the world’s first burgeoning democracy prompted him to note:
“If men who live in a democracy…do not acquire the practice of associating with one another in ordinary life, civilization itself will be in peril.”
Tocqueville believed that if the citizens didn’t regularly come in contact with each other, they would succumb to a phenomenon peculiar only to democracies: the phenomenon of individualism. While Tocqueville didn’t coin the term, he was the first to give verbiage to the word as it’s understood today. Tocqueville noted that individualism arises as conditions become more equal. Citizens, not being wealthy or powerful enough to exert a great influence on the fates of those like them (as in aristocratic countries), withdraw into themselves and cease to care about the needs of society that don’t directly affect them. A sort of exhaustion at “being our brother’s keeper” sets in.
But Tocqueville saw associations as the lynchpin keeping a democracy from unraveling. Just as our teeth will become discolored and deteriorate if we neglect to brush and floss (a daily habit), so will a democracy gradually disintegrate if associational life isn’t alive and active. Whereas individualism causes people to withdraw into themselves and concern themselves only with those in their immediate circle of contact, associations draw individuals outside of themselves and put them in contact. Associations force people to rub shoulders with those unlike themselves. Associations draw us into reality and catalyze relationships. As Tocqueville saw it, when people become acquainted with those outside their comfort zone, “feelings and ideas are renewed, the heart is enlarged, and the understanding is developed.”
Associations (nonprofits) are America’s antidote to individualism. But more than that, they are the crucial ingredient to the success of the “American experiment.” Indeed, there is legitimacy to the claim: as go nonprofits, so goes America. The health of the nonprofit sector has an outsized effect on the health of America. This is a radical claim.
It is no accident that nonprofits have such prevalence in America today, for they are the direct product of the associational mindset that animated this country from its very founding. But just because we enjoy the widespread presence of nonprofits in society doesn’t mean they are healthy. In fact, nonprofits are struggling. They are struggling to engage donors in their respective causes and draw them into relationships with likeminded people. This problem is the result of a collapse of the associational mindset that once existed in the United States. A growing individualism in our culture has sucked dry of the diverse relationships that once enlivened the sector.
As uncomfortable as it is to hear, creative solutions only come about through a sober articulation of problems. We have to be honest with ourselves about the state of things as they actually are – about reality – if we are to address the roots of our problems. Anything else will simply be bandages covering the unsightly and gaping wound beneath. A creative solution will look like antiseptic to the open wound; it may be painful and difficult for a time, but it will heal the wound.
There are no quick fixes to the problem of individualism in our country. Any effective solution will take time, probably more time than we realize. Understanding that we all have a responsibility to own up to the challenges we see in society, do we have the commitment and endurance necessary for meaningful change?
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-Originally published on Philanthro.pe
–Photo: KStof
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