External Content
BIPOC-led philanthropy is leading the way to transform giving, invest where it matters, and respond to the ever-changing landscape of pro-democracy funding, Democracy Fund’s Lauren Hill explains for Candid.
Focus Area: Just and Inclusive Society
Blog
I want to end the year on a note of gratitude and pride for the many ways our community came together to defend and advance a democracy that is open, just, resilient, and trustworthy for all Americans. While I am clear-eyed about the threats facing us and the hard work ahead, I remain determined to stand up for our democracy in these challenging times.
This year, Democracy Fund celebrated its tenth anniversary as an independent grantmaking foundation. Along with our partner organization, Democracy Fund Voice, we have made more than $425 million in grants to promote free elections, a just society, an equitable public square, and accountable government institutions. I would be remiss to end the year without expressing my deep gratitude to all the grantees, partners, and staff that have helped to build this remarkable institution and community of fierce democracy advocates.
This decade has profoundly shaped our democracy, our organization, and my growth as a leader. My understanding of philanthropy’s role in empowering change has evolved along the way. In the face of rising threats to our democracy, I am sharing five lessons I’ve learned, hoping they’ll be valuable to others in the field.
1. Funders can’t shy away from tough conversations — or bold action — in defense of our values.
Many in the philanthropic field are worried about the rising critiques against progressive philanthropy and the emerging threats against the causes and communities many of us hold dear — from immigration, to the LGBTQ+ community, racial justice, and so many more.
Democracy Fund and Democracy Fund Voice stand strong in our commitment to an inclusive, multiracial democracy. We will not back down. Our work is part of a long tradition of fighting for a democracy that truly represents and serves all Americans — a democracy that we have never yet achieved.
It took a lot of learning on our part to get to where we are today. Ten years ago, Democracy Fund and Democracy Fund Voice started with a bipartisan approach, and an incremental and reformist mindset. We thought that broader political buy-in to reforms would be key to improving resilience over time. But that’s not what happened.
We soon realized that we would need to fundamentally revisit our thinking if we wanted to continue to live within our values. We wrestled through a series of tough conversations that resulted in us “declaring independence” from bipartisanship and creating a new organizational framework in 2021. The process of articulating a more explicit set of core values and a bolder perspective on the fundamental inequities of our democracy transformed our strategy, our staff, our organizational culture, and our position in the field.
I am proud we did not shy away from asking ourselves difficult questions about who we were and what it would take to pursue impact as the world changed around us. Doing this work provided us with a clear rallying point around which to stand boldly in defense of our values and our grantees.
As our sector faces new and emerging challenges today, we have revisited this experience and are in the process of articulating a set of principles to guide our posture moving forward. I encourage our philanthropic peers to face this moment with deep introspection and determination – and a willingness to let go of the familiar where necessary to make transformative change.
2. How we fund matters — and it’s up to us to give better.
Our grantees’ feedback has consistently been a source of essential learning – and it has not always been easy to hear. I still remember a 2014 grantee assessment that compared Democracy Fund’s grants diligence process to a particularly uncomfortable doctor’s visit.
Listening to our grantees and learning from our partners, we have increasingly shifted our grants application and reporting processes to be less onerous for grantees. We have significantly increased the proportion of our grants that are larger, multiyear, and unrestricted. By implementing new processes such as verbal reporting, we’ve shifted much of the diligence and reporting burden onto our own shoulders. We’ve become better and more supportive grantmakers, and are gratified in these efforts by improved grantee trust.
In recent years, we have embraced opportunities to share these lessons with others. During the COVID-19 pandemic and the racial justice uprisings of 2020, we joined with peer funders in streamlining processes to better support grantees. In 2024, we launched the All by April campaign to encourage philanthropy to release nonpartisan election-related grant dollars earlier in the year. The campaign mobilized more than $155 million in earlier grants and accelerated payments to pro-democracy organizations when they needed it most.
There is much more that can be done. In particular, democracy funders must break the cyclical nature of elections funding, which causes grantees to dismantle and rebuild operations every 2-4 years. We need to provide organizations focused on the slow and necessary work of structural reform and deep community organizing the multi-year grants that can sustain them. Philanthropy’s commitment to democracy must be sustainable and sustained. We must keep our foot on the gas and ensure our field partners know that we have their backs.
3. The philanthropic sector needs to grow — and organize.
In the aftermath of the 2016 election, I spent significant time on the phone with peer donors and new philanthropists who were eager to learn from Democracy Fund and Democracy Fund Voice on how to direct new dollars into the democracy space. With deep subject matter expertise and relationships – as well as the greater capacity to share these with peers given our staffing model – my staff were particularly well positioned to advise new donors in strategy development and to work with the field on ambitious field cultivation efforts. Since then, donor organizing has grown to be a central pillar of our strategy.
Grantees are the best champions of their own work and their strategic direction must always be at the center of our work. However, we’ve learned that funder-to-funder relationships can create a safe place for shared learning and encourage new donors to take meaningful steps toward funding. And, only we can address the broken sector incentives — such as the confusing proliferation of intermediary groups in the elections space – that create inefficiencies and complicate the nonprofit sector’s ability to operate effectively.
Over the years, we have helped spearhead joint funding initiatives like Press Forward, which will invest more than $500 million into local news and information over the next five years, and which reflects an aligned and unified vision among field and philanthropy alike of the change needed in this sector.
In 2025 and beyond, Democracy Fund is committed to both continuing our efforts to increase the size of the overall democracy philanthropy space and to supporting our funder community to be better.
4. We must cultivate our capacity to look ahead.
Our sector was unprepared for the rise of authoritarianism and for the political violence of January 6th, 2021 – but our position in 2024 is profoundly different. Over the past several years, funders and field actors have invested significant resources developing the skills and capacity to imagine multiple futures and engage in scenario planning. These skills have not only laid the groundwork for contingency plans, they have increased our collective dexterity amid uncertainty, allowing us to now step resolutely into a rapidly changing world.
We are proud of our work helping to establish the Trusted Elections Fund as a hub for election crisis planning and response and of having supported the work of countless grantees like Democracy Forward who have built robust plans to respond to the antidemocratic agenda of Project 2025 and other threats. These plans and infrastructure are now ready to be deployed — and philanthropy must be ready to support them.
We must remember these examples as we feel our attention being pulled into the urgent threats ahead. Funders must act swiftly to defend our democracy, our grantees, and the communities that will face threats. And, we cannot allow ourselves to be distracted from the longer-term work that will be critical to our success. It is essential that philanthropy enable the necessary work of envisioning a democracy agenda that can recapture the imagination of the American people and do the long-term work of building community power to achieve that vision.
5. Philanthropy is deeply flawed – and uniquely important in our democracy.
In the past decade, sector leaders like Rob Reich and Edgar Villanueva have led important conversations about the structural flaws and injustices in our field. As a result, philanthropy has gotten more skilled at recognizing and combating the power dynamics inherent in our very existence.
This shift has been profoundly important to me as a leader — and also enabled me to get sharper in articulating why I believe that philanthropy has a significant and legitimate role to play in our democracy. Philanthropy’s unique ability to deploy flexible, risk-tolerant capital makes it a critical catalyst for innovation and rapid response, bridging gaps left by slower government action and profit-focused private industry.
For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, our community played a key role in supporting a safe and secure 2020 election. Through increased democracy-focused giving, our grantees provided crucial technical assistance and education to local election administrators adopting mail-in voting, implemented health protocols at polling centers, and recruited thousands of much-needed poll workers. While the government focused on vaccine development and rollout, philanthropic support empowered hundreds of nonprofits to help the nation’s democratic practice meet this important challenge.
As our nation faces profound threats to our democracy, it is also important to note that civil society – and the private philanthropy that has supported it – has continuously been at the forefront of protecting and advancing democracy and has a critical role to play going forward. From the nineteenth century fundraising societies that supported the Underground Railroad to the Ford Foundation’s crucial role in supporting the advancement of racial justice in the Civil Rights Movement, philanthropists have served as a counterweight to authoritarianism in our country.
With this history in mind, in this moment philanthropy must protect the civic space in which organizations and leaders can speak, operate, and organize, ensure free and fair elections, and advance the democratic values we hold dear. Even as our own sector may come under scrutiny, we must be prepared to vociferously defend our grantees and our vision for the future.
Looking to 2025
As we look ahead, the challenges we face are significant — but so is the strength of our collective determination. The progress we’ve made this year, and over the past ten, remind us of what is possible when we work together with purpose and conviction. Your dedication fuels our hope for the future and inspires our continued commitment to this work. We will not back down. Together, we will safeguard progress won and lay the foundation for an inclusive multiracial democracy.
Statement
As a leader of a foundation committed to a more inclusive multiracial democracy, I want to acknowledge the pain, fear, and exhaustion that so many of us are experiencing right now — while also feeling an urgency to take action to respond to the threats that lie ahead.
In a heightened authoritarian environment, civil society and philanthropy will be under tremendous pressure. The authoritarian playbook depends on the expectation that we will mute our values to appease those in power and leave targeted communities, including Black people, immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, and others to fend for themselves. It expects communities to scapegoat one another and for us to accept the harmful and discriminatory policies of Project 2025 as our future.
As we move forward, we must find solidarity and unity within the pro-democracy movement. We must reject efforts to blame or scapegoat targeted communities, and look for opportunities to resist and to build. I believe a multiracial democracy that is open, just, resilient, and trustworthy is not only possible – it is essential.
The leadership of our grantees and partners has shown us that now, more than ever, we must:
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- Pursue accountability for – and defend against – abuses of power that undermine democratic institutions and values, especially those that threaten free and fair elections or prevent the free and independent exercise of power by those opposed to authoritarian actions.
- Build the durable power of grassroots pro-democracy organizations and broaden the coalition committed to an inclusive multiracial democracy in order to lay the foundation for long-term transformational change.
- Defend the safety, security, and well-being of organizations and communities who will be most vulnerable to authoritarian attacks, including the physical safety and well-being of so many of us in the movement who will continue to face attack for our commitment to defending our democracy.
Democracy Fund grantees have led years-long efforts to ensure the integrity of our electoral systems, improve voter access, expand access to information, and motivate the public to get engaged in this election. We are inspired by their creativity and heart in the face of many challenges: from hurricanes, to misinformation, to voter suppression attempts. It is thanks to these efforts that we saw so many bright spots in this election, and we are deeply grateful. While some of these leaders pause to rest, process, and recover, others of us will need to take up the banner for them.
Today, like every day, we draw inspiration from the resolve of our grantees and partners, and from the stories of generations of pro-democracy champions around the world and in our own history. Democracy Fund remains committed to this fight and to you. We’ve got your back.
Blog
Ten years ago, Pierre Omidyar and I launched Democracy Fund and Democracy Fund Voice after a three-year incubation inside Omidyar Network. The world has changed a lot since then, and so have we.
Over the past decade, Democracy Fund and Democracy Fund Voice have committed $425 million in grants to strengthen American democracy. In that time, we have evolved and grown in our understanding of the perils facing our country and the importance of racial justice as fundamental to our work. We believe that achieving an inclusive multiracial democracy means we must fight for our democratic values now — while pursuing transformative changes that can unrig our political system.
As we enter the 2024 election season, the challenges in front of us are sobering. Despite overwhelming evidence of the dangers posed by authoritarians, new Democracy Fund research shows just how easily Americans will accept undemocratic actions if it benefits their side. While our grantees have worked to ensure consequences for those who tried to undermine our free and fair elections in 2020, the authoritarian threat has not subsided.
Today we face a set of challenges that create profound uncertainty about the future of our republic. The pro-democracy field cannot afford to allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the high stakes or range of threats. We’ve risen to the moment before and we can do so again.
Democracy Fund and Democracy Fund Voice are focused on ensuring the field is prepared and resourced for the challenges that may emerge before, during, and after the 2024 election cycle:
- We are working on protecting free and fair elections by shoring up election administration.
- We’re fighting back against mis- and disinformation.
- We’re strengthening accountability systems for authoritarian abuses that could come in 2025.
- We’re also calling on our peers to join us in making their nonpartisan election-related grants by April, so that groups have the resources they need in time.
While we stand up against urgent threats, we continue to pursue transformative change toward a political system that is open, just, resilient, and trustworthy. This work is complex and challenging, but innovators and advocates continue to make steady progress and real strides toward transformation.
For example, a decade ago, Democracy Fund began responding to warning signs that local journalism was under threat. The sector was seeing layoffs, newsrooms collapsing, racism and sensationalism were all too common, and communities were being left with little or no trustworthy reporting. Together with our grantee partners, however, we saw in this crisis an opportunity for reinvention. We saw the promise of promoting new business models and centering the voices of communities who were never well-served by traditional journalism. Today there is a growing and thriving landscape of non-profit journalism. A tremendous community of news innovators, including our grantees, have created a new way forward for civic journalism. It’s taken years of patient investment to build from a ripple to a wave — but today we see the wave.
This past fall, funders made a new commitment to scale these approaches. Democracy Fund and a coalition of 20 funders announced plans to invest more than $500 million into local news and information over the next five years. We see this as a down payment toward an even more ambitious vision to reimagine the place of local news in the life of communities and our democracy. Local news will never be what it once was, but Democracy Fund grantees have had the vision to rebuild it as something better. The work ahead of us, in journalism and across our democracy, will take more collective action like this.
Exactly what lies at the end of 2024 is uncertain, but with a clear focus on resourcing, mobilizing, and expanding the pro-democracy movement, our field can navigate the year. It is also the time to work with resilience and purpose on advancing the promising ideas that may grow to be the next wave of change for our democracy.
Blog
Over the past four years, we have seen a rise in dangerous rhetoric and policies targeting BAMEMSA communities, such as the Muslim, African, and asylum-seeker travel bans. There continues to be a relentless amount of money dedicated to funding Islamophobia and hate. At the same time, many leaders in BAMEMSA communities are on the frontlines fighting for an end to discriminatory policies and legislation.
Democracy Fund has dedicated a grantmaking portfolio to BAMEMSA-led organizations as they challenge infringements to their civil rights and combat polarizing and racist narratives. As part of this work, we have supported BAMEMSA-led funding collaboratives who help build the “critical social infrastructure”* of BAMESA communities, as well as a number of BAMEMSA led organizations.
We invite you to read the letter we signed and consider joining us in supporting the BAMEMSA community. The attack on civil rights, violation of norms, and unfettered hate speech we have seen over the past 20 years harms our democracy and makes our society more vulnerable to fissures and violence. Supporting BAMEMSA communities is crucial to the fight for a more open, just, and inclusive society and democracy.
*Brie Loskota, Executive Director of the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School, uses this term to describe the organizations, practices, norms, and relationships that make up a healthy society.
Report
The health of our American democracy requires strategic investment in community-led solutions that combat political violence and mitigate its cost to society.
The Costs of Political Violence in the United States — And the Benefits of Investing in Communities by Dr. Andrew Blum, executive director of the Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice at the University of San Diego, examines the human and economic costs of political violence and the strategic investments in evidence-based, community-led solutions that are addressing it.
The report looks at the recent surge in extremism, hate crimes, armed militias, and acts of police brutality and assesses the associated costs: injury and loss of life, trauma, property damage, lost business revenue and personal wages, and the acceleration of additional violence. Philanthropy can mitigate these costs, but investments must be directed toward initiatives led by targeted communities that at their core promote democratic goals and support community resilience.
Op-Ed
After a heroic effort to maintain the integrity of our election system over the past year, Wednesday’s inauguration marks a key turning point, one that requires philanthropy’s continued focus on the health of our democracy.
Report
Research on international violence and peacebuilding reveals that much can be done to prevent violence and increase resilience — if leaders with influence and resources are ready to face these challenges squarely now.
Report
Journalism has long fallen short of reflecting the diversity of the communities it purports to serve—something that is fundamental for supporting a healthy democracy. Last year, we released research from Dot Connector Studio that explored philanthropic support for increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in journalism from 2009-2015. We commissioned this research to learn how funders are investing—or not investing—in field-strengthening organizations working to make journalism more diverse and representative. What we found—unsurprisingly—was a significantly under-resourced field.
Now, we are turning to solutions. Our latest report, Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Journalism: What Funders Can Do, also produced by Dot Connector Studio, digs deeper into the vibrant field of organizations working to build DEI in journalism, and proposes concrete ways that funders can increase their support for this work.
Efforts to build DEI in journalism are led by both news outlets that specifically serve diverse populations and by field-strengthening organizations that provide support to these outlets, and to journalists from diverse backgrounds. These organizations are doing amazing work—often with limited resources—to create more representative journalism. But, as this research reveals, they need more support.
Our report found that:
- DEI-focused organizations receive a very small slice of journalism funding. This research confirms what we’ve long suspected: no matter how you slice the data, DEI within journalism is not a high priority for funders. Of the $1.1 billion that went into journalism more generally in the United States from 2013-2017, only 8.1 percent went to DEI-focused efforts.
- Funders are focused on big players. This research also reveals that funders are focused on bigger players, not a diverse pool of smaller grantees. The data show multiple funders supporting the same, better-resourced organizations. And while some organizations receive funds from multiple foundations, foundations are less likely to support many different organizations across the field at the same time.
- Foundations are the lifeline for DEI-focused organizations. This research shows that 74 percent of revenue for DEI-focused field-building organizations comes from grants and contributions. While many organizations are experimenting with new revenue streams, echoing trends in the broader nonprofit news space, organizations continue to be reliant on foundations to provide the bulk of funding.
What can funders do to improve the situation?
Funders need to work together with urgency and intentionality to avoid grantmaking that reinforces the inequalities this research highlights. Our report proposes two actions that funders can take right now:
1. Funders can join a new collaborative effort: the Racial Equity in Journalism Fund (REJF). This fund is a collaborative that includes Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Democracy Fund, the Ford Foundation, the Google News Initiative, and the News Integrity Initiative at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. REJF is committed to investing in news organizations led by and serving communities of color; supporting news projects that provide information to communities that face the greatest barriers in access to news; and strengthening the organizations that are developing creative and innovative ways to reach communities with relevant news.
“Media organizations led by people of color have long been a vanguard of our democracy, holding the powerful accountable for the ways it treats its most vulnerable citizens in ways mainstream media has often failed to do. It was organizations such as the black press that campaigned most vigorously to abolish slavery, to pass federal legislation against lynching, and to end Jim Crow, when mainstream media either ignored these stories altogether or sided with the powerful” —Nikole Hannah-Jones, journalist at the New York Times Magazine and co-founder of the Ida B. Wells Society of Investigative Reporting.
2. Funders can start sharing more resources across a diverse pool of grantees. Democracy Fund’s Journalism DEI Tracker is a tool that helps funders identify prospective grantees and find useful resources to share with current grantees. The tool includes over 70 organizations and outlets in the field; professional development and training opportunities for journalists from diverse backgrounds; a list of HBCUs, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, and Tribal Colleges with journalism and communications programs to include in recruitment efforts to ensure a more diverse pipeline; and resources for journalism organizations to promote respectful and inclusive coverage. We will continue to update this living document on an ongoing basis.
We hope this report will inspire more funders to action. But it’s just the start: Democracy Fund itself has more work to do to put equity at the heart of how it does its grantmaking in media and journalism. We are still learning and listening and remaining open and accountable.
The events that unfolded in Charlottesville a year ago were a shocking and tragic reminder that the escalation of racism, nativism, and xenophobia in our national discourse is toxic and potentially deadly.
Last year, we saw a 12% increase in hate crimes in our nation’s ten largest cities, according to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism. New research from Professor Thomas Main further documents that so-called “alt-right” websites saw remarkable increases in web traffic between September 2016 and February of this year—collectively reaching larger audiences than some mainstream center-right online publications. And a year that began with the President excusing the violence in Charlottesville has continued with his administration using vile, dehumanizing language to describe immigrants and implementing a racially-charged family separation policy that has shocked the nation.
At Democracy Fund, we know that defending our democracy and standing up for our core values means pushing back on these forces, wherever they emerge. In many ways, the story of Charlottesville over the past year highlights the importance of several of our core programs, from our initiative on the health of local journalism to our special project on a just and inclusive society.
Let’s start with the critical role played by local journalism.
Powerful reporting of the rally and counter protests captured the attention of the nation. At a time when local news outlets are shuttering, the Pulitzer Prize winning photo-journalism of the Charlottesville Daily Progress demonstrated the industry’s role in telling local stories, and of the importance of Democracy Fund’s efforts to support innovators reinventing the business model for local news.
The Daily Progress works hand in glove with Charlottesville Tomorrow, a non-profit newsroom that is a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News – a Democracy Fund grantee that supports mission-driven journalism. Together, the outlets tracked the events of last summer and their aftermath, ensuring that the coverage was both meaningful nationally and true to the voices of the local community. Around the country we are seeing creative collaborations like this one beginning to stitch together news ecosystems in ways that make local news more resilient.
The courts have also stepped in to play an important role.
The Charlottesville community has found a measure of justice for the events of last summer through an innovative lawsuit by the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University (another Democracy Fund grantee). Last year, ICAP sued the organizers of Unite the Right under a 1776 Virginia law prohibiting “unlawful paramilitary activity.” Recently, the rally’s lead organizer Jason Kessler became the final of over a dozen defendants to enter into a consent decree resolving that lawsuit. Under the terms of the settlement, Kessler promised he will not facilitate—and rather will actively discourage—armed paramilitary activity at any future rallies in Charlottesville.
Across the nation, our grantees are working to bring together Americans of all backgrounds to affirm our shared commitment to building a pluralistic, inclusive future. Veterans for American Ideals, for example, this year reached over 4 million people with their #WhatIFoughtFor campaign, a moving portrait that portrayed refugees alongside former service members to emphasize that embracing diversity is a core American value. Faith in Public Life is bringing together faith leaders to reject hate and stand at the defense of communities under attack. Pro Publica’s Documenting Hate project is helping to better track hate and bias crime to enrich the national understanding and conversation about hate incidents. And Civic Nation has joined forces with NBC Universal to relaunch #ErasetheHate, a campaign to help amplify and accelerate the work of people across the country who are combatting hate in unique and innovative ways.
Americans of all stripes have come together over the past few years to assert their commitment to the democratic values on which this country was founded. Across the nation, we’ve seen people stand up in defense of communities under attack, a strong public repudiation of the racist rhetoric and policies by public figures, and increased philanthropic giving to efforts increasing tolerance and inclusion. We’ve also seen record numbers of women and people of color run for elected office, claiming their place in American democracy as never before. These actions represent a counterweight to the types of hatred we saw last year in Charlottesville.
As we commemorate the anniversary of the events in Charlottesville, Unite the Right is preparing to hold rallies in Charlottesville and right here in Washington, D.C. While Democracy Fund believes deeply in the protection of free speech, we believe that these demonstrations must be met vigorously and must not be allowed to use violence to intimidate others. Today and every day, we find hope and inspiration in the actions of those who stand against hatred and against those actions and rhetoric that offend the human dignity of all.