Grants Database

Democracy Fund collaborates with our grantees, donors, and other partners to strengthen and expand the movement for an inclusive, multiracial democracy. We are proud to have supported more than 400 organizations doing this work.

Program Areas
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Elections and Voting
General and Field Building
Governance
Just and Inclusive Society
President's Office
Public Square
Strategies
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Civil & Human Rights Online
Constructive Politics
Digital Democracy
Ecosystem News
Empowering Congress
Engaged Journalism
Equitable Civic Infrastructure
General
Investigative Journalism
Journalism & Power Building
News & Information Ecosystems
Oversight and Accountability
Power Building in Marginalized Communities
Press Freedom
Preventing Authoritarian Abuse of Power
Previous Strategy
Pro-Voter Reform
Representative Institutions
Representative Leadership
Resilient Elections
Rights and Dignity
Roadmap for American Democracy
State and Local Accountability
Trust in Elections
Voter-Centric Election Administration
Voting Power
Organization Name (A-Z) Grant Amount Type Program Area Year
  • Internet Archive
  • $100,000.00
  • Project
  • Elections and Voting
  • 2016

The Political TV Ad Archive provides a searchable, viewable, and shareable online archive of 2016 political TV ads, with fact-checking and reporting citizens can trust. The project is open source and available on Github.

Project:

Political TV Ad Archive 2016 II

Foundation Center Topic:

Campaigns, Elections, and Voting/Campaign Finance

Grant Length:

Sep 2016 to Aug 2017

Strategy:

Previous Strategy
  • The Campaign Legal Center, Inc.
  • $80,000.00
  • Project
  • Elections and Voting
  • 2016

The Campaign Legal Center (CLC) is forming a Litigation Strategy Council (LSC), which is comprised of a small group of the country’s best and most experienced constitutional litigators to collaborate on and lead the development of a pragmatic and winning strategy to transform campaign finance jurisprudence in the courts.

Project:

Litigation Strategy Council

Foundation Center Topic:

Campaigns, Elections, and Voting/Campaign Finance

Grant Length:

Sep 2016 to Sep 2017

Strategy:

Previous Strategy
  • New America Foundation
  • $75,000.00
  • Project
  • Public Square
  • 2016

The Political Reform program of New America develops new strategies and innovations to repair the dysfunction of government, restore trust, and rebuild the promise of American democracy.

Project:

Participatory Budgeting Solutions and Political Reform

Foundation Center Topic:

Government/Executive Branch Performance, Civic Participation/Civic Education and Leadership

Grant Length:

Nov 2016 to Oct 2017

Strategy:

Previous Strategy
  • Partnership for Public Service Inc.
  • $250,000.00
  • General Operating Support
  • Governance
  • 2016

The Partnership for Public Service builds trust and better relationships between the branches of the federal government, enhances accountability for Congressional stewardship for the Executive Branch, and increases general understanding of the challenges facing the government.

Project:

General Operating Support

Foundation Center Topic:

Government/Legislative Branch Performance, Government/Executive Branch Performance

Grant Length:

Apr 2016 to Mar 2018

Strategy:

Empowering Congress
  • Free Press
  • $620,000.00
  • Project
  • Public Square
  • 2016

To support the core journalism program at Free Press, which is building an advocacy approach that combines credible, rigorous analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of local media ecosystems with a public engagement approach.

Project:

Journalism Program and NJ News Replication

Foundation Center Topic:

Media/Journalism, Media/Journalism Education and Training

Grant Length:

Sep 2016 to Aug 2018

Strategy:

Ecosystem News
  • MOAA Military Family Initiative
  • $218,300.00
  • Project
  • Elections and Voting
  • 2016

MOAA Military Family Initiative (MOAA) will use new marketing efforts and current publications to inform and remind members of the military and their families of their federal rights as a UOCAVA (Uniformed Overseas Citizen Absentee Voting Act) voter.

Project:

Military Voter Education Project (MVEP)

Foundation Center Topic:

Campaigns, Elections, and Voting

Grant Length:

Jun 2016 to Jun 2017

Strategy:

Voter-Centric Election Administration
  • Ignite
  • $99,000.00
  • Project
  • Governance
  • 2016

This grant will support efforts by IGNITE and Empowered Women to bring together women-focused organizations and to help them plan ways to work together to achieve political parity in the United States. These organizations will do this through strategic planning and holding convenings of organizations who have similar goals but do not always work together toward those common goals. 

Project:

Strategic Planning Support

Foundation Center Topic:

Government/Legislative Branch Performance, Civic Participation/Public Participation, Civic Participation/Civic Education and Leadership

Grant Length:

Dec 2016 to Dec 2017

Strategy:

Constructive Politics
  • Empowered Women
  • $66,000.00
  • Project
  • Governance
  • 2016

This grant will support efforts by IGNITE and Empowered Women to bring together women-focused organizations and to help them plan ways to work together to achieve political parity in the United States. These organizations will do this through strategic planning and holding convenings of organizations who have similar goals but do not always work together toward those common goals. 

Project:

Strategic Planning Support

Foundation Center Topic:

Government/Legislative Branch Performance, Civic Participation/Public Participation, Civic Participation/Civic Education and Leadership

Grant Length:

Dec 2016 to Dec 2017

Strategy:

Constructive Politics
  • The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York
  • $100,000.00
  • Project
  • Public Square
  • 2016

This is a renewal grant to CJR’s United States Project to support experimentation in building local journalism capacity in the areas of collaboration, innovation, impact, and funding in target states.

Project:

CJR's United States Project - Renewal

Foundation Center Topic:

Media/Journalism Education and Training

Grant Length:

Feb 2016 to Aug 2016

Strategy:

Ecosystem News
  • Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education
  • $70,000.00
  • Project
  • Public Square
  • 2016

The purpose of this grant is to further develop Maynard’s strategic plan and to support reporting on diversity in journalism. This will help them further build out from their priorities developed following Knight’s support for a human centered design work.

Project:

Strategic Planning Support

Foundation Center Topic:

Media/Journalism Education and Training

Grant Length:

Dec 2016 to Nov 2017

Strategy:

Engaged Journalism
  • University of North Texas Foundation
  • $16,000.00
  • Project
  • Public Square
  • 2016

The primary goal of this study is to qualitatively evaluate the impact of diversity placement programs on the recruitment and retention of minority journalists in U.S. newspaper newsrooms between 2000 and 2015. This also allows us to engage a scholar interested in journalism institutions with a focus on inclusion, who we may continue to engage throughout our strategy implementation.

Project:

Diversity in Journalism Research

Foundation Center Topic:

Media/Journalism

Grant Length:

Nov 2016 to Apr 2018

Strategy:

Engaged Journalism
  • New Venture Fund
  • $250,000.00
  • Project
  • Elections and Voting
  • 2016

To strengthen the field of elections and voting research through participation in the Civic Engagement and Elections Research Collaborative Fund (“the Collaborative Fund”), which is a joint effort with other democracy funders. The Collaborative Fund seeks to provide funding for academic and policy research that supports the work of the philanthropic sector, public and nonprofit leaders and institutions, advocates, academics, and other stakeholders.

Project:

The Civic Engagement and Elections Research Collaborative Fund

Foundation Center Topic:

Campaigns, Elections, and Voting/Election Administration

Grant Length:

Oct 2016 to Sep 2017

Strategy:

Voter-Centric Election Administration
  • Ethics and Public Policy Center, Inc.
  • $544,000.00
  • Project
  • President's Office
  • 2016

Grantee will review existing research on the electorate,  will conduct original research and will facilitate follow up discussion and analysis regarding the findings of their research. Research and analysis will be released after the November 2016 elections and in 2017 and 2018.

Project:

Understanding the American Electorate

Foundation Center Topic:

Civic Participation/Public Participation

Grant Length:

Aug 2016 to Dec 2020

Strategy:

General
  • New York University
  • $275,000.00
  • Project
  • Public Square
  • 2017

The Dutch news site, De Correspondent – which has solved the sustainability problem by becoming a world leader in member-supported journalism — wants to bring its formula to the US. This grant would fund a year of research and incubation at NYU and would create a laboratory to test De Correspondent’s models and lessons in the American context and focus on sharing those lessons throughout nonprofit news in the United States.

Project:

Membership Puzzle Project

Foundation Center Topic:

Media/Journalism Education and Training

Grant Length:

Apr 2017 to Sep 2018

Strategy:

Investigative Journalism
  • Trustees of Tufts College
  • $200,000.00
  • Project
  • Elections and Voting
  • 2017

To provide support for a 2-year research project that seeks to better understand the reasons why hard-to-reach youth populations choose not to vote and then create a set of guidelines that election officials can use to help address the needs of young voters. 

Project:

Working with Election Officials to Address Youth Participation

Foundation Center Topic:

Campaigns, Elections, and Voting/Voter Education, Registration, and Turnout

Grant Length:

Nov 2017 to Oct 2019

Strategy:

Pro-Voter Reform
  • Yale University
  • $90,000.00
  • Project
  • President's Office
  • 2017

BrightLinesWatch is a project to track the potential corrosion of democratic norms through the expert opinion of domestic and international political scientists. The grant will also fund an international conference and a series of briefing papers using international experiences to better understand potential threats to American democracy.

Project:

BrightLines Watch

Foundation Center Topic:

Other

Grant Length:

Mar 2017 to Feb 2018

Strategy:

General
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • $75,000.00
  • Project
  • Public Square
  • 2017

This grant will support initial research into the surveillance, experimentation, and persuasion capabilities of platforms such as Facebook and Google and the ways we can prevent or mitigate the use of these capabilities by authoritarians. The initial funding will support the development of a plan for an academic center devoted to these issues as well as the hiring of research support staff for the primary investigator.

Project:

Research on Platform Surveillance and Authoritarianism

Foundation Center Topic:

Media

Grant Length:

Dec 2017 to May 2020

Strategy:

Digital Democracy
  • Institute for Social Policy and Understanding
  • $75,000.00
  • General Operating Support
  • Just and Inclusive Society
  • 2017

To provide general operating support for the Institute of Social Policy and Understanding as they seek to continue to conduct research around the American Muslim community, the challenges the communities face, and to produce a series of online training for media professionals that are covering issues effecting the community.

Project:

General Operating Support

Foundation Center Topic:

Other, Media/Media Access and Policy

Grant Length:

Jun 2017 to May 2018

Strategy:

General
  • Over Zero
  • $150,000.00
  • Project
  • Just and Inclusive Society
  • 2017

To provide support to Over Zero in it’s aim to bring about the reduction and prevention of violence and to create societal resilience to violence in the United States.  

Project:

Support for Over Zero

Foundation Center Topic:

Other

Grant Length:

Nov 2017 to Oct 2018

Strategy:

General
  • The German Marshall Fund of the United States
  • $300,000.00
  • Project
  • Elections and Voting
  • 2017

To provide quick, expansive capacity for the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund to identify and support the best methods of pushing back on foreign threats to our US political system, whether they be through elections, misinformation and attempts to intervene in our governance programs. 

Project:

Project on Alliance for Securing Democracy (US)

Foundation Center Topic:

Media, Government/Legislative Branch Performance, Campaigns, Elections, and Voting/Election Administration

Grant Length:

Nov 2017 to Oct 2018

Strategy:

Trust in Elections
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