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Democracy Fund Invests in the Promise of Representative Institutions

October 10, 2024

Americans have witnessed our democracy lurch from crisis to crisis in recent years. The stakes have become higher in each election, and our country remains stuck in an outdated political system that fails to reflect the will of most Americans. We need to reimagine our election system and governing institutions so we can fulfill the promise of a democracy where all voices carry equal weight and have real representation at all levels of power.

Currently, our institutions — including the Senate, the Supreme Court, and the Electoral College — are set up to privilege the interests of a small minority. At the same time, our “winner-take-all” election system has given outsized power to extremists, leaving voters frustrated by the lack of options on the ballot. These interrelated issues have caused many Americans to question the integrity of our governing institutions.

It’s time to shift power to the people and communities that have been excluded for far too long.

Over the past year, Democracy Fund has advanced its new Representative Institutions strategy, working toward long-term, transformational changes to our institutions and election systems at the local, state, and federal levels. By looking beyond incremental reforms, we are confronting the anti-majoritarian practices embedded in our democracy’s foundation and moving closer to achieving the principle of “one person, one vote.”

To achieve this vision, we have developed a field-building strategy that supports organizations developing critical networks, resources, and infrastructure to advance structural changes to our democracy. We define these changes as improvements that lead to fairer representation and better governing institutions.

Our strategy prioritizes support for organizations that include community perspectives and engage diverse audiences. Far too often, these voices have been under-represented in reform efforts, and important considerations — such as racial and gender justice — have been overlooked in structural change efforts.

One organization we support, Democracy Rising, launched in 2020 with a mission to engage communities in reimagining and transforming our democracy. It helps voters, leaders of color, and election administrators adapt to new election systems such as proportional representation. This work is building a foundation for structural change and the community power required to achieve it.

Important work is also occurring to bring these leaders together with others in civil society. The George Washington University Law School’s Multiracial Democracy Project convenes legal scholars, civil rights leaders, and democracy reformers to examine the harms of our current system and explore new forms of representation that better serve communities of color. These improvements could provide the foundation for a new voting rights consensus — one that more closely reflects an increasingly multiracial and multicultural United States.

“These organizations are laying the groundwork for institutional changes that may not be fully realized in this generation, but must move forward today. Our democracy’s future depends on their efforts to shift the power of the vote back to the majority,” says Sean Raymond, Governance Senior Program Associate at Democracy Fund.

In 2024, Democracy Fund invested nearly $4 million to support organizations and changemakers advancing transformational shifts in our governing and electoral institutions.

“While we must respond to urgent threats facing our democracy, these investments allow us to simultaneously work toward reimagining our institutions and making our political system fairer,” says Winny Chen, Associate Director of Governance at Democracy Fund.

2024 Representative Institutions Grantees

Democracy Fund is proud to announce the 2024 Representative Institutions grantees, who all share a commitment to building a democracy in which all voters have meaningful representation and a stake in governing.

The 2024 Representative Institutions grantees include:

Boston Review, to support its forum on fusion voting and multi-party democracy.
Center for American Progress, Democracy & Elections Program, to bring together the progressive community to combat countermajoritarian features in our federal government and encourage adoption of election systems reforms.
Center for Effective Government at the University of Chicago, to launch a series of research primers and events that make cutting-edge scholarship on structural democracy accessible to those who can use it.
Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race & Justice at Harvard Law School, to convene legal scholars, civil rights leaders, and advocates to study, identify, and recommend electoral systems reforms that increase representation for all voters, particularly historically underrepresented voters of color, as part of its Guinier Project on Strengthening a Diverse Democracy.
Cornell University, Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Group Lab, to produce critical research and leading-edge modeling that will inform communities’ selection of election systems reform, while building a deeper evidence base for the field of structural democracy.
Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, to support its symposium on proportional representation and various implications of the reform, including effects on gerrymandering and ramifications for racial representation.
Democracy Revival Center, to bring the next generation of social and economic justice leaders, working across issue siloes, into the long-term fight to transform our political and governing institutions.
Democracy Rising, to provide effective, community-centered support for implementation of structural reforms that enable proportional representation and build stronger support infrastructure for women of color in public service.
FairVote, to advance better election systems in the United States through research, advocacy, and coalition-building.
Future of the Senate Project (Brookings Institution), to convene leading experts and practitioners to examine modern-day challenges to the Senate, such as the filibuster, malapportionment, and the need for modernization.
George Washington University Law School, Multiracial Democracy Project, to convene and build the capacity of prominent civil rights organizations to help shape the structural democracy movement.
New America, Political Reform Program, to build the research and intellectual architecture for electoral systems reforms, such as fusion voting, ranked choice voting, and proportional representation.
RepresentWomen, to advance systems-level structural solutions that increase and improve women’s political representation.
Sightline Institute, Democracy Program, to build momentum toward pro-voter structural reforms in the Cascadia region through research, education, and implementation support.

This portfolio of grantees represents just a portion of the investments needed to transform our political system. Democracy Fund’s work complements the efforts supported by our partner organization Democracy Fund Voice, a nonpartisan 501(c)(4) that empowers organizations and communities to express their political voice through lobbying, advocacy, ballot initiatives, and campaigns at the federal, state, and local levels. Democracy Fund Voice’s grantees marshal the collective power of communities to advocate for changes to achieve a multi-party, proportional representation system and to enact overdue reforms to institutions like the Senate and the Supreme Court.

In the coming months, look out for more updates and news about Democracy Fund Voice’s investments.

Through the combined support of Democracy Fund, Democracy Fund Voice, and many other critical philanthropic partners, a new field is emerging to advance much needed, transformational changes in our democracy. Collaboration with partners and grantees is essential to achieve our vision of an inclusive, multiracial democracy — one where our political system is open, just, resilient, and trustworthy. We invite you to join us and learn more about our work.

Please Note: Democracy Fund does not accept unsolicited business plans, proposals, or personal requests. For more information on our work and grantees, sign up for updates. For general inquiries, contact info@democracyfund.org. To view a complete list of grantees, visit our grants database.

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Our Work is Not Done After Election Day

Joe Goldman

October 9, 2024

Our grantees are on the frontlines of the 2024 election, doing everything they can to ensure free, fair, and representative elections for our country. We know their work will not be done on Election Day — yet many of these nonpartisan organizations typically experience a sudden dropoff in funding after November.

This withdrawal of support threatens their ability to resist the authoritarian playbook, fuel a pro-democracy governing agenda, and build durable power to support an inclusive, multi-racial democracy. Anti-democracy forces don’t defund their infrastructure after every election cycle, forcing groups to downsize and lose momentum — and we shouldn’t either.

That’s why we’re launching a new campaign called Election Day to Every Day. Following on the success of this year’s All by April campaign, we’re inviting the philanthropic community to join us in ensuring the pro-democracy movement can be sustainable and resilient not just leading into Election Day, but every day that follows.

The boom and bust cycle of election-year giving is toxic. Unless we change our behavior as donors, our grantees will not be able to make progress toward the inclusive multiracial democracy that is so vital for everything we care about.

“People’s Action Institute is working together with networks and organizers across the country to scale up the movement for social justice. We can’t maintain the momentum we need to defeat authoritarianism when funding across the field drops off after every election. But with consistent support, we can strengthen our communities to create a vibrant, multiracial democracy that works for all of us.” – Sulma Arias, Executive Director, People’s Action Institute

With the Election Day to Every Day campaign, we are trying to do things differently. Together, philanthropy will continue our support for building an inclusive multiracial democracy. As a community, we commit to:

Start Planning Our 2025 Giving Now: We lose vital time when we fail to plan ahead and consider alternative scenarios for the future. Donors need to consider how our changing context could impact our strategy and priorities, so that we and our grantees can respond quickly to new needs on the ground. Anti-democracy forces are well-resourced and ready for multiple governing scenarios. We need to prepare for the same. Now is the time to start planning – not next year.
Provide a Bridge into Next Year: Many grantees come out of a hard fought election exhausted and with real gaps in funding. It’s not uncommon for leadership transitions to take place – further complicating the situation. Moving up grant decisions to the first quarter of 2025 or providing bridge funding allows grantees to avoid having to lay off staff and eases the pressure as they pivot to respond to new challenges.
Commit to Multi-Year Support: The single most important thing that donors can do for the health of our grantees is to provide multi-year support. Doing so allows them to plan, build infrastructure, and deploy longer-range strategies. This longer-term view makes our grantees more resilient to a changing environment.
Support Safety and Security: Grantees are facing evolving safety and security threats leading up to and following Election Day. Many are encountering cyber attacks and threats of physical violence. All of them have staff who are experiencing burn-out and trauma. If we want our grantees to sustain themselves past Election Day, we need to provide for their safety and well-being.

Individual donors, foundations, donor advisors, and other philanthropic organizations are all invited to join this critical campaign to change the culture of philanthropy. You can join by becoming an “Election Day to Every Day” signatory and by spreading the word within your networks.

Together, we can ensure the pro-democracy field is ready for the future. We came together powerfully earlier this year under the All by April banner, which mobilized at least $155 million to ensure our grantees had the resources they needed early in an important election year. Now we must keep our foot on the gas and make sure our democracy field partners know that we have their backs not just on Election Day, but Every Day.

Please feel free to reach out to us with any questions.

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What We Learned from All by April

Heather Creek

October 4, 2024

Earlier this year, Democracy Fund joined with funders from across the philanthropic community to commit to making their election-related grants by the end of April. The All by April campaign attracted 174 signers — including foundations, donor networks, advisors, and individual donors — who committed to move funds earlier in the year, simplify grant processes, and encourage their peers to do the same.

By providing early financial support, All by April aimed to empower nonpartisan, nonprofit organizations to plan and execute their election strategies more effectively, build out programs at lower costs, and engage voters earlier in the election cycle. We are proud to share the results from this campaign and outline how funders can carry forward the lessons into their ongoing election-related grantmaking.

The Success of All by April

To understand the impact of the All by April campaign, Democracy Fund collaborated with Grassroots Solutions on an evaluation. Our topline findings include:

1. The campaign mobilized at least $155 million.

Of the 174 signers of the campaign, 60 percent were direct grant makers and 40 percent were groups that work with funders like donor advisors, intermediaries, and funder affinity groups. Forty-seven of the funders and individual donors provided data on their giving between January and April of 2024. They reported making $79 million in new 501(c)(3) grants for election-related work and moving up $61 million in scheduled grant payments so that grantees would have access to funds earlier in the year. The campaign’s message also reached groups that were not able to sign onto the campaign (often due to their organization’s policy on signing public commitments). Entities that didn’t sign the campaign but reported that it still influenced their giving reported $13.7 million in new grants and $3.25 million in payments moved up to the first four months of 2024. In total, the campaign mobilized at least $155 million in election-related support.

“AbA inspired us to make additional gifts — in addition to the 2024 and multi-year funding we had already provided — and to do so before the end of April.”
— All by April Participant (Grantmaker)

2. The majority of All by April signers reported that they changed their plans for giving in 2024 because of the campaign.

The campaign’s deadlines and structure created the motivation that moved signers to action – especially among those who were newer to election-related giving. Among direct grantmakers in the survey, 57 percent gave between 76-100 percent of their funding for elections work by April. Those who did not change their giving based on All by April reported that they had already planned to move their funds early or faced internal barriers that prevented them from doing so.

“Once we had our list of grantees, we might have spent more time obsessing over allocation amounts. Having taken the pledge helped inspire us to stop worrying and get the money moving.”
— All by April Participant (Grantmaker)

3. The campaign changed expectations about how philanthropy can support election-related work.

Nearly all of the campaign signers (98%) reported that they were already aware of the benefits of early money for election-related work before the campaign began, but they lacked the motivation and urgency to respond to the field’s need. Signers who were not direct grantmakers, but who advise donors or convene donor networks, reported that the campaign created a “movement wide” framing that gave them the language to encourage earlier giving among their clients and members.

“It allowed me to have conversations with peer funders about the importance of moving early. It created a very helpful (even if somewhat artificial) deadline.”
— All by April Participant (Donor Advisor)

“We used the All by April frame to push our entire donor community for larger, earlier giving, and to make the case for c4 money also. it was helpful to have “movement wide” framing, coordination and momentum to support the work we would have done.”
— All by April participant (Philanthropic Network)

We are grateful to all of the campaign signers who committed to meet the urgent needs of the field when the funds would be most useful. We are especially grateful to the signers who participated in the evaluation and shared their funding data. This transparency allows us all to learn together and continue to improve the way we support free, fair, and representative elections.

Exploring Practices to Move Money Faster

The All by April campaign evaluation revealed that some funders need to make intentional changes to their practices to meet the needs of the field. Funders reported needing to move their timeline for considering new grants or shift other internal processes — like grant amendment requirements — in order to move up payments.

At Democracy Fund and amongst survey respondents, we noted several practices that helped funders move funds quickly:

Streamlining the grant amendment process. Funders cut internal red tape and asked that grantees only submit an updated budget to process an amendment.
Adopting a shorter renewal application. A shorter application helped to avoid asking grantees to send information their current funders already had.

Starting in 2025, planning to default to making payments for election-related grants in Q1 of each year.

Funders may also consider other established time-saving practices like accepting applications that grantees have prepared for other funders or funding intermediaries who may have existing grantee relationships and can regrant money into state and local groups.

Looking Ahead: Funders Need to Sustain the Field Between Elections

Our grantees are on the frontlines of the 2024 election, doing everything they can to ensure it is free, fair, and representative. But we know their work is not over on Election Day. Anti-democracy forces don’t defund their infrastructure after every election cycle, forcing groups to downsize and lose momentum — and we shouldn’t either.

Yet many grantees see a financial cliff after November. This sudden dropoff in funding threatens their ability to resist the authoritarian playbook, fuel a governing agenda, and build durable power in service of creating a more inclusive, multi-racial democracy.

To ensure we are meeting these needs, we will be announcing a new campaign next week, called “Election Day to Every Day” to ensure our pro-democracy field is ready for any and all scenarios that lie ahead in the post-election period. We must keep our foot on the gas and make sure our field partners know that we have their backs not only on Election Day, but Every Day that follows.

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How (and Why) Democracy Fund is Experimenting with Grantee Reporting Models

October 3, 2024

In 2020, our Digital Democracy portfolio (DDP) wanted to find a way to learn more about our grantees’ challenges while also being mindful of their limited time during a turbulent year. We decided to hold learning conversations with our grantees instead of commissioning formal evaluations, so that we could quickly extend support. Our learning and evaluation partner, ORS Impact, led these conversations by hosting 90-minute small group discussions with grantees, focusing on their work ensuring tech, telecom and media serves communities of color, trends they were seeing across the digital rights movement, and challenges they faced. After a couple of iterations of these yearly learning conversations, we adapted them to count as narrative grant reports, providing the option to replace the traditional, often time-consuming annual narrative reports written by each DDP grantee.

ORS Impact currently conducts these sessions on an annual basis and prepares a final report, which we submit internally to meet the grant reporting requirement. This method of reporting and evaluation is an efficient way to get all the information we need to explore how grantees’ actions lead to outcomes in the aggregate. It also helps us adjust our strategies and activities to best support grantees and the field. Note: Initially, Democracy Fund staff attended the small group sessions. We no longer participate in the sessions because we know our presence creates power imbalances and may alter results.

This new method is just one way that Democracy Fund is experimenting with different forms of reporting that are inclusive, add value to the field, and embrace complexity (tenets of our Strategy, Impact and Learning values).

While the learning cohorts are a unique practice of DDP, Democracy Fund has been using other forms of reporting, like one-on-one verbal reporting, in addition to traditional narrative reports. Most Democracy Fund grantees have the choice between verbal reports or narrative reports, which so far, caters to each grantee’s preferences and reduces the burden on their time and energy.

What we’ve learned from this new model

Over the past four years of experimenting with this method of reporting, DDP grantees have had in-depth discussions on topics ranging from field infrastructure, coordination and networks, and strategies connecting research and advocacy. We have been able to learn a lot from our grantees on these topics, with a richness of findings that is only possible through group conversations.

The small group dynamic has many advantages:

Facilitating real-time learning for us and our grantees. This allows us to spot more connections and patterns across our portfolio, which a traditional one-off narrative report doesn’t do.
Ensuring our grantees have access to the same learnings we do. We share the final report back to grantees and share it with other partners, making our learnings known to the field.
Building relationships and more coordination between grantees.
Reducing grantees’ time spent on reporting.

Most importantly, this approach de-centers the funder and ensures that learning isn’t happening in a vacuum.

There two disadvantages worth noting:

Unlike with written grant reports, the findings from group discussions are aggregated and anonymous so there is less specificity and consistency year over year.
This method, along with verbal reporting, caters to verbal processors, and not everyone prefers learning this way.

Because of our learning philosophy to embrace complexity and conduct learning activities that are inclusive and add value to the field, these disadvantages do not outweigh the benefits of this reporting method. We value our grantees’ time and expertise, and strive to help build more opportunities for coordination.

What we learned from DDP grantees in 2024

This year’s findings have produced valuable insights for the DDP team and our grantees. We asked our grantees about field coordination, philanthropy’s impact on the field, infrastructure support, and how to support local organizing work. These topics, among others, were best discussed without Democracy Fund in the room, to promote candor and provide a safe space. The grantees raised that funder-driven shifts create disruption, loss of strategic agency, and competition and instability. When shifts happen, funders should provide transparency and transition support, and connections to other funders.

Another finding worth noting from this year’s conversations was about supporting local organizing. Our grantees who do local organizing around tech justice talked about the importance of trusted relationships between organizations, community visioning processes, and national policy organizations taking direction from community organizing. The grantees were able to riff on each other’s ideas, and find commonalities across locales. This discussion was less likely to have been as rich or honest if it had happened in a one-on-one conversation.

More findings from the 2024 learning cohorts, such as what grantees surfaced as infrastructure needs and inhibitors to local organizing can be found in our 2024 summary report.

Funders need to consider the impact of their reporting models

As trust-based philanthropy takes hold across the field, more and more funders are looking for methods to learn alongside their grantees and track changes within the field without creating an overwhelming burden on grantees. As a result of Democracy Fund’s recent Grantee Perception Survey, we are committed to finding more ways to share what we are learning. We encourage other funders to do the same, and avoid reporting requirements that put funders’ needs above those of grantees.

Here are some resources, organizations, and individuals that informed shifts in our internal reporting requirements:

Please reach out to learn more about Democracy Fund’s learning processes.

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3.6 Million U.S. Citizens Can’t Participate in Democracy. Here’s How Philanthropy Can Help

Javier H. Valdés and Winny Chen

September 24, 2024

Not only are people from the U.S. territories unable to vote or access government benefits, they’re also largely ignored by grant makers.

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Worried about misinformation this election year? Here’s what funders can do.

Angelica Das

August 15, 2024

Misinformation is hardly a new problem, but it often spikes around breaking news events. Racist narratives and conspiracy theories have rapidly escalated after the launch of Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign. Misinformation from across the political spectrum about the motivations behind the attempted assassination of former President Trump has also intensified.

The spread of misinformation is being acutely accelerated by political violence and the amplification of false AI-generated media. Newsrooms and journalists face staggering challenges to deliver reliable information to communities in a presidential election year — especially when these tensions are high.

The good news is we know more about the solutions today than ever before. The missing piece is the scale of resources needed to adequately respond to today’s challenges.

Philanthropy can address these challenges by combating misinformation and amplifying trustworthy information. Both actions are essential this election year and beyond to ensure communities have the necessary information to make decisions that impact their daily lives. It’s not too late to invest in this strategy.

Here are four ways that pro-democracy and journalism funders can act now:

1. Fund the organizers and experts who are mobilizing against misinformation. They are working right now to disrupt bad actors, hold Big Tech accountable, and intervene against harmful and false information campaigns targeting voters, particularly communities of color. Here are some examples of Democracy Fund grantees doing the work:

A coalition of media and tech advocates including Free Press and MediaJustice are running the Change the Terms campaign to hold companies accountable when their technology is used to discriminate and suppress the vote.
Check My Ads is following the money from ads that show up next to authoritarian messaging that seeks to undermine the election.
Nonpartisan researchers at Protect Democracy and Over Zero are publishing essential resources that support journalists in explaining the various threats to democracy and de-escalating hate speech and dangerous rhetoric.
Democracy SOS and the Center for Cooperative Media are providing crucial support for journalists to stay prepared and quickly respond to emergent issues. This includes curating resources for journalists, providing direct support to newsrooms, and boosting reporting on democratic backsliding, political violence, and misinformation in real time.

2. Fund newsrooms who are sharing trustworthy information. Newsrooms have the ideas, strategies, and motivation to meet this moment and are ready to move with more resources. In particular, newsrooms led by people of color have unparalleled reach and trust with the communities they serve — positioning them to counter misinformation and drive civic engagement. Here are some ways to find and support newsrooms:

Use the Center for Community Media’s Maps & Directories to find and fund diverse community media outlets.
Visit the INN Network Directory to find national and local independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan, and public service news organizations.
Learn about 12 powerful projects already underway in need of resources. The Lenfest/AP Forum on Democracy & Journalism recently highlighted these efforts to strengthen this year’s election coverage and voting integrity efforts.
Give to a joint effort to support newsrooms on a larger scale. The Racial Equity in Journalism Fund, NewsMatch, and Press Forward Pooled Fund all drive general operating funds to newsrooms.

3. Protect the messengers who are vulnerable to physical, digital, and legal threats. Small independent newsrooms and freelancers are especially exposed, particularly those serving communities with high levels of political polarization and voter suppression. We are already seeing authoritarian leaders attacking the media, and we anticipate this strategy will continue. To prepare for these risks, funders can proactively engage their grantees in scenario planning and be ready to quickly deploy resources if grantees are threatened.

4. Ensure newsrooms have the flexibility to adapt within an unpredictable political environment. News operations need the flexibility to plan, respond to challenges, and maintain operations. Restricted funding can lead to short-term solutions at the expense of long-term organizational health. Our funding practices can evolve to better meet their needs by offering multi-year, general operating support whenever possible, extending the timeline of grants, or reducing cohort and reporting requirements.

The need for trusted information doesn’t end on Election Day. Ultimately, elections and democracy reporting needs sustained support from philanthropy to be successful. Fully-funded democracy reporting would cover the decisions made about our voting system year-round by legislatures, courts, and local officials and track voter suppression efforts. It would allow the space to build stronger relationships with the community and the expertise to explain how national patterns impact local events. This coverage requires funders to think of democracy and elections coverage not as a seasonal activity, but as an ongoing process.

Please reach out to learn more about specific funding gaps, needs, and opportunities that Democracy Fund has gathered from our grantees and network.

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Political Violence, Threats to Civic Society, and a Game Plan for Philanthropy

Joe Goldman

July 19, 2024

This op-ed was written by Democracy Fund president Joe Goldman; read the full article on the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Increasing attacks on pro-democracy advocates show that politicians like former President Trump aren’t the only ones at risk from violent political rhetoric.

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Strengthening Democracy: The Crucial Role of Election Administrators

July 18, 2024

As we head into the presidential election, the pro-democracy movement must meet the moment to strengthen our democracy and ensure equitable participation, voice, and power in communities of color. This work happens on both sides of the ballot box – by increasing voter participation and by supporting election administrators who serve our diverse electorate.

On June 26, Democracy Fund hosted a webinar that focused on the trends and needs in the election administration field, featuring Amanda Litman, Executive Director and Co-Founder of Run for Something Civics and Virginia Kase Solomón, Executive Director of Common Cause Education Fund. The conversation, facilitated by Ebony West, Senior Associate at Democracy Fund, focused on the critical issues surrounding election administration in the United States, including the challenges and opportunities administrators are facing today and strategies to strengthen and diversify election administration leadership.

Since 2020, we have experienced a high level of attrition among election administrators as a result of low compensation, inadequate funding, and a hostile work environment due to growing threats against election administrators. And, despite our country becoming increasingly diverse, many election administration positions are still largely filled by older, white Americans who may be unaware of the challenges faced by marginalized communities in gaining equitable representation and access to the vote. Finally, many states have enacted restrictive voting laws, making the voting process more difficult for people of color, young people, LGBTQ+ people, and people with disabilities. However, thanks to the efforts of our panelists, their organizations, and others like them, we’re seeing inspiring progress to confront many of the challenges facing the election administration field.

One example of Run for Something Civics’ approach is exemplified in the Arizona Pima County recorder Gabriela Casarez Kelly, a member of the Tohono O’odham Nation. Kelly successfully advocated for the reinstatement of early voting sites on the Pasquay Yankee reservation, significantly increasing accessibility and voter turnout. Her journey exemplifies the real-world impact of diversity in election administration.

We also heard about the work Common Cause Education Fund is doing to increase state-level funding for election offices so they have more resources for voter education and operations. In North Carolina, Common Cause North Carolina and Democracy North Carolina successfully advocated for increased funding to the Chatham County Board of Elections so they could hire an IT Specialist. These partnerships between election administrators and advocates are key to bolstering funding for elections so that they are accessible, secure, and responsive to voters.

The field of civil society organizations supporting election officials is small, but mighty. Organizations like Center for Tech and Civic Life, Center for Civic Design, and Public Rights Project are some of the few organizations who provide training and legal support to a field that continues to face an increasing amount of challenges including our ability to carry out a safe and fair election.

While these efforts show hope of a better, more representative democracy, this important work is at risk. The chronic challenge of underfunding in election administration has now been met with new operational challenges posed by escalating security threats. Election administrators are the last line of defense against abuse of power in our government, and their work needs our support.

Our ask is simple. Philanthropy must urgently prioritize long-term investments in the backbone of how our elections are run, election administration. Our support should support the strengthening of the workforce and the systems that make the voting process equitable. Civil society and election administrators must continue to deepen the relationship with each other to ensure we work together to solve the most urgent problems for the long-term health of our democracy.

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Listening to Our Grantees: Lessons from Our Third Grantee Perception Survey

Joe Goldman

July 16, 2024

Last year, Democracy Fund partnered with the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) to conduct our third Grantee Perception Report. This work builds on previous surveys from 2014 and 2017. We felt it was crucial to hear from our grantee partners last year as we launched refreshed program strategies as part of our new five-year organizational strategy.

Our 2023 CEP survey was open to all 250 Democracy Fund grantees with a grant active between June 2022 and June 2023. One hundred fifty grantees shared their feedback with us. We deeply appreciate the time and care they took in sharing their thoughts, and we are committed to taking their feedback to heart as we strive to be a better funding partner.

We’re sharing the key findings from the CEP report, which includes feedback from grantees of our partner organization Democracy Fund Voice.

Grantees said Democracy Fund understands and impacts their fields – providing a rating of just under 6 out of 7 on both measures. They said our team was respectful (6.83 out of 7), compassionate (6.54 out of 7), and exhibited trust in them (6.51 out of 7). They also said Democracy Fund staff embody a “strong commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion” (6.44 out of 7).

One grantee wrote: “I have worked with many foundations, donors, government agencies, and other funders during my career to date and Democracy Fund is, by far, the most compassionate, empathetic, equitable, thoughtful, flexible, and trustworthy funder I have had the good fortune to work with.”

While it is always gratifying to hear when we are doing a good job, we view this survey as a unique opportunity to understand what is working and where we can improve. Among the most important messages we heard were:

1. Grantees value our efforts to streamline our grantmaking process. Sixty-two percent of respondents reported receiving unrestricted grants and 36% reported receiving multi-year unrestricted grants – placing us at the 92nd and 89th percentile of foundations respectively. Grantees encouraged us to provide more multi-year general operating support, reinforcing the ongoing changes we’ve made to our grantmaking process and approach. After our 2017 survey, we committed to clarifying our process for prospective grantees, right-sizing our application requirements, and streamlining our reporting practices. In our 2023 survey, Democracy Fund grantees reported spending a median of 10 hours on our proposal process and 6 hours on reporting, down from 24 hours and 15 hours, respectively, in 2017. We are particularly proud that in 2023, grantees reported significantly less pressure from us to modify their organization’s priorities to create a grant proposal that was likely to receive funding: grantees placed us in the 15th percentile of all funders in CEP’s dataset related to feeling pressure from the foundation, down from the 98th percentile in 2017.

2. Our beyond-the-grant assistance (especially our support around field building and fundraising) adds significant value to our grantees’ work. Nearly two-thirds of our grantees reported receiving non-monetary assistance, reflecting our 2017 commitment to expand our non-monetary support. Grantees emphasized that Democracy Fund should continue to help new donors enter the space to increase funding for the democracy field overall, connect grantees to new funders, share its own research and learnings with the field, and convene grantees and partners to strengthen field strategies. Many grantees suggested we double down on this type of support in their narrative feedback, along with requests to more regularly bring cohorts of grantees and partners together, something Democracy Fund did much more frequently before the pandemic.

3. Many grantees highlighted their strong and trusting relationships with Democracy Fund program officers but noted a disconnect between those one-on-one relationships and our foundation-wide communications practices. Following our 2017 survey, we committed to supporting program staff as they worked to build trusting and collaborative relationships with their grantee partners. We are heartened that our grantees reported feeling more comfortable approaching us with problems, and they gave our program officers high marks for being respectful and compassionate. However, we have more work to do to provide organizational context and share timely and consistent updates with our grantees. This need was particularly pronounced as we pivoted into our new organizational strategy. Grantees felt we could have done more to engage them in our strategy development, explain the changes, and describe the implications for their organizations. This sentiment was especially strong among grantees whose grants were not being renewed, who rated their experiences with Democracy Fund less favorably across the board and highlighted areas where our communication and transparency fell short of their expectations.

We take this feedback seriously, and moving forward, we commit to:

Deepening our engagement with grantees by providing clearer and more consistent communications, particularly around foundation-wide strategy, as well as program-level updates. We will experiment with different approaches over the coming months, and we’re eager for feedback from our grantees about which hit the mark and where we can further improve.
Finding more ways to share what we are learning with our partners and develop a shared understanding of where resources can be most impactful. Learning is one of our organization’s core values, and we dedicate significant time and capacity to listening to our grantees and learning from their work. This information shapes our understanding of the problems facing democracy and helps us adapt our priorities to meet the field’s needs. We share our formal evaluations publicly, but we plan to more frequently share what we are learning from informal, ongoing reflections and to be in dialogue with our grantees about their learnings.
Continuing to streamline our grant application and reporting processes as we further reduce grantee time and resources spent on these activities. Since 2020, we have rolled out a streamlined renewal application, experimented with verbal reporting options, and included a “why we ask” rationale for every question on our application to ensure that the information we collect serves a clear purpose. We know how valuable our grantees’ time is, and we plan to further refine our application and reporting requirements to free up grantee capacity for other activities.

We plan to weave these commitments into our day-to-day practices over the long term as we aim to become a better funding partner. We will hold ourselves accountable to this spirit of continuous improvement by repeating the CEP survey every two to three years. We are grateful for our grantees’ feedback, and we are committed to learning and growing as we work together to build a more inclusive, multiracial democracy.

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Statement

Democracy Fund Statement on Shooting at Former President Trump’s Rally

July 13, 2024

Our thoughts go out to former President Trump and all who were impacted by this horrific act of violence today. We are devastated at the loss of life and injuries and the trauma this event caused. We condemn political violence in any form.