Even before the emergence of so-called “resistance tech,” investors, venture funds, and foundations were pumping money into tech tools that make it easier for citizens to express their opinions to their elected representatives. This support has empowered constituents with more ways to contact their elected officials, and as a result, a civic engagement has grown over the past decade, burying members of Congress with ever-increasing volume of emails, phone calls, tweets, texts, and even faxes (yes, faxes).
Although civic engagement is essential to our democracy, Congress sorely lacks the commensurate resources to keep up with the staggering volume of constituent communication. Several reasons exist for this disparity. For one, Congressional offices are a minuscule market when compared to the business opportunity that activating millions of constituents represents to start-ups. Institutional rules and security requirements further hamper product innovation. Vendors must go through rigorous and opaque certification processes with House and Senate administrators before they can release products to congressional staff. These administrators have forbidden common workplace applications like Slack for security concerns. Meanwhile, Congress doesn’t invest adequately in its own technological and communications capacity to the point that offices still have fax machines in 2018.
Democracy Fund and our affiliated social welfare organization, Democracy Fund Voice, recently awarded several grants to address the disparity between the tools available to congressional staff and the technological innovations of the digital advocacy industry. These grants will enable staff to gauge constituent sentiment quickly and efficiently, deliver more meaningful and satisfying replies, and save offices countless hours of staff time currently spent on menial tasks. They also pave the way for further innovation.
A grant to the Tides Foundation will support the Popvox LegiDash Fund to build “LegiDash,” a closed social network for constituents and member offices. This tool will give congressional staff a new way to connect with folks back home one-on-one, offer a clearer picture of district sentiment in the aggregate, and provide a trusted alternative communications portal to Facebook, satisfying a growing concern on Capitol Hill about what the tech giant does with the data generated on members’ official pages.
Congressional vendor Fireside21 will use a grant from Democracy Fund Voice to research machine-learning techniques that automate much of the rote, labor-intensive processes that member offices use to organize bulk constituent email. The resulting improvements of this research could save offices dozens of personnel-hours a week and make further advances – such as content analysis of constituents’ social media comments on elected representatives’ accounts – possible.
These grants follow the success of Democracy Fund grantee the OpenGov Foundation to develop and deploy Article One, a voice-to-text tool that saves offices many hours by transcribing constituent voicemails. Fireside21 recently partnered with the nonprofit to offer this service to members in the House of Representatives.
This approach is an experiment in using philanthropy to build technological capacity for congressional offices in ways the marketplace cannot provide. Importantly, these grantees are trusted partners of congressional stakeholders, with years of experience collaborating with Congress to understand the needs of members and staff as the foundation of product design. If the grants are successful, harried staff will have capacity to craft more meaningful responses to constituents in less time, rebuilding constituents’ trust that Washington is listening. They will also free up staff hours that offices can reallocate to researching public policy, drafting legislation, and conducting oversight.
Using technology to make the most labor-intensive parts of constituent service more efficient is an exciting prospect, but it’s not our only goal in funding this space. We will continue to explore other projects and tools that can rebuild congressional capacity to address the nation’s most pressing public policy issues. Lorelei Kelly at Georgetown University’s Beeck Center likens this lawmaking capacity to a technical stack, or the overlapping components that build a technological system or software platform. Right now, this stack is breaking down. Technology can assist members of Congress in a variety of ways, from helping to build relationships with subject-matter experts at the district-level, creating new venues for constituent-member discussion in real time, leveraging troves of data to formulate policy and evaluating whether those initiatives are meeting desired outcomes.
Building this capacity makes it more likely that constituent sentiment, now often channeled into mass advocacy campaigns, can actually produce desired policy change. Congress needs knowledge-building solutions, like quick access to high-quality, impartial information; situational awareness within the institution itself; visibility into staff networks working on shared issues; and – universally – more time to act upon constituent needs.
Ideally, Congress would give itself this capability with an in-house version of 18F or a Congressional Digital Service; until that happens, philanthropy and private investors have a civic obligation to reinforce the technological infrastructure of the first branch of government. The challenges are so fundamental that even modest levels of funding, if properly placed, can create transformative change within the congressional workplace. A stronger democracy will be the ROI.
As a learning organization committed to the success of our grantee partners, Democracy Fund regularly gathers feedback from grantees in order to better understand what is working, where we need to do better, and how we should think about the role we are playing in strengthening our nation’s democracy. This isn’t always easy given the natural power dynamic between funders and grantees – and so we work with the Center for Effective Philanthropy to periodically collect anonymous feedback through their Grantee Perception Survey.
Last year, Democracy Fund took part in our second Grantee Perception Survey administered by CEP. Since receiving the results last fall, our staff has had the time to reflect on the input provided to us by our grantees and implement a number of changes to our grantmaking approach in light of what we heard. We would like to thank our grantees for their thoughtful and detailed feedback. This blogpost provides an update on what we heard and what we’ve committed to doing differently.
When we asked our grantees to participate in our first Grantee Perception Survey in 2014, Democracy Fund was in the process of becoming an independent foundation. What our grantees shared then had a significant influence on our grantmaking approach – from how we streamline our processes to how we think about measurement and evaluation. For example, as a result of this work, we reduced our grant processing time by nearly 30 percent.
This year’s survey, open to all grantees who held an active grant with us in 2016 came at no less a transitional time for Democracy Fund. While we are no longer a start up, it’s hard to overstate the tremendous growth that this organization has managed over the past 18 months. Our staff size has tripled and our Democracy Fund portfolio has grown from 28 organizations when we first surveyed in 2014 to 74 organizations in spring 2017. As our original programs have matured, we’ve taken on a range of new programs and special projects to ensure that this organization is able to stand up for our constitution and democratic norms at a time of great consequence for our country.
This sense of growth, maturation, and change is evident in what we heard from grantees.
Here are just a few of the key things we learned:
We provide more support to grantees than most other funders. We provide larger grants and more general operating support than our peer funders. Our higher staff-to-grantee ratio compared to others means we’re able to be in more frequent contact with our grantees. This finding aligns well with our intent – and we’re glad to see our grantees found us living this approach day to day.
Grantees are still waiting for us to demonstrate impact. As a young foundation, many of our efforts are still nascent. Grantees rated us lower than other funders on impact in the field and effect on public policy as our work is only beginning to gain traction.
Our grantees recognize our field expertise and appreciate our efforts to advance knowledge in the field – but we can do better. Grantees gave us solid scores in our understanding of the field and see us as emerging thought leaders, reflecting the fact that much of our staff comes from the practitioner community. Still, they thought we can do more to understand grantee organizations themselves, pointing to a need to better support our field-expert staff in their transition to grantmaking roles.
As we have grown in size and complexity, we’ve paid less attention to some relationships — and it shows. Many grantees — in particular grantees who received smaller grants — sometimes felt out of the loop on Democracy Fund’s thinking. Grantees sought more clarity and consistent communication about our processes and decision-making. Many wanted more transparency about our strategy, especially as our democracy entered a period of profound change. And we heard that we need to do more to foster trust with grantees, so that they are more comfortable reaching out to us as challenges emerge.
“We are committed to improving and most effectively supporting our grantees’ work.”
We are grateful to our grantees for this honest and thought-provoking feedback. Over the past several months, our team has had the opportunity to engage with the survey results, and the key findings from the report. We have begun to implement a variety of improvements to our processes to address those areas where we know we can do better.
Each of our programs has taken the opportunity to discuss these results with their grantees to gain deeper insights and have been engaged in thoughtful internal conversations on how to address them. Grantees can expect to see the following improvements:
Clarity on applying for a grant: We are revamping our processes for initial grant review to promote more clarity to applicants on where their applications stand, how much time the process will take, and what might be expected if funding is approved. We are also entering into an effort to right-size grant requirements based on grant size.
Engagement with grantees post-approval: We are revising our practices for how to engage grantees post-approval in check-in calls and how to review learning together and share clearer expectations. This reflects direct grantee feedback on how they want to engage with Democracy Fund.
Support beyond the dollars: Leveraging what was a clear bright spot in our survey results, we are assessing what additional non-monetary support we can offer to grantees, and how to ensure all grantees are aware of the resources available to them. We are also more deliberately seeing how to connect grantees with new funders. We will continue to offer and improve opportunities to bring grantees together for networking and shared learning.
Streamlined grant reporting and metrics to put learning first: We are revamping our grantee reporting practices, which will provide new structures, tools and guidance to ensure reporting is easy and best serves the learning needs of both the grantee and the foundation.
We also know that changes at the broader organizational level are necessary to ensure we our clear about our strategies and approach. We will be working to:
Increase transparency on strategy and results: We will be clearer with grantees about our strategies, the approaches we take with our grantmaking, and the learning and results we have achieved to date.
Support program staff development: We have launched an Excelling at Grantmaking program to support staff to improve their ability to form strong relationships with grantees that are supportive and produce shared learning.
I’m excited about the new course we’ve set for our grantmaking practice through the changes I’ve described. Democracy Fund is maturing from our start-up phase at a critical moment for our democracy. Our grantees are engaged in profoundly important work that will shape the future of this country. To meet the challenges ahead, our grantees and partners need us to be at our best. We are committed to improving and most effectively supporting our grantee’s efforts. By continuing to listen to one another, we’ll rise to the occasion together.
Under the leadership its new chairman Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO), and Ranking Member Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), the Senate Rules and Administration Committee hosted a hearing this past week, “Election Security Preparation: A State and Local Perspective.” This is the first hearing since the 2016 election in Senate Rules, the committee with jurisdiction over federal election issues. This hearing was a long-overdue opportunity for state and local election officials and Congress to talk about how they can work together to improve our nation’s election integrity, following the attempts made in 2016 to interfere in the last Presidential election.
In the March 2018 omnibus spending package, states got a boost to help them in these efforts. The omnibus provided $380 million in Help America Vote Act (HAVA) funds that states can use for election security improvements. Specifically, legislative report language outlined key categories to help guide state spending activity. “Consistent with the requirements of HAVA, states may use this funding to:
Replace voting equipment that only records a voter’s intent electronically with equipment that utilizes a voter-verified paper record;
Implement a post-election audit system that provides a high-level of confidence in the accuracy of the final vote tally;
Upgrade election-related computer systems to address cyber vulnerabilities identified through DHS or similar scans or assessments of existing election systems;
Facilitate cybersecurity training for the state chief election official’s office and local election officials;
Implement established cybersecurity best practices for election systems; and
Fund other activities that will improve the security of elections for federal office.”
These resources are critically important given the evidence noted by the Senate Intelligence Committee and other cybersecurity experts about the foreign attacks on our election infrastructure during the 2016 election. According to the EAC, 66 percent of the funds have been requested as of June 19, and the witnesses testified that the Commission worked very quickly to disburse funds to the states. This is a good start, but there is a need for all states to get in the game. There’s also a good practice to provide greater information about how they will use the funds, and to identify how their actions will create greater security for the 2018 election. For example, Ohio recently outlined the steps the state is taking to build confidence in the system. And several Democracy Fund grantees have resources outlining best practices in cybersecurity for election professionals. The Defending Digital Democracy Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has its State and Local Election Cybersecurity Playbook and “tabletop exercise” workshops, and the Center for Data and Technology is partnering with the Center for Technology and Civic Life to deliver online cybersecurity trainings for election officials this July.
Beyond 2018, the hearing was a reminder that election officials are constantly planning and looking ahead. As all the witnesses testified, the complexity of threats to our election infrastructure requires ongoing support from the federal government to aid the states—a challenge that Congress should take seriously if they want voters to have confidence and trust in our election system.
As trusted information providers, local and nonprofit journalism organizations play an essential role in providing news that communities rely on to stay informed, make decisions and participate in civic life. In the wake of the digital disruption of news and declining trust in the media, there is an urgent need to redouble funding for local and state coverage to ensure the nonprofit journalism sector can fulfill its democratic mission.
That is why the Democracy Fund, Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, Knight Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation came together in 2017 to launch NewsMatch, a national matching-gift campaign to grow fundraising capacity in nonprofit newsrooms and promote giving to journalism among U.S. donors.
A new study released this month by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University revealed that from 2010 to 2015 nearly $1.8 billion in grants were given in support of journalism. However, only a small fraction, about 4.5%, went toward nonprofit local and state reporting. The report also found significant and troubling geographical gaps, with the majority of philanthropic dollars ending up in a few coastal cities.
NewsMatch was designed from the ground up to respond to the gaps that the Harvard research now highlights so clearly. It supported newsrooms in almost every state, brought new foundations and donors in, and expanded the capacity of journalism nonprofits to develop support from their community.
In 2017 NewsMatch provided 109 newsrooms with more than 500 hours of fundraising training, a professional campaign toolkit, national marketing around the importance of contributing to nonprofit news, targeted advertising using $100,000 in ad credits donated by Facebook, and a 1:1 match of individual donations, up to $28,000 per news organization. Nearly all 109 organizations who participated in NewsMatch raised more money, from more donors than ever before. In total NewsMatch helped raise nearly $5 million for local and investigative journalism and inspired 43,000 new donors to give to nonprofit news. Those are just the topline results. The report dives deep into how NewsMatch was structured, what worked and what didn’t.
We are currently raising dollars for NewsMatch 2018 in hopes of making it even bigger than last year. Several updates to the 2018 program reflect the evaluation’s suggestions:
As in 2017, NewsMatch is open to members of the Institute for Nonprofit News. The deadline to apply is Aug. 1, 2018.
We will support nonprofit news organization’s membership models by matching the full-year value of new recurring donations during NewsMatch.
We will offer extra bonuses to small and medium organizations that show they have measurably improved their fundraising capacity over 2017.
We recognize that individual donors support nonprofit news in many ways and will match gifts made by individuals through their businesses and family foundations.
This Fourth of July, Democracy Fund will celebrate its fourth anniversary as an independent foundation. Little did I know in the summer of 2014 just how profound the threats facing our country would turn out to be or the degree to which the health of our nation’s political system would become a near-universally recognized problem. Lately, I find myself thinking that this organization was created for this moment — though I did not realize it was coming.
Fittingly, July Fourth will also mark an important milestone in our growth as an institution — $100 million in grants made to organizations strengthening U.S. democracy. It has been our privilege to make these resources available to a remarkable group of leaders working to ensure that our democratic institutions deliver on their promise to the American people.
While Democracy Fund’s core mission has not changed from its founding, this organization looks very different from four years ago when we had a staff of three and a dozen or so grantees. The events of the past two years demanded that we clarify our core convictions and to dramatically expand our commitment to strengthen American democracy and defend the United States Constitution.
The purpose of this open letter is to share how we have changed, to demonstrate an ongoing commitment to our core programs, and to explain why we think it is so important that philanthropy stand up patriotically in this moment.
With today’s publication of our vision for a healthy democracy, I acknowledge that our commitment to bipartisanship cannot come at the expense of our core values. Indeed, we believe that being bipartisan cannot mean being neutral when actions are taken that threaten our republic.
At Democracy Fund, we believe a healthy democracy requires at least two competitive political parties — and that democratic institutions work best when they have broad support from across the political spectrum. We deeply value our ability to work with Republicans, Democrats, and independents to find ways to ensure that our democracy works for all Americans.
But we also believe in the dignity of every individual and in the equal protection of their rights under law. We believe that checks and balances, as well as respect for the rule of law, are critical to protect against abuses of power. We believe that political leaders bear an uncommon burden to act with integrity. And we believe that threats to the health of our democracy — as well as solutions to these — can come from all sides of the political spectrum.
Over the past two years, I have seen alarming and sometimes unprecedented violations of our country’s democratic norms. For an organization committed to strengthening democracy on behalf of the American people, this isn’t just disturbing — it’s humbling.
Over the past two years, I have seen alarming and sometimes unprecedented violations of our country’s democratic norms. For an organization committed to strengthening democracy on behalf of the American people, this isn’t just disturbing — it’s humbling.
Our first priority was to articulate the beliefs that underlie our work, and clearly assert those core democratic principles for which we stand. Working with our advisors and a diverse group of scholars, we created a healthy democracy framework to help explicate the values that motivate our efforts. The framework will serve as a compass, inform decision-making, and provide clarity about the principled positions underlying our actions for ourselves and others.
Having articulated these beliefs, we knew that staying the course in the face of new and widening gaps between our vision for a healthy democracy and the realities of America today was not an option. We rebooted some of Democracy Fund’s core programs and added new, bipartisan initiatives to stop abuses of government power, secure our elections, defend press freedom, and combat misinformation. We increased our staff by more than 40 percent and tripled the size of our grantmaking budget. We also created three new special projects that include two-year commitments of:
In addition, we launched the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group to help policymakers keep in touch with the beliefs and attitudes of ordinary Americans.
Even as we continue our ongoing work to strengthen American democracy, we’re taking a stand against real and direct threats to our Constitution.
Combatting the Abuse of Power
Core to our understanding of a healthy democracy is the notion that constitutional checks and balances protect against abuses of power and preserve the rule of law. Over the past year, Democracy Fund has worked to reinvigorate government accountability in a challenging environment in which government leaders have openly flouted ethics rules and challenged the independence of everything from the courts to the Justice Department.
Democracy Fund’s grantees are fighting back aggressively. Collectively, they have participated in more than 35 lawsuits targeting government corruption, secrecy, and ethics violations. In addition to exposing abuses, these legal actions are helping to protect institutions that have come under attack. For example, a FOIA lawsuit filed by Lawfare helped secure the release of 100 F.B.I. emails that contradicted the White House’s false narrative that former F.B.I. Director James Comey had lost Bureau support before his firing.
Other grantees, like the National Security Archive, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), and the Government Accountability Project, have filed more than 2,300 FOIA requests to expose government corruption, misconduct, waste, and conflicts of interest. Work by POGO and Open the Government has led the Department of Homeland Security to release an Inspector General report criticizing initial implementation of the Muslim travel ban.
POGO, the Lugar Center, and the Levin Center are also continuing to encourage bipartisan congressional oversight by training nearly 300 Hill staffers on how to hold the executive branch accountable. In addition, POGO and the Government Accountability Project have distributed whistleblower education materials to more than 2,100 federal employees, NGO employees, journalists, and engaged citizens.
Another grantee engaged in especially urgent work is the Protect Democracy Project, which was established in February 2017. In its first month of operation, the Project successfully helped force the Trump administration to release a policy restricting communications between the White House and the Department of Justice. Then, it helped expose instances in which the White House had violated those restrictions. In just a year, the Protect Democracy Project has forced important public disclosures on issues ranging from potential executive overreach into a major healthcare merger, to alleged intimidation of federal workers, to the legal rationale behind military strikes in Syria.
Three grantees of our affiliated 501(c)4, Democracy Fund Voice — R Street Institute, Stand Up Republic, and the Niskanen Center — are working to build bipartisan networks to push back against threats to our democracy. These networks are working to stand up for democratic norms while building consensus on a vision for American democracy over the long term.
To stop the abuse of political power, our grantees are cutting deep into the weeds of government. But we are confronted by threats that go deeper still, undermining the most basic feature of our democracy: free and fair elections.
Securing Our Elections
We believe that voting is the cornerstone of our democracy; but when it comes to elections, Democracy Fund worries less about who wins than about whether people have faith in the outcome. False claims that millions of fraudulent votes were cast in 2016 have the potential to undermine faith in our elections — while creating a spurious justification for erecting barriers that make it more difficult for Americans to vote.
M.I.T.’s Election Data and Science Lab and the Center for Election Innovation & Research played a leading role in pushing back against these false claims that the Pence-Kobach Voter Fraud Commission sought to justify. These efforts to correct the record — alongside legal actions by Common Cause, the League of Women Voters, the Campaign Legal Center, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund, and others — contributed to the eventual dissolution of the Commission.
We believe that voting is the cornerstone of our democracy, but when it comes to elections, Democracy Fund worries less about who wins than about whether people have faith in the outcome.
At the same time, we know malicious foreign actors made a concerted effort to undermine the 2016 presidential election and that the security of our next election cannot be taken for granted. For more than 12 months, Democracy Fund Voice worked with its partners to persuade Congress to provide state and local election officials with the resources and training necessary to maintain the highest possible security. This work paid off last month, when Congress included $380 million in grants to the states to improve cybersecurity, replace paperless voting machines, and perform post-election audits (among other measures). Lawmakers also approved $10 million in funding for the Election Assistance Commission — a 10 percent increase — and provided the F.B.I. with an additional $300 million to bolster election cybersecurity.
Democracy Fund grantees have also found innovative ways to get ahead of the next attack on our election infrastructure. The bipartisan duo of Robby Mook and Matt Rhoads (former campaign managers for Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney, respectively) launched a new program at Harvard to help campaigns and election officials protect sensitive data against intrusion. The effort is organizing “tabletop exercises” that simulate attacks on election systems — and allow election officials and security experts to practice their response.
Additional grantees with a focus on money in politics have also played important roles. The Campaign Legal Center (CLC) developed a symposium and report about whether current laws are sufficient to prevent or deter future intrusion. Campaign finance complaints filed by CLC and Common Cause forced other actors, including President Donald Trump’s lawyer, to disclose more information about alleged foreign interference than otherwise known. Additionally, CLC and others have done important work to promote greater disclosure on social media platforms.
Defending the Fourth Estate
At a moment when journalists face profound economic and political threats, Democracy Fund is helping to ensure our fourth estate remains free and resilient. In the healthy democracy framework, we assert that journalists provide a critical check on power, holding our leaders accountable and revealing corruption, wrongdoing, and conflicts of interest. They provide Americans with the information they need to uphold the promise of a democracy of, by, and for the people. That’s why Democracy Fund has made a two-year commitment of $11 million to strengthen investigative reporting. It’s also why we’re supporting press freedom watchdogs, including the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Reporters Without Borders, and the Student Press Law Center.
Grants to the nation’s premier investigative watchdogs have enabled these nonprofit newsrooms to pursue a wide range of stories that have held administration officials accountable for wrongdoing, forced divestitures, and changed laws.
ProPublica has taken on biased algorithms, forced changes in Facebook’s advertising rules, and prompted New York City lawmakers to pass the country’s first bill to address discrimination produced by social media algorithms. And Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross divested from his global shipping company after an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity showed significant conflicts of interest.
Too often, journalists become targets for threats and abuse as a result of their work to advance the public interest. Trump administration officials have gone so far as to call out Democracy Fund grantees by name. One grantee, the Pulitzer Prize-winning newsroom ProPublica, faced a cyberattack that took down its entire email system — an attempt to silence ProPublica journalists in retribution for hard-hitting reporting on hate crimes and extremists groups. In the face of these attacks, Democracy Fund’s support provided these grantees with the resources and independence they needed to stand firm, fix their systems, and continue their indispensable work.
Local newsrooms are, in many ways, the building blocks of our democracy, covering stories that matter to residents and holding local leaders accountable in a way that no other organizations can.
Local newsrooms are, in many ways, the building blocks of our democracy, covering stories that matter to residents and holding local leaders accountable in a way that no other organizations can. Yet, across the country, we’ve seen an increase in “trickle-down” attacks on the press, where those in power use their positions to undermine — or even encourage violence against — local journalists. These attacks have come at a time of severe economic turmoil for many local newsrooms, when their business models are failing — and their continued viability is in serious question.
That’s why Democracy Fund has worked hand-in-glove with peer funders to launch NewsMatch — an unprecedented campaign to strengthen nonprofit journalism and make 2017 a record-breaking year for giving to local investigative news. With the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and a partnership of five additional funders, we matched donations to nonprofit newsrooms for the last three months of 2017, helping journalists raise more than $4.8 million. Among the more than 100 nonprofit newsrooms that participated, nearly all raised more dollars from more donors than ever before.
Even as we work to ensure that all Americans have access to quality local news and investigative reporting, Democracy Fund’s grantees are also striving to combat the misinformation that pollutes our public square. For instance, long before Cambridge Analytica captured national headlines, we published a report examining the ways in which social media platforms exacerbate information disorders, spread hate, and threaten our democracy.
But declining trust in media is not only a product of this political moment. It also stems from the ways journalism has at times stood apart from communities and failed to deliver stories that matter to them. Grantees in our Engaged Journalism portfolio continue to experiment with tools that foster a deeper connection between newsrooms and the public. In the context of that work, we’ve made significant commitments to making newsrooms more diverse and representative of their readership.
Through all of our efforts in this space, Democracy Fund is working toward a future where we can trust the headlines we see — and the democracy we shape together.
Protecting the Dignity and Rights of Each Individual
First among our core beliefs is a fundamental dedication to the dignity of every individual in our democracy, and the protection of their rights under the law. Without a recognition of our common humanity and a common American identity, our democracy cannot function. All too often, however, divisive rhetoric targeting Muslims and immigrants — rhetoric that has been embraced, over the past year, by policymakers, government officials, and media figures — encourages bigotry among the public while creating political momentum for policies that demean individuals and threaten to violate basic civil rights.
Nationally, as well as in individual communities throughout the country, Democracy Fund grantees are fighting for greater inclusion — and pushing back against policies that undermine what it means to be an American. While some leaders in government and the media blamed the hate-motivated violence we saw in Charlottesville on “both sides,” Democracy Fund grantees like Faith & Public Life were training clergy in nonviolent strategies to protect peaceful demonstrators from gun-wielding white supremacists. In the aftermath of that conflict, Georgetown University’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (ICAP) acted to prevent it from happening again. ICAP lawyers discovered provisions of Virginia law — dating back to 1776 — that prohibit “paramilitary activity.” This discovery became the basis of a 79-page lawsuit ICAP filed in Charlottesville last October.
As activist groups, members of Muslim, Arab, and South Asian (MASA) communities, and allied organizations came together, over the past year, to challenge the Trump administration’s Muslim and refugee ban, the Proteus Fund’s Security & Rights Collaborative (SRC) played a critical coordination role. Through the #NoMuslimBanEver campaign, SRC helped facilitate mobilization efforts across the country — and also provided direct monetary and strategic support to MASA organizations. Their and their grantees’ work continued this spring, when ICAP’s Neal Katyal, a former acting U.S. solicitor general, argued against the ban before the Supreme Court.
In our effort to maintain a just and inclusive society, Democracy Fund has also partnered with Freedom to Believe, an organization that brings people of all faiths and backgrounds to mosques to learn more about Islam and forge connections with Muslim communities. Similarly, our grantee Veterans for American Ideals is using proven strategic communications tactics to promote tolerance. Their #WhatIFoughtFor campaign showcases moving collaborations between refugees and military service members that are helping to make America, in every sense, a more perfect union.
In recent months, Democracy Fund staff have also worked closely with Civic Nation and NBCUniversal to support the re-launch of their “Erase the Hate” campaign to combat prejudice, hate crimes, and the spread of hate speech online.
Understanding the American Public
The concept of robust representation is embedded throughout our healthy democracy framework and is fundamental to the proper function of our democratic republic. In this unique and consequential moment, it is as important as ever before that America’s leaders — in public office and at every level of civil society — hold a nuanced understanding of the American public, their experience and preferences, and how their changing attitudes are reshaping our politics. To this end, Democracy Fund created the Voter Study Group to dig deep into public opinion data — and then to analyze and share those results with policymakers, government officials, and the media.
There are two key attributes that distinguish the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group from other polling efforts. First, the group itself is made up of a diverse group of scholars from across the political spectrum, ranging from the Center for American Progress and the Brookings Institution on the left to Heritage Action and the American Enterprise Institute on the right. This remarkable diversity of opinion not only increases the quality of our analysis; it also means we have been able to gain attention and interest from media and policymakers in important and unusual ways. Second, the use of a longitudinal dataset — which surveys the same group of people who have been questioned since 2011 — has yielded deep insights into how the American electorate is changing in ways that are quite unique. We believe that the collaborative nature of this project lends itself especially well to the vigorous, informed dialogue across ideological difference that is necessary to sustainable policy and sustainable politics.
Since its launch, the Voter Study Group has released ten reports. Initial analyses focused on understanding the 2016 electorate, examining the composition of President Trump’s political base, and considering how party coalitions are changing. More recently, the group published “Follow the Leader,” a report that sought to assess the health of American democracy by better understanding authoritarian attitudes among the public.
What we found was alarming. Nearly one in four Americans say it would be good to have a strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with Congress or elections. Nearly one in five say the same of military rule. In aggregate, 29 percent of respondents showed at least some support for an authoritarian alternative to democracy.
And yet, the cause for hope was clear: when offered a direct choice, the overwhelming majority of Americans chose democracy. Moreover, we didn’t see a correlation between dissatisfaction with democracy and support for authoritarian options.
Frustration and anger at the state of our democracy are well founded; openness to autocracy is not. The big question for us — as an organization and a leader in the philanthropic space — is what more we can do to strengthen our democracy, both for the next election and for the next generation.
Our Commitment to a Healthy Democracy
We live at a time when the principles articulated in our healthy democracy framework are threatened by uniquely dangerous circumstances. At Democracy Fund, we firmly believe these threats demand a full-throated response.
Admittedly, the approach I have outlined above is far more aggressive — necessarily so — than the one we took during our first few years of operation. In the face of unprecedented threats, philanthropists — including Democracy Fund — can’t just do what we’ve been doing. This moment demands something more than business as usual. That’s why Democracy Fund is calling on our peer organizations to take action — and why, moving forward, we will be proud to serve as a partner and resource to any funder willing to stand up and speak out for our Constitution.
Even as we respond to the current crises, we know the conditions that gave rise to this moment will still be with us for the foreseeable future. So we all need to commit to the long-term health of our democracy. Beyond the work outlined in this letter, Democracy Fund continues its work to reduce polarization, modernize elections, diversify newsrooms, and perform other essential tasks to strengthen our political system. Our hope is that peer funders will also join us on these longer-term projects.
At a time when our political institutions are under tremendous strain, Democracy Fund and its partners have been inspired by ordinary Americans who are standing up in extraordinary ways to help protect our republic. Their examples are proof that the vision outlined in our healthy democracy framework is not too much to hope for. That is why we’re rallying experts, activists, political leaders, and patriotic philanthropists to renew their personal responsibility for the greater good of our democracy.
Efforts in journalism to support diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) over the past decade have been ineffective in creating dynamic change in the stories, sources, and staff of news outlets in the United States.
Clearly, the dramatic financial downturn in newspaper advertising revenue has placed strain on all legacy journalism organizations. However, those dynamics alone do not explain the persistent gap in employment opportunities between minorities and their white counterparts seeking jobs in journalism following college graduation. Or excuse the historic leadership failure of large and profitable outlets to fulfill their promise to diversify their ranks, which has an outsized impact on communities of color given the dearth of opportunity at smaller newsrooms.
The purpose of this report is to begin to understand philanthropic interventions supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion in journalism from 2009 – 2015. As a foundation new to DEI funding in journalism, which has not made any grants in this area during the period under consideration, we plan to use this report to identify major funders and recipients of institutional grants.
This report represents our first attempt to get at this information using data from Foundation Maps for Media Funding, created by the Foundation Center for Media Impact Funders. We are aware of the many limits of this data set due to self-reporting and challenges in categorization. Even with those challenges we are proud of the work that Katie Donnelly and Jessica Clark at Dot Connector Studio have done so far to illuminate larger trends and we plan to use this report as a launchpad into further analysis of the organizations supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion in journalism.
We are already getting started. We are partnering with funders including the Knight Foundation and Open Society Foundations to support data training from the Ida B. Wells Society; News Integrity Initiative and Gates Foundation in leadership training from the Maynard Institute; Ford Foundation to support the National Association of Black Journalists; Google News Initiative with the revamp of the ASNE Diversity survey led by Dr. Meredith Clark; Nathan Cummings in support of DEI initiatives at CUNY; MacArthur and McCormick Foundations with new approaches in Chicago like City Bureau and the Obsidian Collection; and Heising-Simons Foundation in paid internship with the Emma Bowen Foundation.
At Democracy Fund, our approach to journalism is focused on building trust and engagement. We break our Engaged Journalism Strategy into three tracks focused on (I) Audience-Driven Storytelling, (II) Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and (III) promoting Transparency.
Through our Audience-Driven Storytelling work we invest in innovations and projects that support journalists in reorienting their work towards a focus on the concerns of their audience. This involves building inclusion into newsroom practices, supporting universities as teaching hospitals for innovation, creating communities of practice around engagement, and developing new practices, people, and products hard-wired for engagement.
Our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion work focuses on improving the diversity of sources, stories, and staff in news outlets. This work involves creating an inclusive environment at news outlets; recruiting, retaining, and promoting diverse staff, including leadership; and working to develop and sustain minority ownership of media properties.
In our Transparency work, we seek to help news outlets and the public better understand one another. We are committed to supporting innovations in engaged journalism through grantmaking, partnerships, and collaboration to strengthen the Fourth Estate and the democratic principles on which our nation is founded. This report is part of that commitment. We will continue to seek opportunities to collaborate with news outlets, journalism support organizations, and partner funders to achieve this goal.
Journalism has long struggled to reflect the diversity of the communities it serves, and over the past decade, most efforts to support diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in news outlets have been unsuccessful in creating meaningful change within the stories, sources, and staff of newsrooms across the United States.
New research released today by Democracy Fund traces half a decade of philanthropic investment in organizations, programming, and research aimed at increasing DEI in journalism. We commissioned this report to learn from the important work undertaken up to this point, to guide our future investments, and to spark discussions across philanthropy regarding the urgent need to address these challenges with significant new resources.
This report is based on data from the Foundation Maps for Media Funding, created by the Foundation Center for Media Impact Funders. The data set has some important limitations due to the nature of self-reporting and challenges around how grants are categorized. Even so, Katie Donnelly and Jessica Clark at Dot Connector Studio have done great work to reveal larger trends in the field.
From 2009 to 2015, $1.2 billion was invested in journalism, news and information in the U.S.
Recent research by the Shorenstein Center at Harvard and Northeastern University, using the same Foundation Center data as well as a study of foundation 990 tax forms, found that there is simply not enough philanthropic dollars flowing into journalism to make up for the gaps in what has been lost from legacy newsrooms. Amongst the funding that does exist there are troubling gaps and disparities. Our report provides a deeper look at one of those gaps, showing that there are even fewer dollars are going to DEI efforts within the industry.
Here are a few interesting takeaways, according to data as of February 2018:From 2009 to 2015, there were 1,105 grants totaling $105.6 million from 274 funders to 294 recipients pertaining to either racial and ethnic groups, women and girls, or LGBTQI populations.
Funding has declined in these areas overall, both in terms of dollar value by $1.3 million and total number of grants by 18.
When it comes to funding that serves racial and ethnic groups, relatively few dollars go towards financial sustainability compared to programming and project-specific funding.
There has been significantly less investment in gender-related news and staffing compared to racial and ethnic groups.
Funding serving LGBTQI populations in journalism remains extremely limited.
Here’s a breakdown of philanthropic support strategies for funding DEI in journalism.
The past efforts represented in these numbers faced stiff headwinds and real challenges, including a dramatic financial downturn that strained the news industry. But tight budgets alone cannot explain the persistent gap in employment opportunities between minorities and their white counterparts seeking jobs in journalism. Nor does it excuse the historic leadership failure of legacy outlets to fulfill their promise to diversify their ranks.
Reviewing this history, we are left with more questions than answers: How should we think about supporting programs and investigative projects looking at inequality when they may be housed at news outlets with a weak history of supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion internally? How do we rethink equitable funding so that program-specific funds at ethnic media outlets don’t exacerbate financial and structural uncertainty? And how do we ensure that investments in diversity, equity, and inclusion have broad and measurable impact across the industry?
Democracy Fund isn’t represented in the data released today because we only became an independent foundation in 2014. However, in our first few years we’ve prioritized this work. So far we are:
Working with News Integrity Initiative, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, and Gates Foundation in diverse leadership training from the Maynard Institute;
Collaborating with Google News Initiative to help revamp the ASNE Diversity Survey led by Dr. Meredith Clark;
Investing in new models like City Bureau with the MacArthur Foundation
Partnering with funders like Knight Foundation and Open Society Foundations to support data training from the Ida B. Wells Society;
Working alongside the Heising-Simons Foundation to support paid internships for aspiring journalists of color through the Emma Bowen Foundation.
Together with these funders, we are learning from the research we released today to ensure that our strategies are as effective and equitable as possible. We are committed to supporting innovations in engaged journalism through grantmaking, partnerships, and collaboration. This report is part of that commitment.
The ability of journalism to serve as our Fourth Estate—to be a check and balance on government and powerful interests—is under increasing threat. Journalism today faces multiple challenges: a faltering business model with shrinking resources; a political environment in which they find themselves under attack; and a climate of deep distrust by the American people.
In a 2017 survey, the Poynter Institute, a Democracy Fund grantee, found that only 49% of Americans have a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the media. We believe this distrust is connected to another problem: journalism’s lack of deep engagement with its audience, exacerbated by news organizations whose staff and coverage do not represent the communities they serve.
At Democracy Fund, one of our goals is to ensure that every American citizen has access to audience-centered, trusted, resilient journalism. To meet this goal, we are working to build a media landscape that truly serves the public interest. Through our Public Square Program, we support projects and organizations that enable newsrooms to build meaningful, trusted relationships with their communities through audience-driven storytelling, inclusion, and transparency. We call this work “Engaged Journalism” and have seen firsthand how practical investments in these organizations and ideas can have a transformative effect on newsrooms.
As a part of this effort, we’re re-launching the Democracy Fund Engaged Journalism Lab on Medium. The Engaged Journalism Lab will focus, not on how to get a grant from Democracy Fund, but rather on what our grantees and partners are doing and learning. We’ll also discuss the big ideas shaping the field and shine a spotlight on the people helping to make journalism more collaborative and engaged with its community. We hope it will serve as a resource for those working at the intersection of media and democracy.
Managed by Paul Waters and Lea Trusty, the Engaged Journalism Lab will feature content on a variety of subjects, including how newsrooms can better:
Engage their communities in content generation, production, dissemination, and discussion;
Address issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion within journalism through inclusive newsroom policies and practices, including recruiting, retaining, and promoting diverse staff and supporting minority ownership of independent media properties;
Experiment with new tools and technology that aim to help the public and news distribution platforms identify quality, trusted news; and
Rebuild and fortify trust between the media and Americans.
We recognize that these are not small goals—and we know we can’t do it alone. We believe that collaboration is the only way we can begin to solve journalism’s most pressing challenges, and as a systems change organization, we are committed to learning, iterating, and partnering in ways that strengthen both our work and the field at large.
It is our hope the Engaged Journalism Lab becomes a place to highlight new ideas and uncover new solutions that we haven’t thought of yet. If you have a question or a thought, please share it. If there’s an idea or project that we should know about, please let us know. We don’t pretend to have all answers to journalism’s problems, but we hope this will be a place where we can work through them together.
We are excited to announce the new cohort of the Democracy Fund National Advisory Committee. This group of leaders from across the political spectrum brings expertise in politics, academia, media, culture, and philanthropy, and are committed to helping us find achievable solutions to our nation’s biggest problems.
Three years ago, shortly after Democracy Fund became an independent foundation, we established our first National Advisory Committee to help us think big, identify gaps in our work, and dig into the tough questions facing our political system. We are deeply grateful to our first cohort for their advice, candid feedback, and partnership. We look forward to elevating the expertise and ideas of our new committee, which includes new and returning voices, in our work to support a healthy democracy.
The Democracy Fund’s 2018 National Advisory Committee includes:
Hon. Robin Carnahan, National Advisory Committee Co-Chair The Honorable Robin Carnahan leads the State and Local Government Practice at 18F, the team of digital technology consultants housed within the General Services Administration. Carnahan was twice elected Secretary of State of Missouri and served as senior director at the global strategy firm Albright Stonebridge Group.
Brett Loper, National Advisory Committee Co-Chair Brett Loper is Senior Vice President, Global Government Affairs, for American Express. In that role, he coordinates the Company’s engagement strategy with policy makers in the United States and countries around the globe. Before joining American Express, he held the position of Deputy Chief of Staff to U. S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner (R-OH).
Kristen Soltis Anderson, Member Kristen Soltis Anderson is a researcher, pollster, and political analyst and co-founder of Echelon Insights, an innovative research and analysis data analysis firms. She is a leading expert on the millennial generation and is author of The Selfie Vote: Where Millennials are Leading America (And How Republicans Can Keep Up).
Francis Fukuyama, Member Francis Fukuyama is Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and the Mosbacher Director of FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. He is professor (by courtesy) of political science.
Lanhee Chen, Member Lanhee J. Chen, Ph.D. is the David and Diane Steffy Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution; Director of Domestic Policy Studies and Lecturer in the Public Policy Program at Stanford University; and Lecturer in Law at Stanford Law School. Chen served as the Policy Director of the Romney-Ryan 2012 presidential campaign.
Cherie Harder, Member Cherie Harder serves as President of The Trinity Forum. Prior to joining the Trinity Forum in 2008, and previously served in the White House as Special Assistant to the President and Director of Policy and Projects for First Lady Laura Bush.
Lisa Leingang, Member Lisa Leingang has worked in the media and entertainment business for over 25 years and is currently Senior Vice President of Scripted Programming at First Look Media. With senior executive roles ranging from production to development executive, she has held posts at various media companies including HBO, NBC, CBS and Viacom, discovering, nurturing and developing creative talent from all over the world.
Kierna Mayo, Member Kierna Mayo is the Senior Vice President of Lifestyle Content + Brands at iOne Digital, Inc. A veteran culture writer/editor and brand architect, Mayo has been recognized by Folio, The Root, and the NAACP among others as a modern media trailblazer.
Hon. Mellissa Mark-Vivierito, Member Melissa Mark-Viverito is Senior Advisory to the Latino Victory Fund (LVF) and former Speaker of the New York City Council. In her current capacity, Mark-Viverito works with LVF to identify and recruit progressive Latino candidates, expand the Political Action Committee’s fundraising and state infrastructure, and help launch state chapters in Florida, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. Her work will focus heavily on the 2018 midterm elections.
Raju Narisetti, Member Raju Narisetti is the new director of the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economic and Business Journalism and professor of professional practice at the Columbia Journalism School. He was most recently the CEO of Gizmodo Media Group, a portfolio of digital journalism sites that included some of the web’s most beloved and authentic brands, including Gizmodo, Jezebel, Deadspin, Lifehacker, The Root. A media executive with a track record in creating, rethinking and managing major media organizations in North America, Europe and Asia, Raju was also previously Senior Vice-President of Strategy at News Corp.
Chip Sullivan, Member Chip Sullivan serves as Executive Vice President, Communications, at NBC Entertainment where he is responsible for strategy, development and execution of public and media relations for the network and Universal Television.
Sonal Shah, Member Sonal Shah is an economist and entrepreneur. She is the Executive Director of the Beeck Center of Social impact and Innovation at Georgetown University. She led policy innovation at the White House for President Obama and the Treasury Department for President Clinton.
Anthea Watson Strong, Member Anthea Watson Strong designs and builds technology that supports our shared civic infrastructure as a Project Manager for News at Facebook. She leads a new program that establishes stronger ties between Facebook and the news industry. She previously lead the Civics team at Google and launched products in over 30 countries, reaching hundreds of millions of users.
Charlie Sykes, Member Charles J. Sykes is a an author/commentator. He is a contributing editor of the Weekly Standard and a contributor to NBC/MSNBC. A former conservative talk show host, Sykes has been published in the New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Review of Books, Politico, Newsweek, and other national publications. He is the author of nine books. His most recent book, How the Right Lost Its Mind, was published in 2017; an updated paperback edition will be published in October.
Geneva Overholser, Member Geneva Overholser, an independent journalist in New York City, is a senior fellow at USC Annenberg’s Center for Communication Leadership and Policy. She was until 2013 director of the USC Annenberg School of Journalism. She serves on the boards of the Rita Allen Foundation, the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, the Women’s Media Center, and the Academy of American Poets.
Rev. Starsky Wilson, Member The Reverend Starsky D. Wilson is a pastor, philanthropist and activist pursuing God’s vision of community marked by justice, peace, and love. He is pastor of Saint John’s Church (The Beloved Community), president & CEO of Deaconess Foundation and chair of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.
Democracy Fund National Advisory Committee members serve for three-year terms and meet twice yearly to advise Democracy Fund on matters of organizational strategy. They play a critical role in helping the Democracy Fund develop effective strategies that ensure the American people come first in our democracy.
New reports from the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group reveal mixed signals about support for traditional pillars of democracy: Americans strongly support Congressional oversight of the executive branch and believe the president is subject to courts and law. However, support is lower for media scrutiny of the president and attitudes toward Muslim Americans suggest a troubling lack of commitment to religious diversity.
The Voter Study Group is a research collaboration of leading analysts and scholars from across the political spectrum. The two new reports analyze robust survey data about attitudes of Americans toward our political systems’ checks and balances and Muslim Americans:
In “Muslims in America,” Sides and Mogahed analyzed unique data from the July 2017 wave of the Views of the Electoral Research (VOTER) Survey from the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group. Key findings include:
Americans view many Muslims in the United States as insufficiently “American.” The survey asked respondents what percent of Muslim Americans are described by a specific statement. For each statement, respondents moved a slider on a scale of “none” (0%) to “all” (100%). On average, Americans believed that only 56% of Muslim Americans want to fit in and be part of the U.S., and that an even smaller portion (51%) respects American ideals and laws.
Perceptions of Muslim Americans are strongly related to partisanship and cultural conservatism. On average Democrats believed that a substantial majority of Muslims (67%) wanted to fit in but Republicans believed that only 36%, or less than half, of Muslim Americans wanted to fit in.
Perceptions of Muslim Americans cross partisan lines on three dimensions: Democrats and Republicans did not differ much in their perceptions of how many Muslims are religious, have outdated views of women, and have outdated views of gays and lesbians.
Negative perceptions of Muslim Americans do not match how Muslim Americans describe themselves. For example, a large majority of Muslim Americans express patriotic sentiments. In a 2017 Institute for Social Policy and Understanding poll of Muslim Americans, 84% of Muslims said they identified strongly with being an American, as did 84% of Protestants and 91% of Catholics.
Almost 20% of Americans would deny Muslims who are American citizens the right to vote.
“In this report, we document a wide gap between what most Americans say about Muslims living in the United States and how Muslim Americans see themselves,” said John Sides, associate professor of political science at The George Washington University and research director of the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group. “This gap is accompanied by substantial support for policies targeting Muslims; nearly one in five Americans would even deny Muslims who are U.S. citizens the right to vote. With the Muslim share of the U.S. population projected to double by 2050, the civil rights and liberties of Muslim Americans appear to have a tenuous status in American public opinion.”
“This paper highlights the misperceptions that fuel Islamophobia,” said Dalia Mogahed, director of research at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. “Muslims have been part of America since its inception and are just as likely to be patriotic as non-Muslims, yet many Americans believe Muslim Americans are not ‘fully American.’ These misperceptions hurt not only Muslim Americans, but all Americans.”
The second analysis released today tackles another pillar of our political system – checks and balances – and suggests Americans who exhibit less religious tolerance are also less likely to be supportive of the media’s role in scrutinizing the executive branch. The new brief, “Testing the Limits,” examines how Americans think about the relationship between presidential authority and three specific checks on presidential power: the Congress, the courts, and the press. The brief builds upon “Follow the Leader: Exploring American Support for Democracy and Authoritarianism,” also authored by Drutman, Diamond and Goldman. Key findings include:
Large majorities of Americans believe the president should be subject to oversight and restraints on executive power. For example, 91% of respondents agreed that “the president must always obey the laws and the courts, even when he thinks they are wrong.”
However, President Trump’s supporters are much more likely to express support for other types of accountability and oversight. For example, 48% of respondents with a favorable view of President Trump agreed that “the media shouldn’t scrutinize the president.”
Among President Trump’s supporters, lower levels of education and lower levels of interest in news are associated with lower support for checks on executive authority.
“It is encouraging that support for checks on the presidential authority remains high,” said Democracy Fund President Joe Goldman. “Even among Trump supporters who express dissatisfaction with democracy or openness to authoritarian alternatives, many support Congressional oversight and say the president must be bound by the law. However, it is extremely concerning that support for media scrutiny of the president – a pillar of our democracy – is not as high, particularly among the president’s supporters.”
“Our analysis found strong support for American democracy’s distinctive set of checks and balances,” said Lee Drutman, senior fellow at New America. “However, the differences in partisan attitudes toward these key institutions is worrisome, as it highlights the fragility of essential democratic institutions that are currently under attack.”
“Our democracy depends on popular support for its norms and institutions, including Congressional oversight of the executive branch, a free and independent press, and the rule of law,” said Larry Diamond, senior fellow, Hoover Institution. “We can take heart that most Americans express support for democratic norms and institutions, but we have work to do to increase understanding of their importance and the values that they represent.”
The full reports can be found at www.voterstudygroup.org, along with other research from the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group.
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