General operating support provided by this grant will help to expand the Niskanen Center’s operations. Ultimately, the center seeks to drive and shape a public conversation on the importance of democracy and the best way to defend it through a series of published works by leading thinkers. With the support provided by this grant, the center will be expanding existing initiatives and creating new ones.
Program Area: Governance
Sojourners
To support Sojourners’ Matthew 25 initiative to shift the political and public narrative towards more inclusive and constructive conversations. To do this, Sojourners will use values-based messaging and convene diverse partners to address issues such as racism and xenophobia through videos, audio pieces, and other resources.
Georgetown University
To support Georgetown University’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life in hosting a gathering of Catholic leaders from around the country to discuss the problem of polarization within the Catholic Church in the United States, and the ways in which Catholics can contribute to our national political culture in a way that decreases hyper partisanship and polarization.
Congressional Sports for Charity
This grant will support Congressional Sports for Charity, organizer of the annual Congressional Baseball Game. The Congressional Baseball Game, first held in 1909, is an annual bipartisan event in which Members of the United States Congress face off in a friendly baseball game. Congressional Sports for Charity uses proceeds from the game to support charities across the Washington, DC area.
POPVOX LegiDash Fund
The POPVOX LegiDash Fund, a project of the Tides Foundation, will develop a communications and legislative resources dashboard for use by congressional staff. The free product, called LegiDash, will provide staff with an improved constituent communications portal they can use to view and respond to messages delivered to Congress by POPVOX, increasing the efficiency of that process.
Faith and Politics Institute
The Faith & Politics Institute will explore the development of a network of faith leaders to promote civil discourse.
Voice of the People
Building on the infrastructure established in the first phase of the project, we propose to carry out Citizen Cabinet surveys on seven new policy topics in an expanded number of states as well as with a national sample and to more broadly promote the idea of the Citizen Cabinet to Congress, the media and the public. This grant will also work to help VOP find a new long-term home for this project with more robust institutional resources.
Congressional Management Foundation
This general operating grant is aimed at helping boost the efforts of the Congressional Management Foundation’s efforts to help Congressional offices manage resources as effectively as possible. More specifically, this grant aims to boost several key functions within CMF including a program that would look at developing guiding principles that would establish best practices for use of technology in Congressional offices and a program that focuses on training Freshman Member offices.
FairVote
This grant will be to help support the general operations of FairVote – an organization working to generate greater civility in government through voting reforms.
Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
This grant will expand CRFB’s fact-checking capabilities to monitor and analyze (in real time) the various statements and positions put forth by the president, his staff, and administration representatives.