This past week, the Democracy Fund and seven peer funders joined with the Foundation Center to launch the beta version of a new interactive map and database that documents how foundations fund our democracy and democracy reform. The new tool tracks funding across an intentionally broad set of categories, including money in politics, election reform, redistricting, civil liberties, open government, public administration, investigative journalism, media literacy, access to broadband internet, civic education, volunteerism, and public participation.
Our hope is that this new tool will help raise awareness about how the field is funded, so that we can make more strategic decisions about where dollars should go in the future. The map will also be helpful for new entrants into the field as they chart their own course and to prospective grantees who are seeking out new funders or partners.
The data remains incomplete and rough around the edges because of the challenges of compiling data on foundation funding and significant inconsistencies in how funders label and describe the grants that they make. Nevertheless, I find the current version to be tremendously helpful and am hopeful that the data will become significantly more complete over time.
Three things initially jumped out at me from reviewing the beta version of the tool.
First, while the overall amount of money going into the field is relatively large (about $450 million from 355 foundations to 1,570 recipients in 2012), the amount that is going into actual reform of our political system is shockingly low by almost any standard (and the total amount remains quite small compared to other major fields of reform). While these numbers are certainly incomplete, it appears that between $6.4M and $14.2M was invested in election and campaign finance reform efforts in 2012 (this does not include funds aimed at mobilizing voters.) Even if we assume that the actual numbers are twice as large, it is hard to look at this data and not be incredibly concerned.
Second, the fields within democracy reform are remarkably uneven in their development and maturity. In some subfields, like civil liberties, we can see strong anchor organizations (like the ACLU) and a wide diversity of funders. Other subfields,like campaign finance reform, appear to be quite fragmented and populated by organizations that are rather small relative to the challenges on which they are working.
Third, the field of democracy reform remains highly polarized. There appear to be very few areas where progressive and conservative funders are jointly funding work in the same area, let alone the same organizations, outside of the fields of civil liberties and volunteerism.
I hope that other funders, as well as reform leaders, will take advantage of this new tool to take part in collaborative discussions about the health of the political reform community and how we can guide funding flows in the future to produce stronger advocates and better reform. I am confident that it will shape the trajectory of the Democracy Fund and our partners going forward.
We are especially grateful to the Hewlett Foundation for their leadership in initiating this process and for the Foundation Center’s staff for their excellent work in creating the database and tool. This is incredibly hard work and everyone involved has demonstrated remarkable commitment and skill.
Please take a moment to visit the Foundation Center’s site and provide them with feedback on how the tool could be more complete and more useful.
