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Democracy Fund Relaunches electionline

Stacey Scholl

October 18, 2018

Today we are pleased to unveil a new and improved electionline — America’s only politics-free source for election administration news and information.

In January 2018, we announced that electionline had become a project of Democracy Fund’s Elections program. We felt then, as we do now, that it is a vital platform for finding trusted news and information about the people and processes that guide our nation’s elections, and for sharing tools, best practices, and innovative ideas for improving the voting experience. Our simple goals for redeveloping the site were to enhance its capabilities and expand content — but our long-term plans are to create a place where readers are exposed to new ideas, opportunities for continuing education, and relationship building.

To do this, we started by thinking long and hard about the site’s current audience and their needs. Starting today, election administrators, academics, voting advocates and other regular readers of electionline will find new items of interest on the site, including:

A calendar of national, state and other field-relevant events;
A directory of organizations and their areas of expertise;
Reports, trainings, tools, guides, and other materials;
A marketplace featuring job openings in the elections field and information on used election equipment for sale; and
Better search functionality throughout

Electionline remains the only place on the internet to find state-by-state curation of daily election administration news. In addition to publishing the classic electionline Weekly newsletter, we will also begin sharing original reports and exclusive content from leaders and experts in the field — making the site a must-read for local election officials, civic organizations, and journalists who cover elections.

While redeveloping the site, we learned two really insightful lessons that might be helpful for others who are developing virtual spaces for information sharing and engagement.

First, collaborate with your audiences and include some “outsider” perspective. As our team weighed important decisions about the look and feel of the website, we were grateful to receive insight and direction from many readers who already trust and rely on electionline.

Second, reflect your values. Redeveloping or creating a new platform is an opportunity to reinforce essential characteristics that inform readers who your organization is, and what they care about. For us it meant focusing on authenticity (even if it means publishing unflattering stories about ourselves or our partners); transparency about who we support with resources in the field; and cultivating greater interest for under-covered areas of importance like voting trends for overlooked communities.

Through this process, we hope we were able to successfully incorporate the feedback we heard from current readers. We also hope that the new electionline website more deeply resonates with all those who are interested in elections in America. We’re excited to hear your thoughts and reactions as you explore the new website. Please visit www.electionline.org and let us know what you think!

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Six Models for Understanding Impact

Liz Ruedy

September 25, 2018

Let’s face it – it’s a tough time to be in the democracy business. America’s democratic institutions and norms are under pressure from hyperpolarization, disruptive technologies, and foreign interference, to name a few things. And we’re not alone: new and established democracies all over the world are facing what Varieties of Democracy has dubbed the “third wave of autocratization”. So when I tell people that I’m the director of evaluation and learning at an organization dedicated to strengthening American democracy, the response I often get is a slightly raised eyebrow and the question “so…how’s that going for you?”

It’s a question intended to prompt a pithy response, I suppose, but I’m increasingly inclined to answer it honestly, and thoroughly. Because the truth is that while assessing impact in any kind of complex social system is hard, it’s particularly difficult when the problems you’re trying to solve are the really big ones and the headwinds you’re facing are especially strong. In these situations, real, meaningful impact is unpredictable, nonlinear, and often something that can only fully understood retrospectively. It’s no wonder that despite robust evaluation and learning practices, many social change organizations still struggle to understand, in real time, whether the work they’re doing is making a difference.

But I’m increasingly convinced that our challenge is not just in measuring the impact that we’re having – it’s in how we think about what impact looks like in the first place. There’s a particular mental model that most people fall into when we talk about impact: we think about what the system will look like as our program progresses over time, compared to what it would look like over the same period without that program. And we default to the expectation that our programs will lead to greater positive increases in desired outcomes compared to the status quo. The rate of change may be incremental, exponential, or something else, but it’s always positive. Unfortunately, this contributes to a widespread assumption in social change work that a program can only be “impactful” if there are measurable increases in expected outcomes.

I’ve spoken a lot with my colleagues at Democracy Fund, as well as at other Omidyar Group organizations, about what impact looks like for the work that we do. I’ve recalled evaluations that I’ve led and reviewed other evaluation literature. And what I’ve realized is that impact can manifest in many different ways. Consider, for example, a conversation that I had recently with one of our program teams about an initiative that they had continued to pursue, despite a lack of measurable outcomes in the last year or so. “We never expected this program to fix the system,” they said. “But it’s a finger in the dam. If we don’t do this work, things will keep going downhill.” That’s a perfectly valid strategy, and stabilizing a system in decline can be, in and of itself, an important impact.

So, together with other evaluation and learning experts in other Omidyar Group organizations, I’ve been working on a way to communicate the different ways we think our work will achieve impact, whether that’s transforming a system, stabilizing a system, or something else. With their input, I’ve identified six different “models” of impact, each of which reflect a particular type of status quo, and potential trajectory of change.

Six Models of Impact

Transformative: This is “impact” the way its most commonly thought of. With transformative impact, we expect a positive change in the system over time compared to the static rate of the counterfactual. The rate of change may be gradual/incremental, exponential, or somewhere in between. For example, we might expect a Get Out the Vote initiative to be transformative, with a positive change on voter turnout over the course of the project.

Proactive: Some systems may already be moving in a positive direction, but an intervention can help accelerate that change. In this case, the ultimate change in outcomes is the same, but the accelerated pace and steeper rate of change is meaningful. We might facilitate these programs if the impact then allows us to pursue further opportunities that we are otherwise waiting to implement. For example, a public awareness campaign can help shift public attitudes toward a particular issue more quickly than they might otherwise have done.

Opportunistic: In the opportunistic model, the program lays the groundwork for change, but the outcomes will be entirely constrained by the context. There may be little perceivable difference in the treatment vs. control scenarios until there is a change in the context that creates an opportunity or removes an obstacle to change. If and when that happens, we expect to see a jump in the value of the outcome in the treatment scenarios compared to the counterfactual. The rate of change therefore looks like a “stair step,” with long periods of stasis interrupted by sudden increases. Public advocacy campaigns often follow an opportunistic model, where ongoing advocacy work lays the groundwork for a trigger event that creates a groundswell of public interest and an opportunity for reform.

Stabilizing: In some situations, we are working to prevent further decline within the system, to disrupt a “vicious cycle,” and/or to hold the system steady until the opportunity arises for positive change. In the stabilizing model, there is no measurable change to the outcome value throughout the course of the program. The program thus appears to have no impact unless you consider the counterfactual and/or the negative historical trendline. We sometimes refer to this as a “finger in the dam” strategy. In this case, the benefit of the program lies in its ability to halt further decline. A civil liberties protection program may follow a stabilizing model: while we may not expect to see substantive expansions of legal protections for marginalized populations, we may be able to maintain the protections that currently exist and ensure their continued enforcement.

Preventative: Perhaps the opposite of an opportunistic model, in this model the program lays the groundwork to strengthen the status quo and prevent certain events with the goal of having no change in the outcome. In this model, we recognize that there are vulnerabilities in the system that could lead a seemingly healthy system to accelerate suddenly in a negative direction. Crisis communications work, in which a crisis event could lead to sudden negative shift in public perceptions/behaviors, is an example. This model is similar to the “stabilizing” model, in which the impact is “no change,” but differs in that the catalyzing event that spurs the decline may never actually happen. “Proving” impact in the preventative model is particularly challenging, because the impact in this case is, essentially, that a worse-case scenario did not occur.

Palliative: One of the realities of working within a systems context is that, occasionally, systems fail with no recourse. The intervention, in these cases, may be focused on slowing the decline of the system in order to mitigate the effects of the eventual collapse, or to buy time for alternatives to emerge or evolve. The palliative model may appear to show a negative relationship between the intervention and the outcomes – that the program is actually doing harm – unless we consider the counterfactual or the historical trendline. An example of the palliative model might be providing direct financial support to a struggling organization or sector until a new, more sustainable business or service model emerges.

Applying Impact Models in an Evaluation and Learning Practice

Of course, in a systems context, it may be hard to actually prove, empirically, whether a system is following one of these models for a number of reasons. But “impact models” can still be an enormously helpful evaluation and learning tool. They can prompt us to analyze not just the current state of the system, but how that system has evolved over time, and thus calibrate our expectations for how the system might respond to an intervention in the future. They can help us communicate a theory of change more clearly, especially what we think the benefit of a program will actually be. They can help us develop strategies of multiple interventions that work together to strengthen a system. They can also help us make sense of performance data, and place outcome measurements in greater context. Finally, they can help us determine how and when to adapt our strategies, as we move from one model to another or add new models to the mix.

I’m sharing these six models not to propose that any and all programs must follow one of them, but rather to start a conversation about the different ways our work can support positive change in complex systems. If these models resonate for you, or if they don’t, or if you have other models you’ve seen in your work, I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to tweet them to me @lizruedy.

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Military Spouses Need More Voting Information to Increase Participation and Confidence

Stacey Scholl

September 24, 2018

Monday was the start of Absentee Voting week, a voting emphasis week for the Federal Voting Assistance Program, the Department of Defense entity helping uniformed service members, their eligible family members, and overseas voters exercise their right to vote. The week is focused on reminding these voters to pay close attention to their ballot return deadlines.

This week can also serve as a reminder for this unique group of voters to register and request an absentee ballot if they have not already done so, as many of the earliest state/territory registration or request deadlines for the November General Election are this week. For example, Alaska, Arkansas, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and the Virgin Islands all have important deadlines on October 7th.

For this group, especially for those living outside of the country, organic cues – like campaign fliers, billboards, or local news coverage of an election – to start the absentee process are often missing. And though there are efforts to get key dates, deadlines, and materials into the heads and hands of this community, there are some troubling early findings released last week by the Military Officers Association of America’s (MOAA) Military Family Initiative, a Democracy Fund grantee.

It seems that military spouses may have a larger informational deficit than those directly serving in the military. For example, according to initial findings, which are part of the MOAA MFI survey conducted in partnership with Syracuse University’s Institute for Military and Veteran Families, only 40% of active duty military spouses felt it was easy to obtain voting information. Only 39% considered themselves knowledgeable (i.e. rated their knowledge as good or excellent) about the use of the Federal Post Card Application (FPCA), which is the most critical election form for the military voter community. This is compared to 56% of active duty members who felt they were knowledgeable. We’ve written about the FPCA before on the Democracy Fund blog, this form allows them to designate as military voters, affording them specific protections under federal law, and acts an absentee ballot request.

Additionally, only 41% of active duty spouse respondents consider themselves knowledgeable about key absentee ballot deadlines as compared to 52% of active duty. The survey findings paint a picture where “awareness and understanding of the absentee voting process is associated with the likelihood of voting.” This is telling, because it is a driver of turnout. Only 36% of active duty military spouses shared that they voted in every election, as compared to 57% of active duty members. Spouses’ top reasons for not voting were:

They did not want to vote;
They did not think their vote mattered; and
Did not know how to get an absentee ballot.

The last two reasons should give us pause. We can and must help this community overcome their informational and confidence hurdles. While the Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) has experimented in the past with military spouse outreach, more must be done to equip these men and women with resources. Additionally we should look for new ways to address some of the potential attitudinal challenges. This is an area where Democracy Fund and MOAA MFI will continue to look for opportunities. In the short-term, we encourage a diverse group of stakeholders: military spousal groups, associations, and peer networks to consider urgently sharing relevant absentee voting information with this audience. One option is to share MOAA MFI’s absentee voting guide powered and populated with information from FVAP. MOAA’s incredible name recognition in this community provides an added layer of trust if constituents aren’t familiar with the FVAP brand, and over time it is a way to help them become familiar.

While the purpose of Absentee Voting week is to encourage these voters to return their ballots as soon as possible, there are likely too many who haven’t even started their absentee voting journey. There might still be time for them to catch-up this election season, but we must look to make larger scale systems changes in the future so no one, especially the military spouse, is left behind.

Prior to joining the Democracy Fund, Stacey Scholl worked for the Federal Voting Assistance Program as a program analyst and also has experience working in two state election offices—Colorado and Iowa. Both her father and mother served in the United States Air Force.

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Leap of Faith: Empowering Faith Leaders to Strengthen Democracy

Chris Crawford

September 17, 2018

American politics is characterized today by gridlock that paralyzes our political institutions and a rise in extremism that dominates our national dialogue and drives Americans further apart. Religious engagement is often thought to be a driver of many of these challenges. But while ideological religious advocacy can feed political tribalism through polarizing “culture wars,” the moral framework that faith provides can also help to build community and promote understanding across partisan lines.

In her latest analysis of Democracy Fund Voter Study Group data, Emily Ekins of the Cato Institute found that religious participation may help moderate Americans’ views, particularly on issues related to race, immigration, and identity. For example, Ekins says that Trump voters who attend church more regularly tend to have more favorable opinions of racial minorities, support making it easier to immigrate to the United States and want to provide a pathway to citizenship for those who are unauthorized immigrants living in the United States. Additionally, church-going Trump voters are half as likely to support a travel ban on Muslims entering the United States as those who never attend church.

Although some partisanship is to be expected in a democracy, it is also true that civil debate and principled compromise are essential to governing a large, diverse, and complex society like ours. As part of our effort to foster more constructive politics, we undertook the task of conducting a “faith in democracy” field scan—interviewing over 40 religious leaders, political leaders, and academics about the ways in which faith communities interact with Congress and other institutions in our democracy. We started with a simple question:

As a foundation committed to creating a more constructive political system, what are we missing?

Some of what we learned revealed major, cross-field implications and provided more specific context to inform our work, including:

faith voters engage more in line with their religious, racial, and partisan identities than they do on specific religious doctrines or beliefs;
important interfaith work can be supplemented by work within specific faith traditions;
“Religious Left” is not a term favored by many religious social justice activists on the Left who do not want to be seen as a mirror image of the Religious Right; and
almost everyone we spoke with mentioned the overwhelming polarization in our political system and the way in which religion can both feed and help overcome tribalism in our political system.

As a result of this deep thinking, Democracy Fund is investing in innovative efforts that empower faith leaders to build bridges, break through polarizing paradigms, and create a more inclusive America. Through this multi-level approach, we hope to identify new ways funders can contribute to strengthening our democracy and help fix the problems in our political system.

To foster deeper understanding among elites and disrupt hyperpartisanship in local communities, Democracy Fund is proud to support:

The Faith and Politics Institute in their work to convene political leaders at the intersection of their moral foundation and their public service through events on Capitol Hill and pilgrimages to historic civil rights sites throughout the country.
The Ethics and Public Policy Center which has, for the past 19 years, helped hundreds of reporters increase their religious understanding through the Faith Angle Forum conferences.

In addition, Democracy Fund’s Governance program and Just and Inclusive Society project have joined together on the following grants:

The Freedom to Believe Project brings together conservative members of Congress with their Muslim constituents through holiday meals and mosque visits in their home districts.
Sojourners’ Matthew 25 Project empowers faith leaders to build a more inclusive, respectful America through building new coalitions across the country.

As a result of our field scan, we have multiple grants focused on empowering leaders within individual faith traditions to combat polarization within their ranks, and to exercise their moral authority to speak out against the forces that divide us as Americans.

The Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University has hosted a dialogue series on Faith, Democracy, and the Common Good. Earlier this year the Initiative also hosted a conference that focused specifically on the ways in which Catholics can lead the way in overcoming polarization in our country.
The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention hosted “MLK50 Conference”, a conference focused on racial healing and unity in Memphis, Tennessee on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. We are supporting ERLC’s efforts to turn the energy from the conference into long-term action. We believe that faith leaders can play an important role in combating the white supremacist Alt-Right movement, white supremacy more broadly, and other forms of extremism.

These initial investments complement our existing partners such as Welcoming America, The Socrates Program at the Aspen Institute, and other grantees who are conducting important work to create a more inclusive America.

Over the past year, we have learned a great deal about the ways in which religious Americans interact with our democratic institutions. Across religious traditions, we have found a hunger for a more inclusive America in which our political system respects the dignity of every individual and serves the needs of the American people. In supporting bold leaders who are working to unify Americans and promote our shared values, we hope to experiment with and scale models to further strengthen and improve our democracy.

We look forward to continuing to share our learnings as we evaluate these initial grants and plan our future investments.

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Adapting Long-term Strategies in Times of Profound Change

Srik Gopal

August 24, 2018

This piece was originally published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Over the past few years, foundations have increasingly embraced a systems approach, formulating longer-term strategies designed to solve chronic, complex problems. We value foundations for having strategic patience and being in it for the long haul. But what happens when they carefully craft a set of strategies intended for the long-term, and the context of one or more the interconnected problems they are trying to address changes considerably? Our experience at Democracy Fund, which aims to improve the fundamental health of the American democratic system, provides one example and suggests some lessons for other funders.

My colleagues and I chronicled the systems-thinking journey of Democracy Fund as we went about creating initiatives. After becoming an independent foundation in 2014, we went through a two-year process of carefully mapping the systems we were interested in shifting and then designing robust strategies based on our understanding of the best ways to make change. Our board approved our three long-term initiatives—elections, governance, and the public square—in 2016.

The 2016 election and its aftermath

It would not be an overstatement to say that the context for much of our work shifted considerably in the months leading up to, during, and following the 2016 US presidential election. Our strategies, as initially developed, were not fully prepared to address emerging threats in the landscape of American democracy, including:

The massive tide of mis- and dis-information
The undermining of the media as an effective fourth estate
The scale of cybersecurity risks to the election system
The violation of long-held democratic norms
The deepening polarization among the electorate, including the extent to which economics, race, and identity would fuel divisions]

During and after the election, we engaged in a combination of collective angst (“How did we miss this?”) and intentional reflection (“How can we do better?”). We came out of that period of introspection and planning with three clear opportunities for our work that we carried out over the next few months.

Ramp up our “system sensing” capabilities. We realized we needed to be much more diligent about putting our “ear to the ground” to understand what was going on with the American electorate. Our sister organization, Democracy Fund Voice, was already doing research that explored why many Americans were feeling disconnected and disoriented. Building on those lessons, we founded the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group, a bipartisan collaboration of pollsters and academics that seeks to better understand the views and motivations of the American electorate. It explores public attitudes on urgent questions such as perceptions of authoritarianism, immigration, economics, and political parties. We also ran targeted focus groups and conducted polling around issues of press freedom, government accountability and oversight, and the rule of law. Collectively, these gave us (and the field) insights into the underlying dynamics and voter sentiments that were shaping the democratic landscape.
Create an opportunistic, context-responsive funding stream. Our long-term initiatives, while highly strategic, did not leave many discretionary resources for needs that arise in the moment. Hence, with support from our board, we launched a series of special projects—time-limited infusions of resources and support to highly salient, timely issues. Our special project on investigative journalism supports and defends the role of a robust, free press in America’s public square. Our special project on fostering a just and inclusive society seeks to protect those whose civil rights and safety seem endangered in this emerging landscape. And finally, our special project on government accountability, transparency, and oversight aims to strengthen the checks and balances that help Americans hold their leaders and government accountable. Taken together, these projects address urgent issues undermining the foundations of our democracy.
Codify our convictions. As a bipartisan organization, we believe that sustainable solutions require broad buy-in, and we strive to incorporate good ideas wherever they originate. However, in the midst of multiple violations of democratic norms in the heat of the 2016 election, we asked, “Does being bipartisan mean being neutral?” In other words, we questioned whether our positioning prevented us from taking a stance. The answer was a resounding no. But we also felt we needed a point of reference from which to act. We then set about creating a healthy democracy framework that codified our core convictions—a framework that would allow us to take principled positions, speak out when needed, and act by putting our resources to work. The framework articulated a set of beliefs, including the importance of respecting human dignity, the role of checks and balances, the significance of a free press, and the expectations of elected leaders to act with integrity. These beliefs act as a filter for what fits or doesn’t fit our general frame for action.

Lessons for other funders

Based on conversations with other funders, I know our experience is not unique. The field, as a whole, is trying to understand what it means to be strategic at a time of unprecedented change. Below are a few lessons that may be helpful:

Recognize that “both/and” is the new normal. Rather than see the dynamic between the long-term and the immediate as an either/or, foundations need to adapt a mindset of both/and. The urgent needs are in many ways symptoms of systemic failure, but they do need dedicated responses and resources in the short term. Our attention is our most precious resource, and foundations need to constantly calibrate theirs to make sure it is appropriately focused.
Go beyond adaptive learning. Notions of adaptive philanthropy—having clear goals, a learning agenda that tracks to those goals, and experimenting along the way—are helpful and did indeed shape our thinking. At the same time, we and other funders must recognize that adaptive learning, by itself, may not be sufficient when the nature of change is profound, rather than incremental. There may be times when we need to take several steps back and examine core assumptions about our work, as Democracy Fund did with our healthy democracy framework, and the McKnight Foundation did with its strategic framework.
Invest in self-care. This may seem like strange advice in a discussion about strategy, but organizations are made up of people, and people tend to burn out in times of incessant and relentless change. It is important to recognize that we are living in a fraught political environment, and foundation staff, grantees, and partners may need an extra ounce of kindness and grace from others as they carry out their work. This may mean additional capacity building support for grantees, wellness counseling for staff, and an organizational culture that promotes empathy and understanding.

Conclusion

Foundations are unique in the sense that they have the ability to focus on an issue over a considerable period of time. And the recent strides the field has made on systems thinking have ensured that long-term strategies consider the multi-faceted nature of systems we are seeking to shift. However, we are grappling with the question of what happens when long-term thinking bumps up against immediate and acute needs.

In Democracy Fund’s case, building better system-sensing capabilities, creating a context-responsive funding stream, and codifying our convictions have equipped us to better respond to changing context. Our journey is by no means complete and we have a lot to learn, but we hope that our experience gives others—especially foundations wrestling with how to address immediate needs without abandoning their core priorities—an emerging roadmap for moving forward,

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A Year After Charlottesville

Joe Goldman

August 9, 2018

The events that unfolded in Charlottesville a year ago were a shocking and tragic reminder that the escalation of racism, nativism, and xenophobia in our national discourse is toxic and potentially deadly.

Last year, we saw a 12% increase in hate crimes in our nation’s ten largest cities, according to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism. New research from Professor Thomas Main further documents that so-called “alt-right” websites saw remarkable increases in web traffic between September 2016 and February of this year—collectively reaching larger audiences than some mainstream center-right online publications. And a year that began with the President excusing the violence in Charlottesville has continued with his administration using vile, dehumanizing language to describe immigrants and implementing a racially-charged family separation policy that has shocked the nation.

At Democracy Fund, we know that defending our democracy and standing up for our core values means pushing back on these forces, wherever they emerge. In many ways, the story of Charlottesville over the past year highlights the importance of several of our core programs, from our initiative on the health of local journalism to our special project on a just and inclusive society.

Let’s start with the critical role played by local journalism.

Powerful reporting of the rally and counter protests captured the attention of the nation. At a time when local news outlets are shuttering, the Pulitzer Prize winning photo-journalism of the Charlottesville Daily Progress demonstrated the industry’s role in telling local stories, and of the importance of Democracy Fund’s efforts to support innovators reinventing the business model for local news.

The Daily Progress works hand in glove with Charlottesville Tomorrow, a non-profit newsroom that is a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News – a Democracy Fund grantee that supports mission-driven journalism. Together, the outlets tracked the events of last summer and their aftermath, ensuring that the coverage was both meaningful nationally and true to the voices of the local community. Around the country we are seeing creative collaborations like this one beginning to stitch together news ecosystems in ways that make local news more resilient.

The courts have also stepped in to play an important role.

The Charlottesville community has found a measure of justice for the events of last summer through an innovative lawsuit by the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University (another Democracy Fund grantee). Last year, ICAP sued the organizers of Unite the Right under a 1776 Virginia law prohibiting “unlawful paramilitary activity.” Recently, the rally’s lead organizer Jason Kessler became the final of over a dozen defendants to enter into a consent decree resolving that lawsuit. Under the terms of the settlement, Kessler promised he will not facilitate—and rather will actively discourage—armed paramilitary activity at any future rallies in Charlottesville.

Across the nation, our grantees are working to bring together Americans of all backgrounds to affirm our shared commitment to building a pluralistic, inclusive future. Veterans for American Ideals, for example, this year reached over 4 million people with their #WhatIFoughtFor campaign, a moving portrait that portrayed refugees alongside former service members to emphasize that embracing diversity is a core American value. Faith in Public Life is bringing together faith leaders to reject hate and stand at the defense of communities under attack. Pro Publica’s Documenting Hate project is helping to better track hate and bias crime to enrich the national understanding and conversation about hate incidents. And Civic Nation has joined forces with NBC Universal to relaunch #ErasetheHate, a campaign to help amplify and accelerate the work of people across the country who are combatting hate in unique and innovative ways.

Americans of all stripes have come together over the past few years to assert their commitment to the democratic values on which this country was founded. Across the nation, we’ve seen people stand up in defense of communities under attack, a strong public repudiation of the racist rhetoric and policies by public figures, and increased philanthropic giving to efforts increasing tolerance and inclusion. We’ve also seen record numbers of women and people of color run for elected office, claiming their place in American democracy as never before. These actions represent a counterweight to the types of hatred we saw last year in Charlottesville.

As we commemorate the anniversary of the events in Charlottesville, Unite the Right is preparing to hold rallies in Charlottesville and right here in Washington, D.C. While Democracy Fund believes deeply in the protection of free speech, we believe that these demonstrations must be met vigorously and must not be allowed to use violence to intimidate others. Today and every day, we find hope and inspiration in the actions of those who stand against hatred and against those actions and rhetoric that offend the human dignity of all.

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North Carolina organizations building a bold future for news and information together

Teresa Gorman

August 1, 2018

How can we help local news survive, transform, and thrive? This question will not be answered by one person, one organization, or one innovation. Instead, it will be answered by local ecosystems that have many players, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, coming together to be greater than the sum of their parts. It will look different everywhere around the country, but without this systemic approach, local news cannot survive.

This theory is at the core of the work of the North Carolina Local News Lab Fund, which is announcing $500,000 in grants today. NCLNL’s goal is to support people and organizations working to build a healthier local news and information ecosystem in North Carolina. It is a collaborative fund at the North Carolina Community Foundation, established by a group of local and national funders who believe in the power of local journalism, local stories, and local people to strengthen our democracy.

The grants were selected by an advisory board with representatives from the following foundations: A.J. Fletcher Foundation, Democracy Fund, Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation, Prentice Foundation, and Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, as well as subject matter experts from North Carolina Central University and NC Congress of Latino Organizations.

The fund’s first grants go to organizations working to expand access to critical news and information for all North Carolina communities. This cohort represents the fund’s commitment to supporting a diverse set of organizations pursuing meaningful projects to better serve local communities and strengthen the news and information ecosystem overall. Each of these grantees also represent vital networks of people, communities, and organizations that will engage and collaborate with their work.

It is, as Fiona Morgan wrote in “Learning from North Carolina,” a manifestation of how “North Carolina’s news ecosystem will likely succeed best as a network of networks, with distinct areas where people join forces, share resources or collaborate.”

These grantees are working to build new infrastructure for independent media, recognizing that we have to work together to meet the full needs of our communities. Across these efforts we saw a deep commitment to community and collaboration and a generosity and determination to openly share and jointly build a bold future for North Carolina.

Individually these are all great projects and organizations, and taken together they begin to connect people and communities across North Carolina in new ways. We are thrilled by the work these organizations will do, but this is just the beginning. We had more than 70 ideas submitted to the NCLNL through the application process, many of them addressing important needs and opportunities that we want to work on in the future.

Word on the Street/La Voz de los Jóvenes trainees learn how to tell stories in Asheville. Photo by Sekou Coleman.

The grantees are:

Asheville Writers: Word on the Street/La Voz de los Jóvenes – Asheville Writers in the Schools and Community provides creative writing and arts programs for young people in local schools and community programs. Word on the Street/La Voz de los Jóvenes is an online magazine with a program that mentors and trains youth of color to gather and publish news that engages their communities and builds racial equity.
Carolina Public Press: North Carolina Investigative Journalism Collaborative – Carolina Public Press is an independent nonprofit news organization established in 2011 with a focus on in-depth and investigative news in Western North Carolina. In 2018, it expanded to cover the entire state. CPP will lead the North Carolina Investigative Journalism Collaborative, which will launch collaborations between state and local media outlets, organize listening sessions between residents and members of the media statewide, and experiment with new ways to generate its own self-sustaining revenue.
Colectivo de Comunicación Participativa de Carolina del Norte (CCPNC): Enlace Latino NC – Enlace Latino NC is a Spanish-language website that offers local, state, and national immigration and policy news during a critical time of need in the Latinx community in North Carolina. With this grant, Enlace Latino NC will focus on building their capacity, adding more resources, and reporting on key issues.
Duke University Reporters Lab: North Carolina Fact-Checking Project– The North Carolina Fact-Checking Project is a collaborative effort focused on the 2018 state elections and 2019 state legislative session, providing rigorous fact-checked content for publications and broadcast programs statewide. The project aims to increase fact-checking coverage of public officials and candidates. It brings together partners with deep experience in substantive fact-checking with an innovative edge, including the Duke Reporters Lab, the News & Observer, and the Reese News Lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
NC Health News: General Operating Support – North Carolina Health News is a leading news source on information about health care for residents, policymakers, lobbyists, and healthcare workers across North Carolina. With this grant, the NC Health News staff will continue and strengthen the organization’s work.
NC Press Association: Training Program – The North Carolina Press Association (NCPA) supports newspapers statewide, offers a legal hotline, and hosts an annual convention. The NCPA is focused on a defending “the public’s right to know” by advocating for open government and championing First Amendment freedoms.
UNC Center for Public TV: Public Media NC and HBCU Radio Together – Radio stations at historically black colleges and universities in North Carolina are a valuable resource for local, relevant, and timely news for the communities they serve. This collaboration between HBCU radio stations and UNC-TV will give all involved an opportunity to learn from each other and collaborate across mediums.
UNC School of Media and Journalism: Trail Blazer – The Trail Blazer project will help sustain long-term coverage of stories by simplifying the research process for journalists in North Carolina. Through a mobile-friendly website, it will provide a comprehensive, updated, simple-to-navigate repository for journalists, including limited-scope facts, timelines, annotated documents, and links to existing articles. The core concepts of the Trail Blazer project were developed by veteran journalist Vaughn Hagerty, who broke a story about the presence of the chemical GenX in Cape Fear River.
WNCU: Advancement of Emerging Young, Diverse News Journalists – WNCU is a public radio station that serves partly as a hub to train young journalists at North Carolina Central University. The Advancement of Emerging Young, Diverse News Journalists project will train a diverse, inclusive, and underrepresented group of student reporters via the WNCU radio station and the student newspaper, The Campus Echo.
Working Narratives: Wilmington Ecology Project – Working Narrativesfocuses on reporting on pressing social challenges such as media justice, mass incarceration, and health equity. Founded in 2011, the organization works at the local and regional level to “tell great stories that inspire, activate and enliven our democracy.” The Wilmington Ecology Project will train citizens to produce and report their own stories through performance, radio, video, and other forms.

The advisory board of the Fund — Brett Chambers (North Carolina Central University), Elena Conley (Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation), Damon Circosta (A.J. Fletcher Foundation) Teresa Gorman (Democracy Fund) Bobbi Hapgood (Prentice Foundation), Ivan Kohar Parra (NC Congress of Latino Organizations), Sorien Schmidt (Z Smith Reynolds Foundation) and Josh Stearns (Democracy Fund) — were inspired and challenged by the scope and creativity of the proposals we received. It was incredibly difficult to pick just a few grantees in this round.
In partnership with the advisory board, funder partners, and others, including Democracy Fund Senior Consultant Melanie Sill, the NCLNL will continue to explore ways to support and strengthen North Carolina’s local news ecosystem. This will include future grantmaking and convenings. It will not be done in a vacuum. We will strive to live the NCLNL’s stated values of learning, diversity, equity, inclusion, innovation, and transparency, and continue to share updates from our grantees and others here on the Local News Lab.

As we continue this work, please share your comments, feedback, and ideas to localnewslab@democracyfund.org.

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Congress Needs Modern Tech to Keep Up with Constituents’ Needs. Here’s How Philanthropy Can Help.

Chris Nehls

July 12, 2018

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.

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Listening to Our Grantees: Lessons from our Second Grantee Perception Survey

Joe Goldman

July 11, 2018

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.

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Election Security Preparation for the 2018 Midterms

Lindsay Daniels

June 28, 2018

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.