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Our Growing Team

Joe Goldman

November 10, 2014

Four months ago, I shared the exciting news that the Democracy Fund had spun off from Omidyar Network to become an independent private foundation. Since that time, we have been hard at work building our new organization – setting up internal systems, approving new grants, refining our strategies, and so much more.

I’m incredibly proud of how much progress we have made in the short time since our launch and in particular would like to share that four incredible people have since joined our team. You can find their bios in the About Us section of our web site, but I wanted to share quick notes about each of them here.

Tiffany Griffin has joined us as our Manager of Learning and Impact from the U.S. Agency on International Development, where she was a Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist for the Feed the Future initiative. Tiffany has a PhD in social psychology and spent time working for Senator Bingaman as a Congressional Fellow.
Lauren Strayer has joined us as our Manager of Communications & Network. Lauren brings ten years of experience to the team in communications, media, and advocacy. Most recently, Lauren was an independent consultant specializing in communications and strategy for non-profit and philanthropic enterprises. Previously, she was Associate and Acting Director of Communications at Demos, a Democracy Fund grantee, and the executive director of the New Democracy Project.
Stacey Van Zuiden has joined us as a Program Associate for Responsive Politics from the Federal Voting Assistance Program at the U.S. Department of Defense. While attending law school she interned with the Colorado Secretary of State’s Elections Division and the Iowa Secretary of State’s Elections Division, and previously worked for the Nebraska Republican Party in a variety of positions, eventually serving as the party’s Communications Director.
Paul Waters has joined us as a Program Associate for Informed Participation from the Federal Communications Commission, where he served as a Legal Fellow in the Office of the Chairman and the Wireline Competition Bureau. Paul was a GW Presidential Merit Scholar and a Public Interest Scholar at the George Washington University Law School, where he earned his J.D. He also served as the president of the Gulf Recovery Network, a student group that provides pro bono legal work in New Orleans.

Stay tuned for more updates. We expect that several more inspiring leaders will be joining us over the course of the next six months.

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“We’re going to fix that.”

Adam Ambrogi

November 4, 2014

In his 2013 State of the Union address, President Barack Obama brought national attention to ongoing problems in election administration and most notably long lines at polling places on Election Day with the quote above. What came next was the creation of the temporary Presidential Commission on Election Administration (PCEA).

A year later, the PCEA released a report that recommended policies addressing some of the bigger problems in election administration. Since the release of the report, members of the PCEA have traveled the country speaking to audiences of election officials, lawmakers, and the public, hoping that its recommendations would catch on and find willing agents for implementing its changes.

In states and localities where election officials took the lead on implementing some of the recommendations, today’s midterm elections will be the first time voters experience new policies. The election community will be watching closely as the effects of three big recommendations—new online voter registration (OVR) systems, interstate exchanges of voter information, and mandated adoption of PCEA’s resource allocation tools for use at the local level—are tested.

The PCEA made it clear that the value of OVR cannot be overstated. At the time of the report, states with OVR experienced a reduction in voter information errors, which led to an increase in the accuracy of voter rolls and reduced wait times for voters. States also experienced a decrease in the number of provisional ballots issued, which can indicate problems with voter rolls. And now, with the addition of Illinois, Delaware, and Georgia, 20 states have OVR. Will these states see the same improvements, what else will they encounter?

Beyond the OVR benefits for voters who traditionally show up to vote, there are broad higher-level questions of how OVR affects voter confidence and turnout overall. Does the experience of registering to vote online translate to showing up to vote on Election Day, voting early, or casting an absentee ballot? Do online registration services such as provided by TurboVote or Rock the Vote employ other mechanisms for informing and engaging voters? These and other questions will be answered over the months and years to come.

The PCEA also recommended states participate in an interstate exchange of voter registration information. The Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) allows member states to check voter rolls against lists from other member states, in addition to state DMV records, the National Change of Address list, and the Social Security Administration. ERIC’s data matching program helps state election officials more confidently determine which voters should be removed due to a move out of the state, or death. All voters benefit from accurate rolls, and the goal of ERIC is to ensure that no voters are removed improperly.

ERIC also identifies potentially eligible individuals who have not yet registered to vote. ERIC member states are required to mail registration information to these individuals. The question to be answered: how many will register as a result and show up for this midterm? Pew’s initial responses show great promise for the ERIC system, but the impact and effectiveness will grow as the number of participants grow.

Long lines on Election Day 2013 were a major catalyst for the PCEA, but now there are several practical tools that local election officials can use to give voters a better, faster experience and do so with limited resources. A new toolkit includes a series of calculators that help estimate the appropriate ratios of volunteers, check-in stations, voting booths, and machines so that voters do not experience long waits.

In 2014, the Ohio Secretary of State’s office issued a directive requiring local Boards of Elections to create a plan for election administration. As part of this plan, administrators are strongly encouraged use the Election Toolkit to make resource allocation calculations.

Many in the election community are especially interested in the data and experience this will generate in Ohio because of the potential broad use of the tools. Will the tools effectively account for all of the variables of voter behavior and the environment of all varieties of polling places? Will other variables outside of an administrators control (length of the ballot, voter confusion, etc.) still cause long lines on Election Day? The answers will be here soon enough.

Finally, perhaps the greatest experiment occurring this Election Day in thousands of jurisdictions may answer the question that so many have been afraid to ask: will aging election equipment function properly through yet another election? Some jurisdictions are using Diebold Equipment even though Diebold is well out of the business of manufacturing voting systems. When will the threat of an election technology meltdown prompt a better way of voting?

If there was one warning that the PCEA issued, it is that election equipment purchased in the early 2000s is now nearing the end of its life cycle and yet, jurisdictions are still relying on it to meet high voter demands. It’s unclear how much longer these systems can be maintained by local election offices. It’s clear that there are innovative start-ups and that leading jurisdictions (LA County, CA and Travis County, TX) are working with their voters to imagine next-generation voting equipment. Where will elections look like in 2016? 2020?

In many ways, these questions are not going to be answered today, but will be determined by state & local election officials, advocates, voters and politicians who all share the goal of quality elections. We hope to work in collaboration with those who want to improve the process of making elections something worthy of our country’s history, encourages a process the gives every eligible voter a chance to cast that vote, and have that vote counted correctly.

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2014 for 2016: Supporting Innovations in Voter Information

Tom Glaisyer

October 16, 2014

This post is by Tom Glaisyer, Kelly Born, and Jonathan Kartt. Tom Glaisyer is the Program Director of the Informed Participation Initiative at the Democracy Fund. Kelly Born is a Program Officer at the Hewlett Foundation, where she works on both Special Projects and the Madison Initiative, and Jonathan Kartt works in Programs & Evaluation for the Rita Allen Foundation.

Last week, we shared our early research on voter information platforms and the breadth of exciting new organizations that our research unearthed. The impetus: The Hewlett Foundation, the Rita Allen Foundation and the Democracy Fund all share an interest in better equipping voters with the information they need: to participate in elections, vote in ways that reflect their interests, understand candidate positions and ballot issues, and to keep track of their representatives.

We partnered to explore dozens of these platforms, and quickly realized that we weren’t sure how best to support the field, or which groups to partner with. So the Hewlett Foundation and the Rita Allen Foundation crafted an RFP to solicit proposals from a handful of potential nonprofit partners, with the goal of funding them in a rapid-cycle innovation project. We were open to all kinds of ideas, and suggested a few possibilities:

Consulting Support: Because the ultimate success of any voter information platform depends on the quality of its design and resultant resonance with users, we suggested potential projects aimed at supporting design iteration and experimentation.
Implementation Support: These needed to be projects that were essentially shovel-ready, capable of being fielded before (and tested during) the 2014 election cycle.
Learning Support: There is much to be learned during this election cycle that might help inform later work in 2016. So we were open to jointly establishing a learning agenda for 2014 and then pairing nonprofit partners with researchers to test the effectiveness of different innovations.

Ultimately the proposals we received included some combination of all of these options.

Independently, the three foundations reviewed and assessed the pros and cons of all of the proposals, and between us we are now funding three public charities that responded to the RFP:

The Healthy Democracy Fund, to pilot its deliberative ballot decision-making approaches in Arizona and Colorado, and to conduct communications research around the efforts to understand what kind of messaging works with voters.
Maplight, to further develop its Voter’s Edge tool such that it can be more easily embedded in other platforms (e.g., news sites, civic organizations).
Seattle City Club’s Living Voters Guide, to further develop the site and to expand it to encompass not just ballot information but candidate data, including information from Voter’s Edge.

All of these projects include a research component to help understand what nonpartisan information resonates with voters, in hopes that we can learn and improve in future election cycles.

We are optimistic about the possibilities of these charitable projects, and about innovations in the sector more broadly – both for-profit and non-profit. These efforts offer hope that in future cycles citizens will have access to—and use—a wealth of information for even down-ticket races.

But we also have (lots of) questions:

When do people search for this information? How do they find it?
How do you expand the audience beyond political junkies to reach a broader population?
How useful do voters find this information? When and how does it actually influence decision-making?
What formats do voters prefer?
Do the platforms increase public trust in the political process or might some, particularly those that offer candidate matching, increase polarization?
How can the platforms be sustained?
Are the approaches scalable? What level of data standardization is desirable or feasible? For example, it is currently easy to get information on Congressional candidates, but much harder to digitally aggregate even the names of candidates for down-ballot races, let alone any meaningful information about them.

We are wrestling with these questions, supporting some research with these partners to test aspects of them, and exploring more broadly how we can aid the emerging community of practice that exists around this next generation of nonpartisan voter information tools. As always, we welcome your comments.

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The Rapidly Expanding Field of “Voter Information Platforms”

Tom Glaisyer

October 8, 2014

How will voters find information in 2014?

For those who care about US democracy, this question is front and center in a world where both the structure of the news media and the channels through which voters get information are in flux. In the not too distant past, voters received most of their information about candidates and ballot measures through mass market dailies and TV or radio—places where the message was mediated by gatekeepers. The only opportunity to directly communicate with voters was through paid advertising or in-person contact. Nowadays, candidates have limitless options to directly reach voters – even television, when delivered via satellite, permits hyper targeting of political advertising messages.

But it’s not just campaigns that are exploiting these new digital opportunities—a host of (mostly new) organizations, non-profit and for-profit, are seeking not to win a vote, but to inform voters about their options.

It’s an exciting time for the field. Abroad, websites that match voters to policy positions held by parties, so-called voting advice applications, have seen significant adoption. In Germany, for example, Wahl-o-Mat was queried 13.2M times in 2013—not bad when you consider there are only 80M people in the country. In the US, we have encountered dozens of similar sites such as Vote411, ethePeople and Project VoteSmart.

The digitization of data permits an increasing amount of contextual information to be added to what was previously just a thumbnail sketch of a candidate or issue. For example, information on candidates or ballot initiatives can now be combined with “rules of the road” on where and when to vote, and what materials to bring. This digital “plumbing” is often under-appreciated—Google’s Civic Information API provide a way to lookup polling places in 2014 and listed the candidates on the ballot. It builds on data from the PEW Charitable Trust’s Voting Information Project and augments a recently developed iOS app.

Recognizing the possibilities in this emerging ecosystem of voter information, the Hewlett Foundation, the Rita Allen Foundation and the Democracy Fund partnered to explore the dozens of voter information websites that have developed in the last few years. We examined a number of dimensions:

Candidates vs Ballot Initiatives (or both): Many of the sites focus on candidates, while others like Healthy Democracy in Oregon and Washington State’s Living Voters Guide have (until recently) focused exclusively on ballot measures. Others like ethePeople, Project VoteSmart and PollVault, cover both.
Geographic Scope: Many provide national coverage, whereas others, like ethePeople, partner with media and civics groups in specific states or localities. Maplight’s Voter’s Edge, cover national races, while also offering some down-ballot coverage in particular states (in this case, California).
Audience: Some, like Ballotpedia, provide detailed information that might appeal more to policy wonks like ourselves, whereas Voter’s Edge or Who’s On The Ballot seek to serve those who prefer a less detailed view.
Approach: Sites like Voter’s Edge provide “just the facts” (on a lot of dimensions, including candidate’s prior jobs, campaign funding sources, etc.). Others, like the newly launched Crowdpac,use campaign funding sources to predict candidates’ positions, in an attempt to address the challenge of comparing a 30-year incumbent’s record to that of a first-time challenger who has never held office. ISideWith uses matching algorithms – and has now paired more than 11 million users with their “ideal” candidates based on answers to basic philosophical and political questions (e.g., “what is your stance on taxation?”). Still others actually involve citizens in the deliberative process: Healthy Democracy in Oregon convenes a representative panel of dozens of citizens for a week to evaluate the pros and cons of a particular ballot initiative. The information is then shared with voters in the official voting guide. Research has shown how valued that information has been – a majority of Oregonians were aware of the tool, and roughly two thirds who read the CIR statements found them helpful when deciding how to vote. In Washington State the Living Voters Guide has utilized a deliberative platform to allow voters to share why they are in favor of or opposed to a particular initiative.
Business Models: Half of what we found are for-profit operations like Crowdpac and Poll Vault. The other half (most of what we’ve discussed herein) are nonprofit. So we spoke with venture capitalists who had invested in several of the for-profit competitors to understand their reasons for doing so, and to ensure that we felt there was a good rationale for philanthropic investment in this space.
Operating and Partnership Approaches: Some, like Project VoteSmart, rely on teams of dedicated interns, while others are striving towards more automated systems. We also looked at organizations’ partnerships – many like ethePeople are collaborating extensively as part of their model, others are closer to independent operators.
Use: Finally, we looked at use. Not much is known about the end-users of these types of voting information services beyond broad demographic statistics. In terms of numbers, some platforms have received a fair amount of uptake, whereas others are so new that no usage data is even available yet – however, no site appears to have come close to Wahl-o-Mat’s success in Germany.

This wide variety of activity left us with lots of questions: whether and how to support this field, who to partner with, and on what kinds of projects? We have begun to explore these questions, and will discuss our early work on this topic in a follow-up post next week.

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Guest Post: First State-Wide Partnership Brings Voter Registration Services to 850,000 Students

Seth Flaxman

August 1, 2014

Back in January of 2012, TurboVote had one partner school, our first grant had only just come in, and I was struggling with how to run payroll for the first time. That month I hired a dynamic young organizer, Sam Novey, on one condition: fly to Miami for two weeks with no travel budget and get three colleges that are a little bit interested in TurboVote signed on as partners. Over a dozen trips to Florida later, we’ve come a long way.

Last month, Senator Bob Graham announced in front of a packed audience of student affairs professionals from across the country that Florida was now “leading the charge” with 38 colleges and universities from across the state institutionalizing voter engagement with the help of TurboVote. He was sharing some breaking news. The Florida College System (FCS) had just announced a new partnership with TurboVote to bring our tool to 27 state and community colleges—making this is the first system-wide project of the FCS Civic Literacy Initiative, which aims to make civic engagement part of the experience of all 850,000 students enrolled in the system.

Bringing this partnership to life required some serious teamwork. Our first few Florida colleges were all introduced to us through the Knight Foundation. Funding from Knight and the Democracy Fund helped us keep a team of talented organizers focused on this opportunity for over a year, and funding from the Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions at St. Petersburg College is what made the whole FCS expansion ultimately possible.

This is a big deal. FCS is how most Floridians access higher education – 65 percent of the state’s high school graduates begin their postsecondary education at one of the system’s colleges. And our partnerships are serious long-term love fests, not fly-by-night flings. When TurboVote partners with a school we provide them with a co-branded website and work with administrators on how to institutionalize TurboVote into their student services by integrating our site with class registration, freshman orientation, or other school-wide student experiences.

When students sign up, TurboVote helps them become active voters for the rest of their life. First, we’ll help them register to vote by emailing and mailing a completed registration form along with a pre-addressed, stamped envelope, then send text message reminders about deadlines. After that, we start tracking all their elections—local, state and national, and if students wish to request absentee ballots, we’ll send them all the forms and information they need along with pre-addressed, pre-stamped envelopes. Finally, for every election, TurboVote repeats the process, sending text message and email reminders with important election information, dates and deadlines, to ensure that they never miss another.

However, what’s most exciting about this news was that the move to institutionalize voter engagement was a notably bipartisan effort. Republican Congressman Lou Frey, who founded the Institute of Politics and Government at the University of Central Florida, is also a supporter of the TurboVote effort.

In the words of Congressman Frey, “the adoption of TurboVote by the Florida College System will provide a pathway to a lifetime of participation by the state’s youngest citizens.” Frey knows what he’s talking about. He helped sponsor the legislation leading to the adoption of the 26th Amendment in the 1970s that first gave 18 year-olds right to vote. And now he’s challenging “every student in the state to use TurboVote’s easy website to register and help shape the future of America by voting in every election.”

As schools across Florida come together to bring TurboVote to their campuses, they are doing more than introducing the next generation to our democracy; they are serving as a model for the rest of the country. TurboVote is now at over 140 campuses and signing on more partners every day.

Seth Flaxman is Co-Founder and Executive Director of Democracy Works, a nonprofit dedicated to the idea that voting should fit the way we live.

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Guest Post: API seeks Best-Practices and New Tools for Fact-Checking

Jane Elizabeth

July 22, 2014

The practice of fact-checking is a core function of journalism in the 21^st century. As American Press Institute (API) executive director Tom Rosenstiel argues: “Nothing comes closer to journalism’s essential purpose than helping citizens know what is true and what is not. And in an age when information is in greater supply, it is more important, not less, that there are trusted and skilled sources to help citizens sort through misinformation.”

During the 2014 U.S. election cycle, fact-checking projects emerged in print, television, radio and online newsrooms around the country in greater numbers than ever before. Dr. Michelle Amazeen, a Rider University professor and API researcher, found that mentions of “fact-checking” in media increased more than 75 percent between 2011 and 2012 alone.

From this year’s primaries to the general election in 2016, API’s fact-checking project, launched earlier this year with support from The Democracy Fund, is working to improve and develop fact-checking best practices and trainings for newsrooms that want to provide deeper coverage for their audiences. In fact, API’s new emphasis on fact-checking excellence is already reaching beyond U.S. borders. Kirsten Smith, a journalist in Ottawa, Canada, contacted API in May with a request for assistance for her “small newsroom with limited resources” to prepare for the 2014 municipal elections and the 2015 national election. “Have you a tip sheet or primer for a small scale fact check program?” In fact, API has developed a big-picture tip sheet precisely for requests like this, and we will be developing in-depth training programs based on upcoming research.

API also has developed blog features, convened a meeting of its researchers and media, participated in the world’s first international fact-checking conference, and is discussing additional funding sources with organizations interested in promoting better fact-checking. An important initial function of the project is to compile, curate and examine the latest news from the fact-checking front. Features include:

Q&A interviews with those who study and practice fact-checking;
The latest from our scholars’ research projects and other studies in fact-checking;
“How I Got That Fact,” a regular column by journalists across the country who share their fact-checking tips and process;
A daily, curated collection of fact-checking stories from around the country; and
More news and learning tools from the fact-checking universe.

A major part of the initiative brings together six experienced scholars from around the U.S. and the U.K. to work on projects designed to examine and improve the practice of fact-checking. Their topics include: the impact of fact-checking on political rhetoric; the effectiveness of rating systems like the Washington Post’s “Pinnochios;” readers’ changing perceptions of fact-checking; and a survey of journalists on the prevalence of fact-checking. The group joined API’s fact-checking project, announced in February, with plenty of experience in the study of information, misinformation, and how facts are processed. Here are the scholars, with a brief description of their work for API:

Michelle Amazeen, Rider University. Amazeen, a Temple University graduate who holds a Ph.D. in mass media and communication, will study the effectiveness of political fact-checking rating systems (such as the Washington Post’s “pinnochios”). On Twitter @commscholar.

Lucas Graves, University of Wisconsin. Graves, who holds a Ph.D. in journalism from Columbia University, has written about fact-checking topics for CJR and other publications. He will study the effects of fact-checking on journalistic practice and is part of the team working on the study of rating systems. On Twitter @gravesmatter.

Ashley Muddiman, University of Wyoming. Muddiman, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas, is part of the team that will study the effectiveness of rating systems. She also is involved in the Engaging News Project. On Twitter @ashleymuddiman.

Brendan Nyhan, Dartmouth College. Nyhan, who holds a Ph.D. from Duke University, will assist on the project on the effects of fact-checking and a project which will examine how attitudes toward political fact-checking change over the course of a campaign. On Twitter @BrendanNyhan.

Jason Reifler, University of Exeter, UK. Reifler also holds a Ph.D. from Duke University. He will work with the teams studying the effects of fact-checking and changing attitudes during the course of a campaign. On Twitter @jasonreifler.

Emily Thorson, George Washington University. Thorson holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. She will examine how contextual information in news coverage can minimize misperceptions, and will work with the team studying the effectiveness of ratings systems. On Twitter @emilythorson.

The American Press Institute will combine the researchers’ work with the work of other scholars and API’s own research to identify what kinds of fact-checking are most effective at stopping misleading rhetoric and are most informative to citizens. In the second year of the program, API will conduct workshops and meetings and develop other resources aimed at supporting news organizations interested in fact-checking on the eve of the 2016 election cycle.

Have questions? Topics you’d like to see tackled? A good fact-checked story of your own? Contact me at jane.elizabeth (at) pressinstitute.org, 571-366-1116, @JaneEliz.

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Guest Post: Seeking Common Ground and New Audiences in the Good Fight

Robert Wright

July 18, 2014

Over the past few months, with the support of the Democracy Fund, we at Bloggingheads.tv have been trying to show that, even in today’s highly partisan atmosphere, policy disagreements can be expressed civilly—and, what’s more, even ideological opponents can find things they agree on.

In a certain sense, this has been our mission ever since Bloggingheads.tv was created in 2005. From the beginning we found that when ideological antagonists have a face-to-face conversation, their civilizing instincts usually kick in. What’s different about our new project, The Good Fight, is our attempt, in collaboration with The Atlantic, to make this civilizing effect visible beyond the small but devoted audience of politics and policy aficionados who come to the Bloggingheads site to watch meaty discussions that can go on for 30, 45, even 60 minutes.

Here is how The Good Fight works: We host a video debate on some policy issue, and the moderator encourages the debaters to crystallize their disagreements but also to highlight any areas of agreement they may have. The whole conversation is shown on Bloggingheads.tv, and, in addition, we distill the results into a highlight reel of only four or five minutes in length. That’s what gets distributed on The Atlantic, the aim being to reach a broader audience than we normally reach, including people who won’t invest as much time in a policy discussion as will traditional Bloggingheads.tv viewers.

So what have we learned from this experiment?

Well, for one thing, we’ve learned that, though 4 or 5 minutes may seem short by Bloggingheads standards, to many of today’s internet denizens, that’s an eternity.

Some commenters on the Atlantic’s site have demanded that we just print a transcript—it’s faster to read than to watch and listen, after all. Others have suggested that, if they’re going to invest as much as four or five minutes in a video, they want something slickly produced, with vivid graphics, arresting animation, and so on. One Atlantic commenter recently wrote, “If you want to produce a video about it, then produce a video about it. The point of video is ‘show me’ rather than ‘tell me’.”

To be sure, some of the videos have done pretty well. A debate between Andrew Sullivan and David Frum on the legalization of marijuana got thousands of views and was shared 700 times on Facebook. And that’s not bad—especially given that the Atlantic precedes each video
with a 30-second ad, thus discouraging casual viewers from sticking around. Still, most of the videos haven’t done as well as the Frum-Sullivan debate.

And maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. If you reflect on the last time that you clicked on a video, you may find that it involved something visually compelling: footage of a storm or an unruly demonstration, say. And if the video was of two people talking, there’s a pretty good chance that there was heated debate, perhaps including a sustained rant. We all like drama, and the internet gives us so much of it to choose from that less dramatic if more edifying content faces an uphill battle for attention.

In any event, we’re proud to have produced some of that edifying content. Good Fight videos have shown that, even though committed partisans are often reluctant to cede ideological ground, points of agreement can almost always be found. For example, Sullivan and Frum agreed that marijuana can harm teenage brains. And NSA critic Conor Friedersdorf admitted that spying on foreign heads of state is appropriate, while Edward Lucas, a supporter of the NSA, conceded that Edward Snowden’s revelations about bulk metadata collection benefited the American public. And in a debate on whether to raise the minimum wage, Tim Noah agreed that placing the minimum wage too high would hurt employment, while Glenn Loury conceded that indexing the minimum wage to inflation made political and economic sense.

Our experiment is far from over. In collaboration with the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts, we’re going to conduct a rigorous study on the effects that such agreements can have on the viewing audience. For example, will conservatives who see liberal Tim Noah concede that point about minimum wage be more open to the liberal side of the debate than conservatives who only see disagreement between Noah and Loury? The study is scheduled to take place in June, and we’re eager to see the results.

Robert Wright is a journalist, the Editor-In-Chief of Bloggheads.tv, and President of the Nonzero Foundation.

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The Democracy Fund Relaunches as an Independent Foundation

Joe Goldman

June 30, 2014

We have incubated the Democracy Fund within Omidyar Network over the past three years as a unique philanthropic enterprise driven by Pierre Omidyar’s vision to address the perilous state of our democracy and rebuild public confidence in our political institutions. During this time, we have committed nearly $20 million to support organizations working to strengthen our media, improve the administration of our election and campaign finance systems, and foster more effective governance in the United States.

When Pierre asked me in the Spring of 2011 to develop this new program, I could not have imagined the incredible journey I was about to embark upon. Three years later, I am excited to share that the Democracy Fund will re-launch itself this summer as an independent private foundation within The Omidyar Group.

The Democracy Fund remains committed to the priorities we have set out in our three core initiatives. Our support for grantees like the Investigative News Network, the American Press Institute, Healthy Democracy, and the Engaging News Project will continue to foster innovative new practices within and outside of journalism to better inform voters. We will continue to work with grantees like Pew’s Elections Initiatives, TurboVote, the Committee for Economic Development, and Fund for the Republic to pursue common sense solutions for fixing our election and campaign finance systems. And our work with grantees like the Bipartisan Policy Center, the No Labels Foundation, the Faith & Politics Institute, and the National Institute for Civil Discourse will continue to build bridges across the aisle and seek out ways for our government to solve problems in the face of increased polarization.

Going forward, the Democracy Fund will collaborate with its peers to drive funds towards major gaps in the field. We will seek to complement our grant making with more direct involvement in pursuing our goals through advocacy, research, thought leadership, and convening. We will maintain a strong commitment to pursue bipartisan solutions to the challenges facing our political system.

Pierre has become Chairman of our new Board of Directors and will remain the sole funder of our work. I will transition from my role as Director to become President of the Democracy Fund. Tom Glaisyer and Adam Ambrogi will continue to direct our initiatives on Informed Participation and Responsive Politics respectively. They will be joined later this year by a third Program Director for our initiative on Problem Solving and Governance.

We are also pleased to share that Senior Consultant for Operations Margaret Yao will be joined by Tony Bowen as our Manager of Operations, Finance, and Grants Management. Natalie Adona and Megan Mohr have also joined our team as our first Democracy Fellows. Several additional members of the Democracy Fund will be announced in the coming weeks and months as we continue to grow our team.

Today, we posted two open Program Associate positions that we hope to fill over the summer. Please take a look at the job postings on our blog to learn more about the positions and how to apply.

We are deeply grateful to our colleagues at Omidyar Network who have served as mentors, partners, and friends over the past three years. Their work to create a world of positive returns inspires us and we continue to be guided by their values. Without their patient support and counsel, the Democracy Fund would not be the organization that it is today. We look forward to continued collaboration to advance our respective goals.

The Fourth of July is a time for us to reflect upon the founding values and vision of our nation. While the dream of a country that is truly governed “of, by, and for the people” may sometimes feel out of our reach, it is incumbent upon each of us to do our part as Americans to continue to carry the torch of democracy and combat those forces and trends that threaten to extinguish it. As Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable…Every step towards the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.” At the Democracy Fund, we are honored to have the opportunity and resources to contribute to this important struggle and hope that you will join us in the days, months, and years to come.

At this moment of transition and possibility, we remain as inspired as ever by the potential for the American people to come together and rise to meet the historic challenges facing our political system.

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How Do Foundations Support our Democracy?

Joe Goldman

June 7, 2014

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.

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Local Journalism – What will the new ecosystem look like?

Tom Glaisyer

January 16, 2014

Last year, the Democracy Fund convened a cross section of journalists, editors, and media experts to begin a dialogue about the major issues facing the field. It was a productive discussion that has greatly informed our approach to ensuring that the public has the information it needs to make informed choices. Perhaps the clearest priority voiced at the forum (and one that has the greatest impact on our thinking) is the need to support and improve the quality of journalism at the local level.

The challenges for reporters and publishers at the local level are legion—audience size is limited, online advertising rates aren’t anything like the rates obtained by print publications in the past, staff numbers in such outlets are small, and there are few opportunities for reporters to develop distinct capabilities or expertise. In the last months, the downsizing at Patch (AOL’s hyper-local network) and in Gannett’s community publishing division has just reinforced how tough this space is for all.

Since our spring 2013 meeting, I have been exploring how we can best understand the needs in this space and have been heartened by the research into news deserts being undertaken by Michelle Ferrier and the development of MediaCloud and the MediaMeter mapping the level at which the Boston Globe covers news stories. Thanks to these and other projects, we may soon be better able to understand both coverage and consumption at a much more granular manner than before.

What I have become most interested in are three themes that appear to be emerging as local news ecosystems transition:

1. Collaboration and sharing at a regional level.

One solution to the challenge facing local journalism is higher efficiency in the production of stories, or broader distribution through regional collaborations. As Jan Schaffer’s very useful recent research shows, collaborative efforts are emerging across the country. In Colorado, a local collaboration been led by the INewsNetwork started off as an independent organization and has now become part of a local PBS television station and built partnerships with 21 other outlets. In New Jersey, Montclair University’s School of Communications and Media is hosting NJCommons an effort to build collaboration between outlets within the state. This includes a story exchange as well as providing training to partner organizations. Other partnerships such as IdeaStream in North East Ohio that combines public television, radio, public access cable, and an online engagement platform shows how collaboration can grow within public media.

Regional and topic focused collaborations have also emerged. In radio, there has been the State Impact Project across public radio and partnering outlets. In public television, multiple local journalism centers have been set up. How much of this infrastructure will survive in the long term is unclear, but collaboration, often in a non-traditional manner, seems to be central to the provision and distribution of public interest journalism.

2. Specialization of outlets around news beats.

All too often, reporters at local papers simply do not have the bandwidth to develop the specialized knowledge they need to cover complex stories. Outlets that focus on a single beat can address this challenge by enabling local media to build on top of reporting they do and adding a local flavor. InsideClimateNews, winner of a Pulitzer for National Reporting in 2013, is perhaps one of the most well known example of a successful vertical outlet. They actively encourage republishing of their stories. ProPublica, goes a step further and provocatively asks people to steal their stories. The presence of non-profits such as the Food and Environmental Reporting Network suggest that there is momentum in provision of specialized beat news. In particular, Homicide Watch has been lauded for its coverage in D.C. and has expanded to Chicago via a partnership with the Sun Times.

3. Provision of services by a central organization

Another solution to improve local coverage is for small outlets to rely on a central entity to provide them with shared resources. The Shorenstein Center publishes Journalists Resource with the objective of providing journalists with easy access to relevant academic scholarship that can aid reporters. The Investigative Reporters and Editors organization has long provided datasets and operates DocumentCloud. For its part, our new grantee, the Investigative News Network provides a customized WordPress configuration that they are willing to customize further and host for organizations. The Public Insight Network operated by American Public Media serves as a source development platform for a number of outlets. The soon to be launched FOIA Machine platform is another great example. Nearly all of these are solutions narrowly tailored to a particular challenge but all seem to represent a promising trajectory.

There are many reasons to be cautious about the future of local news and journalism, but the impact of these three threads coming together in the right way appear considerable. We don’t know all the answers and how this field will develop, but we will continue to explore the space and welcome input on Twitter. @tglaisyer.