Pooled funds represent a valuable means for funders to engage in the democracy space. Democracy Funders Network has developed a guide to help funders determine which pooled funds best align with their giving priorities and will be the best partners in advancing their goals.
The PACE Primer: Democracy is a resource designed to explore the question, “What is democracy?” and help funders assess their interest and understanding in democracy, and ultimately, help them along their journey toward integrating or prioritizing it in their work.
Candid (formerly Foundation Center and Guidestar) manages a free data visualization platform featuring tens of thousands of grants regarding philanthropy's role in U.S. democracy.
The Center for High Impact Philanthropy published a toolkit for funders interested on strengthening democracy, which is focused on two primary strategies: increasing civic engagement and reinvigorating local media.
Healthy local journalism is imperative to a healthy democracy, but as a funder who has not given in the space before, it can be challenging to know where to begin. This guide is designed to help funders gather the information they need to fund local news and information in their communities.
Suzette Brooks Masters challenges philanthropy to put democracy first by elevating the importance of democracy issues to achieving foundation missions, exceeding the standard 5% payout rate, and committing resources directly towards democracy issues.
The Hewlett Foundation announces its new U.S. Democracy Program, deepening the work it had previously invested in through its Madison Initiative, and investing in ideas, institutional developments, and reforms that will come to fruition over periods spanning multiple election cycles, and that garner the support of leaders and parties on both sides of the aisle.
In the midst of COVID-19 and the oncoming 2020 election, Democracy Fund President Joe Goldman urges philanthropy to invest in critical democratic priorities such as successfully implementing the census and the election, ensuring continuity of government, preserving access to objective journalism, and protecting civil liberties.
Daniel Stid at the Hewlett Foundation reflects on the Madison Initiative from its founding through 2019, and discusses how the foundation has been evaluating the program and what it has learned.
Stephen Heintz argues that foundations rely on a strong democracy to achieve their missions and that one of the reasons foundations are not achieving the impact they intend is less giving to pro-democracy causes such as advancing voting, promoting civic participation, strengthening government, and supporting the news media.
“Impact” is commonly thought of as creating positive change in a system that would remain static but for a given intervention. However, as Liz Ruedy explains, impact can manifest in a variety of different, valid ways depending the particular type of status quo and potential trajectory of change.
The Hewlett Foundation details its strategic approach to its democracy work: The Madison Initiative. It includes a description of how the foundation approached this work between 2016 and 2018, as well as future funding priorities.
Through data visualization, the Brennan Center for Justice outlines the policies states already have and still need in order to best protect the November 2020 election from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Democracy Fund operates this news and information platform containing trustworthy resources and ideas to improve the voting experience for the American people.
Aditi Juneja & Johanna Kalb reflect on Take Care’s symposium on building a truly inclusive and multi-racial American democracy, describing the writings and reflections of a diverse array of thinkers who participated in the symposium.
Democracy scholar Larry Diamond reflects on the necessary conditions to preserve U.S. democracy through the 2020 election: the ability for all citizens to vote in a secure and timely manner, and for the results of that vote to determine who takes power.
Nativism is on the rise in the United States. It threatens to relegate some citizens to second-class status and degrades U.S. democracy. But the similar experiences of other established democracies show that much can be done to fight it.
“How do Americans vary by worldview?” Through a sophisticated national survey, Hidden Tribes divides Americans into seven “tribes” with similar core beliefs about the world, and discusses how these tribe map on to political ideology and values.
In its 2020 assessment, Freedom House asserts that global freedom has been declining for 14 straight years, as democracy and pluralism come under further assault from dictators and authoritarian states.
In 2016, nearly 100 million eligible Americans did not cast a vote for president, representing 43% of the eligible voting-age population. In this analysis, Knight Foundation explores this population, soliciting their views, attitudes and behaviors on a wide range of topics. The study reveals that persistent non-voters are by no means a monolithic group, but as varied as American society itself.
On November 21, 2022, PACE and DFN hosted a webinar to present newly developed evidence from four organizations–three of which were grantees from PACE’s Faith In/And Democracy Fund. During the webinar, each speaker presented evidence from their work and then participants engaged with the speakers in breakout room conversations.
Building a robust, high functioning pluralist democracy in the U.S. capable of ushering in better futures for Americans requires us to think boldly and move away from reaction, apathy, and surrender. The extraordinary times we live in, full of rapid change, uncertainty and possibility, call upon us to identify and lift up positive disruptors who dare to dream and imagine what could be.
DFN’s report Imagining Better Futures for American Democracy is a call to action to imagine what our democracy could become. Informed by dozens of interviews with visionary thinkers and doers from a variety of fields and viewpoints, including futurists, activists, thought leaders, creatives, artists, religious leaders, and funders, the report shares their insights on why positive visioning matters, discusses how those visions of better futures relate to democracy and governance systems, and asks how we can inspire more Americans to dream bigger and develop a sense of agency to bring those ideas to fruition.
Below are the report’s key findings and recommendations:
Findings:
Enthusiastic and emphatic agreement that positive visions of the future matter tremendously because they help us to imagine better alternatives, motivate us, and guide us to achieving positive societal outcomes. They also reinforce the idea that we have agency to shape our individual and collective futures and those of our descendants.
Several points of disconnection –
Few interviewees saw governance as critical to achieving the better futures they articulated, or had thought about how to improve and reimagine democracy.
The future-oriented community seldom connects with the democracy community.
America lags in experimenting with new forms of future-oriented governance models and thinking.
The people we interviewed are also disconnected from each other, although there are some hubs and communities of practice that provide connective tissue that some interviewees are a part of.
Many obstacles (e.g., complex problems from the local to the planetary, conflict-driven media and political environments, dystopian narratives, racism and othering) currently stand in the way of positive visions of the future emerging at scale.
Positive stories about the future and narratives of mutuality and abundance exist but are barely breaking through in mass culture.
Recommendations:
While we have a strong foundation on which to build – great ideas, visionary leaders, real-world experiments, powerful stories about better futures, and media campaigns – we need more infrastructure and connective tissue to gain traction and impact. Accordingly, we recommend three types of strategies:
Strengthen the positive visioning ecosystem by investing in infrastructure and relationships
There are numerous ways to build and support an emerging ecosystem and to create connections between those broadly engaged in positive visioning and those working specifically on democracy issues. We recommend more networking, collaboration, and mapping, more productive chances to convene donors and working groups around the future of democracy, and greater use of futures thinking tools to change mindsets.
Model what’s possible and fund experimentation
We want to explore how to adapt governance innovations from outside the U.S. that incorporate a futures orientation, a longer planning horizon, and an intergenerational fairness lens. We also see promise in funding innovative efforts to strengthen and invigorate democracy in the U.S., especially at the state and local level, by using technology, engaging youth, creatives, game designers, and speculative fiction writers, and tapping into collective imagination exercises.
Strengthen narrative systems & amplify positive, futures-oriented content
We need strategies that elevate and sustain narratives of abundance, interdependence, and mutuality and that amplify current bright spots for greater impact. Content also matters. We need more of it that’s positive, inspiring, and hopeful about what we can build together. That means influencing which stories are told, by whom, and how.
The Constitution Drafting Project brings together three teams of leading constitutional scholars—team libertarian, team progressive, and team conservative—to draft and present their ideal constitutions. Team libertarian was led by Ilya Shapiro, then of the Cato Institute, and included Timothy Sandefur of the Goldwater Institute and Christina Mulligan of Brooklyn Law School. Team progressive was led by Caroline Fredrickson of Georgetown Law School and included Jamal Greene of Columbia Law School and Melissa Murray of New York University School of Law. Team conservative was led by Ilan Wurman of Arizona State University College of Law and included Robert P. George of Princeton University, Michael McConnell of Stanford Law School, and Colleen A. Sheehan of Arizona State University.
With U.S. democracy in crisis, guest contributors Mike Berkowitz and Rachel Kleinfeld argue that philanthropy cannot stick to its usual playbook. They outline five ways funders can improve how they approach this work.
In this moment of crisis, donors must use all the tools available to protect American democracy. Tax-deductible philanthropy alone is insufficient.
In case you missed DFN’s The Role of Faith Communities in Preserving Democracy program, PACE provided a summary of the webinar.
In this meeting, DFN explored key questions around the role faith communities can play in preserving American democracy: What can faith communities contribute to a pro-democracy movement? How can faith leaders and communities be mobilized to act in defense of democracy and resist embracing extremist and anti-democratic viewpoints? What are the potential benefits of faith engagement in the pro-democracy movement, and what do we risk by failing to engage religious communities?
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More in Common’s newest survey, Parties and Politics, focused on Americans’ attitudes towards the 2022 midterm elections and their feelings about how to best influence politics. It was developed in collaboration with the national NBC broadcast & streaming network, LX News, as well as our polling partner YouGov.
The top findings are :
Americans across party, race, and generations overwhelming see voting as the most effective way to influence politics. However, Gen Z Americans are much more likely than other generations to also see protesting as an effective way to influence politics.
Democrats and Republicans are much more likely to want more moderate candidates in the other party than in their own party. In contrast, Independents want more moderate candidates in both parties. Republicans and Democrats who want more moderate candidates in their own party were less ideologically extreme and more likely to say they belonged to their party because of their family or friends, as opposed to how their party aligned with their values.
Registered voters are ten times more likely to say they will vote in the 2022 general election compared to Americans who are not registered to vote.
As cases of political violence rise in America, PACE reviews five strategies for funders interested in preventing political violence to implement.
There is no shortage of headlines about the grim state of our democracy. Many forces are to blame: leaders who flout democratic norms and spout “us vs. them” rhetoric, a political system that fuels polarization, growing threats of political violence and election interference, and the divisive and distorting effects of social media. The list goes on. Another factor, frequently left out of the picture, is loneliness – often defined as the discrepancy between one’s desired and actual levels of social connection.
We see every day how local news strengthens democracy. People rely on local news to figure out who to vote for, how to speak up at school board meetings, how to run for local office, where to find vaccines, when to organize for change, and more. From daily reporting that equips people to act, to huge investigations that reveal corruption, the health of local news is bound up with the health of our democracy.