Democracy is under severe threat in the United States and around the world, but figuring out how to use your financial resources to protect and sustain American democracy is no easy feat. For one thing, the decline of democracy is an incredibly complex challenge with a multitude of domestic and global drivers. Not only is the problem multi-causal, but the potential solutions are manifold as well. Finally, there are dozens of organizations in the field—many with similar-sounding names—and a plethora of networks, pooled funds, and other resources designed to engage donors on this issue.

What is an aspiring democracy funder to do? READ MORE>

Everyday Americans and political insiders alike have become increasingly concerned with the dangerous levels of division, governmental dysfunction, and public distrust in our country. These trends had been intensifying for several years, and were on display in stark terms this past year in the midst of numerous domestic crises. Our country’s responses to COVID-19, widespread civil unrest, and the January 6 storming of the Capitol each highlighted the seriousness of the situation. READ MORE>

White supremacist violence is not new, but in recent years, it has become a primary national security threat in the United States. Notions of racial superiority, hostility toward immigrants and minorities, and the myth of an embattled white majority defending its power have increasingly infiltrated mainstream American political and cultural discourse. In October 2020, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published its annual threat assessment, identifying racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists, particularly white supremacist extremists, as “the most persistent and lethal threat in the Homeland.” READ MORE>

A shift toward online news consumption, combined with greater political polarization, has altered the media landscape. As part of its Trust, Media and Democracy initiative, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation partnered with Gallup to create NewsLens — an experimental platform and news aggregator first developed in 2017 to facilitate novel research on how people interact with the news online in a manner that offers insights to academics, technology policymakers and journalists. In this report, Gallup examines data gathered through NewsLens during the 2020 presidential campaign to asses how much partisanship influences the way people engage with news content and whether common ground still exists over which stories are considered good journalism. READ MORE>

Drawing on multiple national surveys conducted from July 2020 through March 2021, More in Common explores the landscape of trust in America. At a time of low overall trust levels, we highlight two distinct stories of distrust: an ideological 'us versus them' distrust and a 'social distrust' that has to do more with experiences of belonging, dignity, and equality (or lack thereof). READ MORE>

The January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol was four months ago, but the inquiries from colleagues in philanthropy keep coming: What can we do? READ MORE>

In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people's lives and behavior and the nation's fate. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity. READ MORE>

Lilliana Mason looks at the growing social gulf across racial, religious, and cultural lines, which have recently come to divide neatly between the two major political parties, and argues that group identifications have changed the way we think and feel about ourselves and our opponents. Bringing together theory from political science and social psychology, Uncivil Agreement clearly describes this increasingly "social" type of polarization in American politics and will add much to our understanding of contemporary politics. READ MORE>

In Palaces for the People, Eric Klinenberg suggests that the future of democratic societies rests not simply on shared values but on shared spaces: the libraries, childcare centers, churches, and parks where crucial connections are formed. Interweaving his own research with examples from around the globe, Klinenberg shows how "social infrastructure" could help to bridge our seemingly unbridgeable divides. READ MORE>

When Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, a bewildered nation turned to Strangers in Their Own Land to understand what Trump voters were thinking when they cast their ballots. Arlie Hochschild, one of the most influential sociologists of her generation, had spent the preceding five years immersed in the community around Lake Charles, Louisiana, a Tea Party stronghold. READ MORE>

At times of dysfunction on a national level, reform possibilities have often arisen from the local level. The Fallowses describe America in the middle of one of these creative waves. Their view of the country is as complex and contradictory as America itself, but it also reflects the energy, the generosity and compassion, the dreams, and the determination of many who are in the midst of making things better. READ MORE>

More than 60 foundation leaders and other big names in philanthropy have joined with business executives, scholars, and celebrities to protest efforts in several states to restrict voting rights. READ MORE>

This rapid issue brief, based on DFN's research and conversations with experts, practitioners, and experienced funders, will help donors get oriented to the current state of the field and explore frameworks for using their resources to combat disinformation. The report includes detail on strategies to combat disinformation by increasing accountability for creators and purveyors of disinformation, building healthier media ecosystems, and increasing public resilience to disinformation. READ MORE>

More than 158 million Americans voted in the 2020 election — a record number despite the challenges posed by a global pandemic. But rather than celebrating this development as a victory for democracy, many government leaders apparently see it as a cause for concern and have responded with a stunning slew of proposals aimed at making it harder to vote. READ MORE>

Melissa Spatz of the Piper Fund makes the case for sustained investments at the state level to stop the further degradation of American democracy and begin to build a truly inclusive, multiracial democracy. READ MORE>

The Knight Foundation’s new report “Healthy Local News & Information Ecosystems: A Diagnostic Framework,” presents an approach to assessing the health of local news ecosystems tested and refined across nine U.S. communities of various sizes. Accompanying the report is a playbook and toolkit designed to help funders and other community organizations evaluate strengths and opportunities in their locale. READ MORE>

Unite America’s report The Primary Problem explores the many problems with our partisan primary system and explains why nonpartisan primaries give every voter an equal voice, have higher voter participation rates, produce more representative outcomes, and improve governing incentives by ensuring elected leaders are accountable to a broader swath of the electorate. READ MORE>

If the world is going to stop deliberate or unintentional misinformation and its insidious effects, we need to radically expand and accelerate our counterattacks, particularly human-centered solutions focused on improving people's media and information literacy. READ MORE>

Steven Waldman discusses why philanthropy should be a persistent, ongoing source of income for local news, alongside subscriptions and advertising, the two primary sources of local news support to date. READ MORE>

The Election Integrity Project’s final comprehensive report on voting-related mis- and disinformation in the 2020 election includes insights on significant narratives that shaped 2020; how misinformation progressed from incidents, to narratives, sometimes to conspiracies; how the social media ecosystem was leveraged; tactics and patterns; “repeat spreaders”; and how policy shapes propagation. READ MORE>

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.

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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.

Read the full report here>

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.

Read the full report here>

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.

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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.

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In this moment of crisis, donors must use all the tools available to protect American democracy. Tax-deductible philanthropy alone is insufficient.

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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 :

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

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As cases of political violence rise in America, PACE reviews five strategies for funders interested in preventing political violence to implement.

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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.

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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.

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