In this new report from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Dr. Rachel Kleinfeld examines how over the past two decades, dozens of governments have used regulations, laws, and vilifying narratives to restrict the ability of civil society organizations to act and speak. Now, a similar set of tactics is being rolled out in the United States. What should philanthropists and organizations expect, and what can be done?
Read MoreIn this brief update of the January 2023 report, we summarize how the trends we observed have become even more worrying. With implications for every funder's work, authoritarian populists have strengthened their hold on government power and are using it to restrict freedoms across a wide swathe of American life. Regardless of the programs or issue areas you fund, whether you're socially conservative or progressive, we hope the report and update will act as a guide to the challenges ahead and encourage greater collaboration across programmatic and institutional lines in defense of liberal democracy.Rising authoritarianism in the U.S. has the potential to profoundly damage civil society and the philanthropy that supports it, damage that itself has the potential to further accelerate autocratic rule.
Read MoreSince June 16, 2015, the day that Donald Trump descended an escalator in Trump Tower and announced his run for the presidency, the American body politic has struggled to figure out how to treat him, his rhetoric, and the threat he poses to our system of government. A similar pattern plays out repeatedly: Trump makes a seemingly outlandish promise that upends conventional understandings of politics. Then, those who help Americans make sense of current events — the media, other politicians, pundits, and influencers — dismiss, distort, or deny the very promise Trump has made. And few then know quite what to make of it all or how to respond — a state of confusion that has enabled Trump to shatter democratic norms in previously inconceivable ways.
We now have more than eight years of experience with this phenomenon and a full presidential term as a track record proving that Trump’s pledges should be taken both seriously and literally. He has, for the most part, sought to do the extreme things that were dismissed as mere rhetoric when first promised, from enacting a “Muslim ban” to refusing to accept the results of an election. And yet, here we are again, with Trump making even more extreme promises to “terminate” the Constitution, seek “retribution” against political opponents, and be a “dictator” (just on day one), only to see people unsure what to make of or how to respond to these threats.
This report aims to alter these dynamics by clearly showing how Trump would follow through on his most extreme anti-democratic pledges for a second term and then offering expert recommendations for how to mitigate that danger.
Read MorePhilanthropic support for promoting a healthy democracy has grown in recent years, marking a period of transformation for the field. Since 2016, an influx of funding, actors, and philanthropic infrastructure has amplified the impact of pro-democracy efforts while infusing the movement with needed dynamism.
At the same time, from a funder perspective these developments mean that today’s ecosystem is increasingly complex, confusing, and difficult to navigate. Sustaining the benefits of this transformation while avoiding the pitfalls of rapid growth requires a full understanding of funder capacities and needs.
Drawing insights from interviews and surveys conducted with 70 institutional funders, this report sheds new light on the state and direction of the democracy funding landscape.
Read MoreThe Cleveland Foundation, traditionally focused on grants for various community needs, shifted to support Cleveland Documenters in 2020, paying citizens to attend and document local government meetings. This reflects a broader trend of philanthropies, including major foundations like Ford and MacArthur, increasing funding for local journalism. The emphasis is on disseminating essential information rather than traditional investigative reporting. Initiatives like the Indiana Local News Initiative (ILNI) exemplify this shift, prioritizing community input and collaboration. The approach acknowledges the importance of addressing fundamental information gaps for civic engagement. Despite concerns about the limitations of citizen reporting, some initiatives, like Signal Cleveland, successfully combine community involvement with traditional coverage. Overall, this evolving landscape represents a new approach to meet information needs and enhance civic engagement beyond traditional newspapers.
Read MoreReliable information fuels our lives. We need to know who is on the ballot, what’s happening in our schools, where to find rental assistance, and how to make change in our neighborhoods. 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.
Over five years, Democracy Fund has invested $11 million in six geographic areas across the U.S., where residents and institutions are collaborating to better meet their communities’ real information needs.
This report tells the story of how Democracy Fund grantees created positive impact in their communities through innovative, locally-driven solutions. It also shares lessons for funders and local leaders interested in advancing a more equitable future for local journalism. As more funders consider local collaborative funding, we hope that this report will serve as a valuable resource.
We believe that funding local news ecosystems is an equitable way to support local news because it is rooted in community listening and redistributing resources to areas of greatest need. In 2023, we have committed $4.75 million over the next three years to the geographic areas highlighted in the report, as part of our new Equitable Journalism strategy.
Read MoreOver the last few years, the relationship between faith and democracy has been of growing interest to funders. While there has long been a robust debate in America about the proper relationship between government and religions, there is also a sustained and evolving relationship between faith and democracy. Plenty of headlines have spotlighted the ways they are influencing each other–both positively and negatively.
How are grantmakers to make sense of it all?
This new guide aims to explore the role of faith communities in shaping and making American civic life, while providing a framework for funders to engage with faith communities as partners in advancing a stronger and more inclusive democracy.
Read A Funding Guide For Faith and Democracy>>
Read MoreRecognizing the serious risk of democratic backsliding in the United States, the American Political Science Association (APSA) and Protect Democracy partnered to sponsor the APSA Presidential Task Force on Political Parties.
The Task Force’s report, More than Red and Blue: Political Parties and American Democracy, presents what political science says about the functions of political parties, how we came to have the parties we have, and where sources of change exist.
Over Zero and the Center for Inclusion and Belonging at the American Immigration Council are excited to announce the launch of “The Belonging Barometer: The State of Belonging in America.”
The Belonging Barometer report calls attention to belonging as a critical dimension of life that should matter to all stakeholders who seek to improve America’s physical, social, civic, and democratic well-being.
Read MoreThe Institute for Citizens & Scholars brings together diverse people, across traditional divides, to build a constitutional democracy that works for all. In 2019, Citizens & Scholars released the whitepaper From Civic Education to a Civic Learning Ecosystem: A Landscape Analysis and Case for Collaboration, which noted a surprising consensus among practitioners in the civic education space that thecurrent approach to developing effective citizens needed to be updated for the 21st century.
Building on that work, Citizens & Scholars has launched a multi-year initiative on Civic Measurement. The first major milestone is a new report, Mapping Civic Measurement: How are we assessing readiness and opportunities for an engaged citizenry?
Mapping Civic Measurement is a comprehensive civic measurement landscape review and a first-of-its-kind framework for mapping civic readiness and opportunities.
The report features a collection of measurement tools, rubrics, and more than 200 resources in use by practitioners across education, business, philanthropy, community institutions, media, government, and civil society. You’ll come away from the report with new ways to think about measuring civic learning impact, new research to inform your work, and new opportunities to connect with other practitioners.
Now is the time to come together to cultivate people as informed, engaged, and hopeful citizens. Creating a common knowledge base and practices to measure civic readiness and opportunities will enable us to chart the course to a healthy and robust democracy that works for all.
Read MorePolitical violence is on the rise in the United States, and as we approach the 2022 election season, there are urgent interventions that can mitigate risks and prevent violence from further increasing. As we saw throughout 2020, elections and the post-election period can be flashpoints with particularly elevated tensions and increased risk of political violence. The violent attack on the US Capitol is forever etched in our minds, and it serves as a constant reminder of where our work begins as we look toward the 2022 and 2024 elections. The increasing threats can be overwhelming, but with early and sustained investment in key antiviolence work, we can mitigate the risks of further violence over the next year and beyond.
Political violence and democratic backsliding—including declining institutional health and public distrust of institutions—are mutually reinforcing phenomena. The threat of political violence can chill civic engagement and voter participation, particularly among communities targeted by such threats. A heightened risk of political violence also endangers election administrators and election administration. In this guide we aim to present effective strategies and leading organizations involved in preventing and addressing political violence in hopes of increasing donor understanding of these issues and to catalyze action.
Email Carly Straus at carly@thirdplateau.com for access.
Read MoreWhile questions about the size and role of government are highly politicized, most Americans are united in a desire for our government to be effective and efficient. Despite this, our national governing institutions are weakened by years of neglect and underinvestment. The federal government is beset with outdated systems ill-equipped for the twenty-first century and a demoralized and shrinking expert workforce. Partisan gridlock and insufficient resources perpetuate a vicious cycle in which national governing institutions struggle to deliver the results they aspire to, eroding public trust and therefore making it harder to secure the political support and resources they require to succeed. The historical lack of diversity in the senior federal workforce has led to programs failing to meet the needs of populations who are not represented in decision making processes. This lack of perspective in the design and implementation of programs not only limits their effectiveness, but also leads large swaths of the public to believe the federal government is not serving them or their families.
Highly functioning national governing institutions are more likely to restore the public’s trust and faith in democracy’s ability to deliver for all Americans. The effectiveness of our governing institutions matters on a basic level for making good use of public resources, delivering essential services, and ensuring that citizens experience the value of civic institutions. On a more existential level, our governing institutions need to be equipped to respond to the increasingly complex challenges of our time, including battling a global pandemic, managing a rapidly changing climate, modernizing our nation’s infrastructure, and mitigating the impacts of phenomena like inflation. Michael Lewis, author of The Fifth Risk, has noted that the “United States government manages the biggest portfolio of [catastrophic] risks ever managed by a single institution in the history of the world.”
Read MoreIt’s understandable that the idea that government should help save local media makes many journalists’ skin crawl. How can reporters get support from one of the institutions we’re supposed to be holding accountable?
Read MoreAs the United States celebrates Martin Luther King Jr. Day on 16 January, it is a moment to look back on the ways a broad-based, pro-democracy movement came together to push for civil rights and racial justice. Looking ahead to 2023, the need to galvanize such a large-scale, diverse movement is as crucial as ever.
Read MoreWe are living in a time of immense uncertainty and accelerating change. People who study the long arc of history and macro trends describe this moment variously as a time of cascading crises, shifting paradigms, and civilizational transformation akin to the scientific and industrial revolutions. Change of this magnitude — no matter how it is described — is inevitably disruptive.
Such disruption can enshrine a mythical past, tear down entire systems, or usher in something new and better. It’s up to leaders in philanthropy, civil society, government, and business to think and act in a manner befitting this critical moment. Collectively they can shape which disruptions eventually rule the day and how change is managed across society and its institutions.
This requires dispensing with a business-as-usual mentality that lulls people and institutions into falsely believing that the future will look like the present — that we have time to kick the can down the road on any number of issues. With immense problems to solve, including climate change, mass migration, technological challenges, rising inequality, and ascendant authoritarianism, the societal response must be commensurately immense.
What all this means for philanthropy is clear: The field must mobilize its resources, capture the public’s attention, and work together toward a better version of the future.
Read MoreThe midterm election period proved mercifully free from violence and drama, following months of concern from democracy organizations and even the Department of Homeland Security.
While most experts did not expect Election Day violence (which is rare globally), why did more problems not arise from the army of volunteer poll watchers recruited by Steve Bannon? Why was there not more pre-election intimidation? And why did most election deniers accept their losses peacefully, particularly after an expected red wave failed to materialize?
In other words, how should organizations and philanthropists who have been working to support democracy and deter political violence understand what occurred during the 2022 elections, and what it means for future work supporting democracy and reducing violence?
Read MoreOn 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.
Read MoreBuilding 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 MoreThe 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.
Read MoreWith 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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