The Democracy Funders Network (DFN) is a community for donors who want to learn together, build and strengthen relationships, and ultimately identify opportunities for coordination and collaboration. We convene and connect funders, curate programs, develop informational materials, and advise donors on their democracy investments. DFN serves new and existing funders in the democracy field.



operating principles

DFN’s work is guided by four key operating principles:

  • We provide learning and engagement opportunities for individual philanthropists and donor advisors (not just institutional foundation professionals) who are motivated to support democracy work.

  • We are cross-ideological, helping to disrupt hyperpolarization and to maintain a cross-ideological commitment to fundamental democratic norms, values, and institutions.

  • We elevate authentic relationship building as a key component of effective long-term field building.

  • We are partnership-oriented and aim to animate, rather than divert attention from, aligned and effective donor networks.

 
 

Focus Areas

DFN takes a big-picture view of the challenges facing American democracy and the approaches to solving them. We do not believe there is a silver bullet that will enable American democracy to thrive over the next fifty years and beyond. On the contrary, many approaches will likely play a role in fixing what ails us. We help donors better understand and respond to the long-term challenges facing U.S. democracy, with a programmatic focus in six primary areas:

 

Toxic Polarization

America is hyper-polarized, with politicians on the right and the left abandoning democratic moderating norms like forbearance for win-at-all-cost tactics, and the American public sorted into increasingly oppositional tribal groups. How do we help heal the deep divides that have formed in order to repair, rebuild, and sustain a democracy that allows individuals and groups to live alongside one another and work together across lines of difference?

Authoritarian Populism

Authoritarian populism is on the rise around the globe, with populist figures in countries big and small, rich and poor, undermining the rule of law, quashing dissent, attacking the media, and questioning the legitimacy and loyalty of their opponents as they profess to speak for “the people” to the exclusion of vulnerable groups or those with different views. What is this phenomenon? What is causing it? And how do we combat it?

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Civic Culture & Learning

The civic fabric of the United States is unraveling amidst growing social isolation, deteriorating civic institutions, mistrust of experts and elites, and insufficient civic education. What cultural forces at the individual and communal level drive fragmentation? How can we build a vibrant civic culture that is relevant to the twenty-first century? And how can we ensure citizens understand and participate in the practice of American democracy?

Inclusive Multiethnic Democracy

The United States is an unprecedented experiment in large-scale multiethnic democracy. As the country further diversifies and more Americans acquire rights that were once restricted to a privileged few, democracy faces a new set of challenges and opportunities. What stands in the way of realizing a truly inclusive multiethnic democracy, and how can we get there?

Democracy Reform

Across the country reformers are working on structural and policy reforms aimed at creating greater representation, fairness, participation, transparency, and predictability in the American political system. While many of the underlying challenges democracy reforms aim to address are embedded in DFN’s other focus areas, reform work itself constitutes distinct area of focus. What is happening in the reform space at the federal, state, and local levels? What kinds of reforms are being tested, and what are the anticipated (and potential unanticipated) consequences of these policies?

The Information Environment

The world has been permanently transformed by the new ways information can be accessed and shared. How do we both harness the opportunities digital technologies offer, such as new opportunities for interpersonal connection, greater transparency and information-sharing, and a higher degree of collective action, while also protecting democracy from the growing threats of misinformation and disinformation, fragmentation of news and information, social manipulation, and loneliness, anxiety, and depression?

The Better Futures Project:

We live in complex, uncertain, and rapidly changing times. Democracy in the United States is being buffeted and challenged by this disruptive context. Yet disruption poses opportunities as well as challenges, and American civil society has begun to understand the insufficiency of a mainly defensive strategy when it comes to democracy.

How can we build momentum to develop an aspiring affirmative vision of what American democracy's next chapter could be, and then how can we coalesce a broad constituency to bring those better futures into being?

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News & Events

 

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