American liberal democracy persists against a backdrop of rapid societal evolution. The Democracy Funders Network launched the Better Futures Project to urge democracy donors and practitioners to move beyond reaction and critique towards creation and change. In 2022, we published the Imagining Better Futures for American Democracy report. The report challenges the field to consider the future of our democracy beyond the next election cycle.

Jolts in the 2020 and 2024 presidential election cycles underscore the fragility of the democratic norms and processes we have taken for granted. These shifting sands can foment unease or a hopeless sense of predestination for democracy funders. One path forward is to use futures thinking and strategic foresight to look beyond the short term and stretch the imagination.

This October, we are publishing a funder toolkit: Becoming Futures-Ready: How Philanthropy Can Leverage Strategic Foresight For Democracy. This toolkit showcases practical applications of how strategic foresight can be incorporated into philanthropic strategies and practices. This toolkit highlights our conversations with leading-edge strategic foresight practitioners and funders. It also parses the burgeoning publications devoted to the intersections of philanthropy and strategic foresight.

Featured Speakers: 

• Suzette Brooks Masters, Senior Fellow, DFN and Director of DFN’s Better Futures Project

• Keesha Gaskins-Nathan, Program Director, Democratic Practice–United States, Rockefeller Brothers Fund

• Liz Ruedy, Senior Advisor to the President, Democracy Fund

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Rural communities are home to nearly 20% of the people in the United States but receive only 7% of US foundation funding. While election year dynamics in particular tend to train many democracy donors’ attention to the states and cities where most Americans live (particularly swing districts), we can’t truly talk about a healthier democratic future without including America’s rural communities in the conversation.

Rural America is not a monolith. It is a deeply diverse community that represents many of America’s points of identity and success as a country. At the same time rural America has experienced a pervasive lack of investment that has led to high levels of distrust and low levels of civic infrastructure. The resulting impact is a rural America that is 25% more likely to live in poverty and actually face higher mortality and incarceration rates than their urban counterparts. Anti-democratic forces recognize these challenges and are capitalizing on rural disaffection to frame the enemy of the rural working class as immigrants, people of color, and coastal elites who are quick to discount “flyover country.” A study by the Voter Study Group found that the more rural a voter’s community was, the more likely a voter was to believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 election.

Against this backdrop, rural Americans maintain disproportionate political influence. By 2040, 70 percent of the Senate will be elected by just 30 percent of Americans. If we don’t authentically include rural revitalization in a democracy agenda, we are missing a key part of the equation and reinforcing the perception that national institutions and elites discount the lives and importance of rural communities. We must listen to the diverse perspectives of those on the ground in rural America to ensure a forward-looking democracy agenda is responsive to their needs.

In this program, participants will hear from leading rural funders and practitioners on why rural America is important to the future of American democracy, and why a philanthropic agenda for rural investment needs to extend far beyond building constituencies that can impact election results to improve the long-term civic health of rural communities.

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Too often, democracy in America is discussed only through the narrow prism of elections. It can be hard for the field to consider what civic engagement and civic infrastructure look like outside of this frame, particularly in a major election year. And yet the practice of democracy extends far beyond periodically exercising the right to vote. In a time of deep polarization and disaffection, people’s trust in government and their fellow residents is directly related to their believing they have agency, that government will be responsive to their preferences, and that government at all levels will deliver materially for them in their everyday lives.

A broad set of actors around the world are applying and testing new methods of participatory governance, and there is growing interest in the United States. Collaborative governance – or “co-governance” – models such as participatory budgeting and citizens assemblies offer more responsive and equitable structures for engaging the public in collective problem solving and in making and implementing policy. What is this “deliberative wave,” and how is it emerging in the United States? What models have been tested so far, what is still unknown, and how might funders support these types of experiments? Finally, what might be possible if thinking beyond elections and adopting a more expansive definition of civic engagement became the norm in the United States?

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Whether they are elected, appointed, or career civil servants, the people who make up our local-, state-, and federal-level institutions make a considerable impact on representation and trust in government. We entrust these individuals to make our government more effective, responsive, and accountable to the diverse constituencies they serve. Yet all too often these officials do not share the identities or lived experiences of the communities they represent. This includes gender, race, and ethnicity as much as it does education level, geography, and class. Political distrust is intertwined with failure of representation; people’s trust in government actors goes down when they perceive that those actors do not share their values and interests.

While the federal workforce as a whole is actually about as racially diverse as the U.S. population, people of color are underrepresented in senior-level positions in the federal government. Women are over 50% of the U.S. population yet only around 30% of local, state, and federal elected officials. In the U.S. Senate alone, there are three times more men named John than there are moms of minor children, and Diane Feinstein’s replacement Laphonza Butler will be only the third Black female Senator ever. Some identities are even less well represented in government, including individuals living with disabilities or who are LGBTQ, making up only 10% and .2% of elected officials at the local, state or federal level respectively.

Structural and institutional barriers perpetuate existing inequities and make it harder for underrepresented groups like women and people of color to get into and stay in government service, leaving decision-making tables devoid of their critical perspectives. What are philanthropy and civil society doing to impact representation in government at the state and federal levels? How can structural reforms that address everything from campaign funding rules to electoral systems make an impact on representation? How can philanthropy transcend the distractions of “identity politics” controversies, and instead reframe diversity in government as a nonpartisan democracy issue?

Featured Speakers:

• George Cheung, More Equitable Democracy

• Liuba Grechen Shirley, Vote Mama Foundation

• Larissa Martinez, Women’s Public Leadership Network

• Jenny Mattingley, Partnership for Public Service

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Getting voters to the polls for an election is no easy feat. It requires ensuring that voters are registered, that they are knowledgeable and engaged around the issues on the ballot, and that they have all the information they need about how, when, and where to vote. Adding to the challenge now are widespread mis- and dis-information and dwindling trust in elections and in government more broadly. Join BADF for a happy hour where we will explore the fundamental question: what does it take to mobilize voters?

Joined by Luis Lozada, CEO of Democracy Works and Tatenda Musapatike, CEO and Founder of Voter Formation Project, we’ll explore the innovative ways each of their organizations are using technology in their efforts to inform and turn out voters. Luis and the team at Democracy Works focus on providing reliable voting guidance through the websites, apps, and groups voters trust. In preparation for the 2024 election, Democracy Works will also turn their expertise towards a new challenge: making sure generative AI tools are sharing accurate information about how to vote. Meanwhile, Voter Formation Project uses long-term digital advertising strategies - including some of Democracy Works’ tools - to engage, register, and mobilize new and infrequent voters of color. For the 2024 election, VFP will be working to increase the participation of hard-to-reach Black and Latiné audiences in battleground states. Using innovative ad buying targeting techniques, VFP will place culturally relevant content directly in front of people who would otherwise not be exposed to online civic engagement and voting information.

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In a socially cohesive society, people can count on access to trusting social networks and a shared sense of solidarity, inclusion, and belonging. In America today, we don’t have that. We are dangerously polarized, but many are starting to see the imperative of building solidarity among Americans across lines of difference. What will it take to thrive as a democracy in which many different identities and belief systems are able to coexist?

There are myriad ways funders can help build a more socially cohesive democracy, but many are wrestling with fundamental questions. Is it possible to advance justice and social cohesion at the same time? What is the range of approaches needed to achieve social cohesion? And finally, what do we know about what actually works to do this (and do it well)?

Democracy Funders Network recently released a guide to help funders think through these and other questions and orient to an issue area that is critically important for the future of democracy. We hope you’ll join us in discussion with peers and experts in the field on this topic. This program is for funders who are interested in finding ways to build social cohesion, those who are unsure about how or whether to invest, and even those who are a bit skeptical of this work.

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Join DFN members in conversation with Rachel Kleinfeld on her new report, Five Strategies to Support U.S. Democracy.

The decline of American democracy is a complex challenge with numerous causes. Crafting philanthropic strategies to address this challenge is therefore an immensely difficult undertaking. This is especially true given the severity of near-term threats and the need to develop strategies that look beyond the next few election cycles to fundamentally change the trajectory of American democracy.

Rachel Kleinfeld, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Senior Advisor to the Democracy Funders Network, has published a new paper, Five Strategies to Support U.S. Democracy, that offers one of the most comprehensive explorations of the kinds of strategies that can achieve our objective of revitalizing American democracy for the century to come. Even as we approach a critical mid-term election, we hope you’ll join Rachel in conversation with DFN members to discuss what we’ll need to do in the days, months, and years after this election to keep our democracy alive.

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As America grows increasingly polarized along many axes of division, race has emerged as a particularly salient and lasting one. How can the United States overcome racism to deliver on the American Promise enshrined in our Constitution that all men and women are inherently equal? What lessons for building national solidarity we learn from the exceptional citizenship long practiced in Black America? Join DFN for a conversation with Theodore R. Johnson, author of When the Stars Begin to Fall: Overcoming Racism and Renewing the Promise of America. In his new book, Ted weaves memories of his own and his family's multi-generational experiences with racism, alongside strands of history, to make a compelling argument for national solidarity as a key part of the solution to America's racial woes.

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