Democracy Philanthropy
Let's shift some of our investment to the urgent work of Democracy Renovation
Thanksgiving is little more than a week away. Giving Tuesday arrives just five days later. The moment is ripe for each of us to reflect on what we’ve received and where we give. I’d like to invite all of us in the Renovator community to take a second look at our democracy philanthropy: The time and treasure we dedicate to the health of our nearly 250-year-old constitutional democracy.
As of 2022, only 0.7% of U.S. philanthropic funding went to support the pillars of our democracy— roughly $3.4 billion of charitable investment. This contrasts to $9 billion in total campaign spending that midterm year and the $15 billion spent during the 2024 presidential cycle.
We know what that $15 billion is buying us: toxic, polarized national politics. Every year these investments in mud-slinging pour anger and resentment into our hearts and minds. It’s what each side invests to fend off the wolves it perceives on the other side of the partisan fence. It’s the price of our mutual antipathy. We are poisoning ourselves with it.
So what are we to do? Amy McGrath’s failed bid against Mitch McConnell in the 2020 Kentucky Senate race cost $90 million, and the result wasn’t close. It’s hard to conclude that those who poured over hard-earned money into that race put their dollars where they could do the most good. Regardless of which side we’re on, we all could get a little smarter about how we invest in democracy.
That doesn’t mean we stop funding campaigns we believe in. But it does mean focusing on what’s winnable. And it means shifting some of our investment to the long-term work of democracy renovation.
Because we’ll never escape the trap we’re in until we change our system. Right now, our institutions aren’t working. Congress closes down till people start going hungry and airplanes stop flying. Schools deliver declining literacy rates. Our culture is shot through with alienation, disconnection, despair, and violence. And our elected officials can’t seem to orient themselves toward policies that actually support and reinforce democracy instead of undermining it. Where are the approaches that give us that more perfect union, the blessings of liberty, and the general welfare?
No amount of campaign spending can fix all those problems. They have to be tackled directly— by means of democracy renovation. By work that we ourselves do in our communities.
Here’s a way to reorient away from the wolves: With one hand and from one pocket, you might fight the fights of the day. Invest sensibly in the elections you need to invest in to sleep at night. But with your other hand and from the other pocket, why not invest in fixing what’s broken in our democracy? Invest in redesigning our elections and institutions so they work. Invest in revitalizing our civic culture to connect us in relations of respect and cooperation. Invest in finding solutions to our common problems that foreground our own agency and empowerment.
Whether you can give $2, $20, $200, or $2,000, or 60 minutes or 60 days of volunteer time, why not divide it between elections and democracy renovation?
When my friends in California expressed their despair that they needed to answer Texas and vote this month to return California to gerrymandering, I felt sad but understood. I also encouraged them to think about contributing to the efforts in Oklahoma and Massachusetts to use ballot initiatives to establish all-party primaries. Those ballot initiatives are laying out the path of de-escalation for our politics. They are the antidote to the actions in California and Texas.
Here’s another way of thinking about it, from one of my friends:
My democracy investments include direct support for candidates and also investments in organizations that are addressing issues that include election reform, election integrity, policy development, and candidate recruitment. The balance among these is driven by my view of the circumstances at the time: in the current cycle, changing control of the House is critically important to me, so I expect that approximately 60% of my investments will be directly for the support of candidates.
With respect to the approximately 40% of my democracy portfolio invested other than directly in individual races, I expect that about half will be invested in electoral process reform and election integrity work. Without changes to our primary system, extreme voices will continue to be disproportionately represented in the House and Senate. The other half of my non-candidate-specific portfolio is directed to policy development, candidate pipeline development, and combatting disinformation.
The overarching focus of my democracy investments is to increase the likelihood that the Federal government at least roughly represents the views of a majority of Americans… rather than representing primarily the views of the extreme members of either party. The objectives I support in the non-candidate part of my portfolio are important to achieving long-term sustainable improvement in our government, and require consistent long-term investment, through multiple election cycles to be effective.
I think that balance sounds just about right: 60% on elections and 40% on democracy renovation. Most people I know spend 100% of their democracy money on elections. I’m out of balance the other way. I spend about 5% on elections and 95% of my time and treasure on democracy renovation.
Here at The Renovator, we’re working to make it easier for everyone to see what Democracy Renovation can do. We want to make it easier to see where you can make a difference beyond the current election horse-race.
We have made our content free because we want to build a growing community of democracy renovators. We are mission driven. And we are extremely grateful to all of our equally mission-driven subscribers who have signed up for paid subscriptions. Thank you!
But we need your help to keep this going. Right now, to do this work, the team at The Renovator is largely volunteering an annualized $500,000 worth of person power. So we heartily encourage you to consider making a paid subscription to The Renovator a part of your democracy portfolio. Or, gift Renovator subscriptions to friends and family this holiday season! The more Renovators, the merrier. Together, we’ll keep doing the work necessary to renovate our constitutional democracy, for ourselves and the generations to come.
It's more than a little comic (and certainly the result of a tragic policy) that the rush by the Administration to encourage redistricting in Red states has led to a predictable outcome: Republican state officials lament that such efforts may have made their party's electoral outlook even dimmer as its officials on the federal and state levels are being punished in the polls, evidently because of the actual priorities of the American Public. The recent denial of fully funding EBT/food stamps, ironically on the basis it would be too bureaucratically challenging, was compounded by the White House's emergency appeal to the Supreme Court to block State efforts to supplement the shortfall in funds--or deny food to people approved to receive such assistance because they are in need. Such actions certainly have alerted a good portion of our fellow citizens about this Administration's priorities. The missing link in the breathless reporting on the redistricting effort by either party omits, remarkably enough, the primary driver of elections: the voter. If the average voter feels their needs are unmet by either party, much less disrespected and even scorned, redistricting will in most races probably not rebalance a party's electoral fortunes. We live in strange times.