With the 2020 elections a year away, the Carnegie Corporation of New York has issued a call to action for philanthropy to safeguard the ballot and ensure that next year’s votes represent the people’s will.
A report released Monday, “Voting Rights Under Fire: Philanthropy’s Role in Protecting and Strengthening American Democracy,” provides a snapshot of foundation support for voting rights that includes litigation, policy research, and advocacy to make it easier to register and to vote.
“Traditionally, people in philanthropy wake up three weeks before an election and say, ‘Oh, we need to do something,’ " said Geri Mannion, program director for U.S. democracy at Carnegie. But that attitude, she said, has changed. A big reason, she said, was the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which stripped away the requirement that jurisdictions with a history of voter suppression get proposed voting changes cleared by the federal government.
In response, foundations have attempted to coordinate their efforts to protect voting rights. The State Infrastructure Fund, a pooled fund administered by NEO Philanthropy, has raised more than $56 million over the past decade. Since 2016, the fund has backed a group of 12 civil-rights organizations, coordinated by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, to monitor and respond to voting changes across the country. The coalition has pursued more than 50 voting-rights case
Allison Riggs, chief counsel at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, said the fund had been valuable, but the need for more money is acute.
“After the Shelby County decision, philanthropy knew that it was going to have to just pony up more money that it had before,” she said. “Philanthropy has really stepped up,” she said, although she cautioned that there are limits to what philanthropy alone can do because the problems are so multifaceted.
Big Turnout Expected
The general election next year is likely to attract a large turnout, which will put pressure on nonprofits that monitor polling stations and fight voter suppression. The elections coincide with the decennial census, and redistricting debates in state legislatures across the country. National and regional grant makers are paying attention, and their efforts to make sure the census is accurate and that redistricting is less partisan will begin heating up in 2020.
Riggs and other voting-rights advocates want to push on those issues, while playing defense on the dozens of voter-suppression cases pending throughout the country.
“Next year’s going to be a hard year,” she said. “But it’s possible to push a positive, proactive reform approach and play this game of Whac-a-Mole at the same time.”
Calls to Action
Among other things, the Carnegie report calls upon grant makers to:
- Provide flexible, multiyear operating support for nonprofits that monitor elections and fight voter suppression.
- Avoid a boom-and-bust funding cycle, and support grantees in nonelection years, when attention to voting issues may have died down.
- Support litigation — but don’t just play defense. Invest in nonprofits that promote efforts to make it easier for more people to vote.
- Join with other foundations. Voting-rights organizations can learn from others that have fought similar battles in other states and jurisdictions.
Voting-rights advocates like Vanita Gupta, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, are seeing more interest in voting issues from grant makers. From 2014 to 2017, the last year for which audited figures are available, the group’s revenue nearly doubled, to $17.6 million, including its 501(c)4 affiliate.
A major part of the conference’s work over the next year will be as part of the All Voting Is Local campaign. In eight states the conference and coalition partners, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Campaign Legal Center, are pushing early voting, monitoring state election offices for improper voter purges, and working for a robust voter turnout.
Other social-justice fights are more difficult, Gupta said, if ballot results don’t accurately reflect voter choices.
“Everything else that we work on,” she said, “from justice reform to educational equity to immigrant rights to economic security, rises and falls on our ability to ensure that all communities have access to our democracy.”
Alex Daniels covers foundations, donor-advised funds, fundraising research, and tax issues for the Chronicle. He recently wrote about philanthropy’s attempts to save democracy and about a $100 million effort to use data to improve health care in poor countries. Email Alex or follow him on Twitter.
