Donors Step Up Giving to Influence 2020 Voting

Whether donors’ focus is on climate change, health care, education, or the criminal-justice system, billionaire philanthropist Kathryn Murdoch believes they should take up a new, overarching cause: helping voters cast their ballots safely and securely.

Murdoch, the daughter-in-law of Rupert Murdoch, is co-chair of Unite America Fund, one of a growing number of philanthropic efforts aimed at bolstering democracy.

On Wednesday, Unite America will host an online meeting of about 125 philanthropists to rally for more support and develop strategies for where to deploy cash before the November elections. In addition to Murdoch, philanthropists Laura and John Arnold, digital gaming entrepreneur Marc Merril, and businessman Kent Thiry will co-host the event.

The fund awards grants to nonprofits that are making an all-out push to ensure voting by mail works smoothly, more voters participate in the election , and politics is taken out of the process of drawing legislative districts. Today, state legislatures control redistricting, and whichever party is in charge usually draws political districts in ways that give them more representation at the state and federal levels.

Photo by Arthur Edwards

Kathryn Murdoch and her husband, James, netted about $2 billion when Fox sold some of its assets to Disney. She declined to say how much she plans to give personally, but Unite America is working at full tilt. The group says it has dozens of other major donors and aims to devote more than $100 million by 2023 to maintain the integrity of the voting process. It has raised $25 million so far. Through a related political-action committee , it provides direct cash support to candidates it views as “problem solvers.”

For progress to be made in any realm of public policy, the electoral process must truly reflect the will of the people and be free of taint, Kathryn Murdoch says.

When she pitches Unite America to potential donors, she stresses political philanthropy as an evolution from other types of giving, whether it is pure charity or venture philanthropy.

“It can affect every other category that you’re interested in,” she says. “For people that care about their dollar going further and having maximal impact, this is a relatively unexplored area.”

Although Murdoch won’t offer specifics, she says she plans to “go big,” because of the threat she sees from President Trump’s attacks on voting by mail and his suggestions that he might not abide by the results if he loses in November.

Murdoch and the Unite America Fund are part of a growing network of efforts to improve the elections process, including:

• One for Democracy, in which 70 donors have pledged to give 1 percent of their wealth to democracy efforts. So far, the group has raised nearly half of its $100 million goal.
• The Resilient Democracy Fund, which has raised $20 million since the beginning of 2019. The group’s founder, Nick Chedli Carter, who is managing director of the Resilient Democracy, says the tempo of donations has increased in recent months.
• Way to Rise, the nonpartisan arm of progressive donor collaborative Way to Win has raised about $8 million this year to support vote-by-mail and get-out-the-vote efforts.
• The New Venture Fund created the Trusted Elections Fund, a donor collaboration that has received support from the Democracy Fund and $1 million from Hewlett Foundation. The New Venture Fund did not respond to inquiries.
• The Rockefeller Brothers Fund this summer announced it would add $18 million to its democratic practices program.

Philanthropy — or Politics?

Some critics say the efforts of these groups and donors is nothing more than politicsdis guised as philanthropy.

“I don’t think they’re interested in democracy. They’re interested in electing the candidates that they like, and they’re calling it democracy,” says James Piereson, president of the William E. Simon Foundation and a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute. “Donald Trump, who they don’t like, got elected, and so they decided there’s something wrong with democracy.”

Unite America says its efforts are nonpartisan. It has a panel of advisers from both major political parties and independents. Among them: Rob Stein, founder of the Democracy Alliance, and Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee. However, the organization’s structure is part of what makes critics suspicious. It operates both as a nonprofit grant maker through its Unite America Institute, a 501(c)(3), while also supporting candidates through United America, a federal political-action committee.

While the money raised by other democracy efforts won’t explicitly support candidates like the political arm of Unite America, much of the work being supported, like voter mobilization and redistricting, is seen by some as helping Democratic candidates. The fact that many of the groups supported by the democracy philanthropists are targeting political swing states gives their philanthropy even more of a political edge.

Philanthropic support of increasing voter turnout, whether it is through community organizing or ensuring mail-in ballots are properly counted, is legal, but could benefit one party over another, says Rob Reich, a political-science professor at Stanford University. In that sense, it is an example of wealthy donors using their fortunes to sway the democratic process.

But he says he wouldn’t single out philanthropists who act in battleground states for special criticism because the broader campaign system is so ripe for abuse.

“Our campaign-finance laws are so degraded, and our dependence upon the wealthy for some of the core operations of elections is just a disgrace,” he says.

Although the work Unite America is doing to spur people to vote appears within legal bounds, nonprofit lawyers say its charitable arm has to be very careful to avoid close ties to the political action committee.

James Joseph, co-chair of the tax-exempt practice at the law firm Arnold and Porter, says it is unusual to have a charity affiliated directly with a political-action committee. Organizations created as charities offer tax deductions to their donors and can’t be involved in partisan politics, he notes. Typically, if a charity does want to get involved, it creates another unit as an intermediary, and that organization cannot offer donors a tax break and can get more involved in politically activity, including supporting a related PAC. He says that Unite America will have to be very careful to keep strict separation between the charity and political-action committee.

Donor Access

Murdoch maintains she’s driven by a desire to improve the electoral process, not partisan politics. Marrying into the Fox dynasty has given her access to Democratic and Republican donors alike, she says.

“I’ve been translating between the two sides for a really long time, and I feel fairly comfortable with the language of both,” she says. “I would say we have quite a large number of people who are conservative who are interested in these reforms.”

The Simon Foundation’s Piereson doesn’t buy it. He says it is an exaggeration to say the electoral system is broken. Foundations have supported get-out-the-vote campaigns for years, and participation still lags, he says.

“It’s really pretty easy to vote,” he says. “A lot of people don’t vote simply because they’re not interested in voting, and they don’t follow politics.”

Conservative donors have also been hard at work supporting causes related to the vote. They have sought to combat voter fraud and protect the electoral college, an institution that propelled Donald Trump to the White House despite losing the popular vote.

From 2016 to 2018, for instance, donors gave $25 million to the Honest Election Project through donor-advised fund accounts managed by Donors Trust. The group pushes to root out voter fraud and has warned of the risks of relying on a mail-in vote.

This year, Lawson Bader, Donors Trust’s president, has seen more donor interest in protecting the Electoral College through efforts like Save Our States, an Oklahoma nonprofit that says it received $1 million in donations in 2019 and is on track to exceed that amount this year.

Bader believes a lot of the interest in election issues from across the political spectrum has come because of the current hyper-political environment. Things like the electoral college or absentee voting, typically debated by academics and wonky policy insiders, have become highly politicized and attracted new dollars, he says.

“I have a feeling both sides are positioning themselves to cry foul no matter what happens in early November,” he says.

‘Trusted Messengers’

Grantees supported by the recent entrants into democracy funding use a variety of tactics. For instance, Resilient Democracy has largely supported the rollout of “civic technology,” which allows organizers to use computer applications to strengthen their network and make their political messages more effective. It is supporting groups that work to mobilize voters of color in swing states, including Detroit Action and Voces de la Frontera in Wisconsin.

Chedli Carter, Resilient Democracy’s founder, says the group has moved to incorporate education about voting by mail in its work. Misinformation and confusion about casting absentee ballots has made it necessary for voters to be guided on the issue by people they can relate to.

“Trusted messengers are going to be really important educating people around these election changes,” he says. “Even without the more diabolical attacks on election administration, it’s still really confusing.”

RepresentUS, a grantee of Unite America, has also shifted to support vote-by-mail efforts. In doing so, it is stressing bipartisanship rather than building a movement of voters.

The group plans two campaigns in the coming weeks, costing a total of $10 million, that will use advertising and messages from leaders of both parties, including former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge and former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, and celebrities such as Ben Harper, Alicia Keys, Dave Matthews, and Sarah Silverman. The campaigns will both inform the public about how to vote by mail, and instill into public consciousness the idea that America will choose the officials in “election week” rather than on “election day.”

The change in narrative is necessary to prevent candidates from declaring victory on the night of November 3 when in fact, it could take days to determine a winner, according to Josh Silver, the group’s president.

A bipartisan approach, he says, can attract many donors who feel trepidation about getting involved in something explicitly political.

Says Silver: “The philanthropic sector is finally, vividly seeing how hopeless it is for them to meet their core program goals in areas that they’re supporting unless we change the incentives in politics.”