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On Election Day, Air Force veteran Christa Sperling arrived at the polling station near her home in Asheville, N.C., a few minutes before 6 a.m. We the Veterans, the nonprofit that Sperling helped launch in 2021, had recruited more than 160,000 veterans and members of military families to sign up as poll workers — a remarkable feat, given that some 770,000 volunteers staffed voting precincts in 2020.
Sperling herself worked a 14-hour shift, dressed casually in a blue-plaid shirt and black pants — nothing that signaled her military pedigree. She didn’t even wear her Air Force Academy ring, having forgotten to slip it on before leaving the house. “Getting up at 4:45 will do that to ya,” she says.
We the Veterans is not the only organization that had a significant impact on the elections in a quiet, and unexpected, way. Nonprofits traditionally play a big role leading voter-registration and education campaigns. But Tuesday represented the climax of months, if not years, of efforts in a new arena: helping the country avoid a repeat of 2020’s tumult.
This was no small undertaking. Philanthropy poured at least $1.3 billion into the work and likely much more, and groups mounted a wide range of efforts. Campaigns featured four-star generals as well as TikTok fashion influencers. To head off January 6-like violence, groups built early-warning and response systems akin to those deployed to prevent election turmoil in global hotspots. Notably, the Carter Center brought its international election-observation and conflict-resolution programs to bear on domestic contests — something it did in 2020 for the first time in its 44-year history
Funders and nonprofits threw support behind election offices, which are often underfunded and under siege. They provided equipment, technical assistance, and pro bono legal support to fight lawsuits, and even bulletproof windows and parking lot lights.
This new field of nonprofits — including many spun up after 2020 turned vote-counting into a polarizing endeavor — says its work has only just begun. “We have to be thinking beyond election cycles,” said Ali Noorani, head of the democracy program at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which has put $70 million toward strengthening elections since 2020. “This is a long-term body of work.”
Takeaways From Election Day
Funding has increased significantly. “There has been an explosion in the last five years” in philanthropy support for election administration, says Kathleen Hale, executive director of the Election Center.
There is no definitive tally of philanthropic investment in the full range of election-related work. The best we know: In 2022 (the last year figures are available), institutional and donor-advised funds put roughly $1.3 billion toward violence prevention, election administration, and efforts to combat misinformation, according to Democracy Hub, a database from the Democracy Funders Network and Impala, a tech and data company serving grant makers, nonprofits, and others in the social-impact world.
The set of funders focused on strengthening elections has grown to include many — such as those working on youth development, climate change, and a host of other issues — who believe they can’t get their work done on other issues if the voting system is in tatters, says Joanna Lydgate, head of States United Democracy Center. “Every other issue is dependent on this one. So we don’t make progress on reproductive freedom if we don’t have elections anymore.”
Still, many groups argue that funding doesn’t yet match the need. “It’s really important that funders keep hearing how vital this work is, that it can be effective, and that there is profound underinvestment,” says Nathan Stock, associate director of the Carter Center’s U.S. program for conflict resolution, which is working in six states: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin.
While many organizations stress their nonpartisan status, they are often viewed as working on behalf of a political candidate. As philanthropy dollars flow in, fears of partisan motivations could erode the very trust in elections that groups seek to fortify, says Hale of the Election Center. “There’s real suspicion that private funds are being used to design what is a public process.”
Groups reject the idea that they are partisan players. Staff at Protect Democracy come from both sides of the aisle and even from the most liberal and conservative wings of their parties, says Corey Dukes, head of the organization’s state election advocacy team. “We’re here because we believe in this thing. And we operate with the integrity to fly over the bad-faith attacks.
Republicans who believe the election system is fair and accurate led some efforts. The SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins and the R Street Institute created a set of conservative principles for building election trust. RightCount produced social-media campaigns featuring state leaders, but also everyday Americans — realtors, sheriffs, teachers — talking about their faith in the election process.
Groups often focused on states and jurisdictions where the vote was expected to be close. Keep Our Republic — a group launched by Democrat Richard Gephardt, Republican Tom Ridge, and other retired lawmakers and officials to bolster trust in elections — worked only in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, often targeting areas where tensions ran high after recent votes. “Firefighters go where the fire is, right?” says executive director Ari Mittleman.
Local election officials were some of the chief beneficiaries. Issue One mounted the Faces of Democracy campaign, in which state and local election officials nationwide talk about the laws, rigors, and safeguards behind their processes. “We’re trying to get people to see state and local election officials as the most trusted sources of information,” says Carah Ong Whaley, director of the organization’s election-protection program.
David Becker, an election expert and founder of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, created the Election Official Legal Defense Network, a group of lawyers nationwide offering pro bono assistance to election officials facing lawsuits. Requests for help poured in even before the election, Becker says. “I’m saddened that we live in a country now where a nonprofit has to recruit lawyers to help public servants with their basic needs, to make sure they’re protected, that they have legal representation,” he adds.
Funding of election offices was more limited than it was in 2020. During the pandemic, as election offices grappled with the pandemic, the Center for Technology and Civic Life — thanks to significant backing from Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan — made nearly $350 million in grants to election offices in 47 states. Republicans, however, denounced the funding as a ploy to help Joe Biden win the election and since then, 28 states have introduced some type of ban on private funding of government elections.
Still, support of election offices continued where legal. The center made some $3 million in grants to 300 offices in rural and non-metro parts of 15 states this year. The money paid for additional staffing and security enhancements like bulletproof glass and added lighting. But it also covered bare necessities like making sure polling places were compliant with the Americans With Disabilities Act — signs that elections aren’t a priority for many local governments when revenues are tight. “The mechanism for making sure election departments have enough money to invest in staff and facilities and technology is broken,” says Tiana Epps-Johnson, head of the center.
Social-media persuasion campaigns presented election officials as honest umpires. Issue One, the Chamberlain Network, RightCount, and States United all produced videos. Issue One recruited online influencers to promote the reliability of the vote count. These were not celebrities, but residents of potentially troublesome counties who have earned big followings talking about fashion, sports, and other non-political topics.
RightCount ran $1.4 million worth of ads in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin featuring everyday Americans — a sheriff, a teacher, a firefighter — in addition to well-regarded state and local officials.
Some programs originated abroad, often in conflict zones or countries with troubled democracies. Local residents organized and trained by the Carter Center served as citizen monitors at polling sites in New Mexico and Montana — a program separate from its conflict-resolution efforts. The center, which has done such election-observation or monitoring in some 125 contests in more than 40 countries, introduced its work domestically in 2020 “after a good long period of reflection and concern about the weakening characteristics of democracy,” says David Carroll, director of the group’s democracy program. “It starts then with us thinking about how we could apply some of the approaches that we use internationally.”
Veterans of peacebuilding work abroad lead several violence-prevention groups. Nealin Parker, head of Common Ground USA, has set up early-warning and early-response systems in Liberia and Afghanistan, among other places. Shannon Hiller — head of Princeton’s Bridging Divides Initiative — has done stints in Cambodia and Myanmar.
Rachel Brown started the nonprofit Over Zero after 2016 election depictions of Muslims, Mexican Americans, and others as threats — language used in other countries to justify violence against a specific group. “I thought, ‘Wow, this looks exactly like the rhetoric that we are concerned about elsewhere,’” says Brown, an expert on genocides who also started a violence-prevention and civic engagement NGO in Kenya.
Military veterans were critical players at the local level and in communications efforts. Many organizations recruited veterans to join networks of community leaders to prevent violence and stop misinformation. Like faith and business leaders and retired elected and judicial officials, they are often held in high regard.
“Veterans are still one of the most well-respected groups within American society,” says Sperling of We the Veterans. “If veterans staff the polls, maybe we can win that confidence from the electorate.”
At first, “philanthropy leaders were really, really wary” of We the Veterans, says co-founder Ellen Gustafson. But funders eventually responded to the idea that veterans would help them reach a “wide swath of Americans.”
Among the foundations that made grants to the organization in 2024 were: the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation ($75,000); the David and Lucile Packard Foundation ($670,000); and the MacArthur Foundation ($1 million).
Linking a strong democracy to national security, a group of generals, admirals, and former U.S. secretaries of Defense under both Republican and Democratic presidents came together as Count Every Hero. Recently, the group fought Republican efforts to disqualify absentee ballots from Americans living abroad, including members of the military. It also has warned of “overuse” of the National Guard on domestic missions.
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation are financial supporters of the Chronicle of Philanthropy.
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Reporting for this article was underwritten by a Lilly Endowment grant to enhance public understanding of philanthropy. The Chronicle is solely responsible for the content. See more about the Chronicle, the grant, how our foundation-supported journalism works, and our gift-acceptance policy.
