What’s Happening in Philanthropy
- Carnegie Corporation of New York’s board approved 57 grants totaling ~$38M on December 11th. They include:
- $1M – Center for Tech and Civic Life
- $1.2M – News Literacy Project
- $2M – The Association for Rural & Small Libraries
- $500K – Vot-ER
- $600K – National Association for Media Literacy Education (cross-curricular integration of media literacy)
- The National Endowment for the Humanities announced a $10M pool of funding for c3 organizations — “Endowments for Advancing the Humanities.”
- The NEH is looking for “proposals for endowments to build the applicant organization’s capacity in research and teaching of Western civilization, American history and government, and civics.”
- On December 16th, the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation announced $75.8M in grants “advancing AI for public purpose,” including:
- $500K – ACLU Foundation to advance civil rights through AI policy analysis and online discrimination testing.
- $600K – American Journalism Project to scale AI fundraising tools for nonprofit newsrooms.
- $350K – Factchequeado to launch FactDesafIA and develop AI literacy content for Latino communities and media outlets in the U.S.
- The Trust for Civic Life released its 2025 Annual Report. Some quick highlights:
- The Trust raised $19.48M and awarded $9.9M in grants,
- Eight new funding members joined the Trust,
- Grantees secured a nearly 2:1 match on Trust funding.
- Stand Together (founded by Charles Koch) launched “Be The People,” a 10-year commitment to “connect hundreds of millions of Americans with efforts to solve local problems.”
- The initiative is targeting more than $200M for its first year’s budget, according to the AP.
- The Chicago-focused Polk Bros. Foundation will open a $1M RFP on May 4th tied to their “Fostering a Participatory, Multi-Racial Democracy” goal with a focus on “Next Generation Power-Building.”
- Carnegie Corporation of New York announced $44M in new grants on March 10th. Some democracy-relevant ones:
- $500K – ACLU Foundation for its free speech initiative
- $500K – Aspen Institute’s Weave: The Social Fabric Project
- $750K – The Carter Center’s local election observation networks
- $500K – Citizen University’s Live Like a Citizen program
- $1.5M – Civic News Company for Chalkbeat and Votebeat
- $500K – Edward M. Kennedy Institute’s Senate Immersion Module
- $300K – Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law’s election protection hotline
- $1M – Urban Libraries Council’s new Civic Labs for Youth
- MacArthur Foundation announced a $100M commitment to protect democracy in the U.S., including:
- $10M – Campaign Legal Center
- $3.25M – Defending Democracy Together Institute
- $10M – Democracy Forward Foundation
- $4M – Issue One
- $5M – PolicyLink
- $1M – The Heartland Fund’s Rural Democracy Initiative
- $1M – State Infrastructure Fund
- And it sounds like there’ll be an open call in the future: “We will share more later this year about an open call to apply for funding to support projects that help protect our democracy.”
- The Multiracial Democracy Project at GW Law has launched a new Emerging Technologies Initiative under Dr. Dhanaraj Thakur.
- In this role, Thakur will build and lead a multidisciplinary effort focused on ensuring that artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies protect civil rights and strengthen multiracial democracy.
What to Read & Listen to
- “The local news contract is broken. Civic media can fix it,” writes Darryl Holliday in The Objective’s Civic Media Series (a collab with News Futures).
- NiemanLab’s Predictions for Journalism 2026.
- Democracy 2076 and Harmony Labs’ new report, all about how to tell better stories for democracy!
- From Carnegie Corporation of New Yorkand CivicPulse, the third installment of their survey of nearly 1,400 local government leaders.
- From the Center for Effective Philanthropy, “A sector in crisis: how U.S. nonprofits and foundations are responding to threats.”
- From The Century Foundation, the United States Democracy Meter assesses the health of democracy in the U.S on a 100-point scale.
- The Mapping the Modern Agora dataset is an effort to map civic infrastructure in the U.S.
- The Third Place Index from Evan O’Neil scores “every U.S. census tract from 0–100 based on access to” third places.
- This polling on Gen Z/generational divides from the SNF Agora Institute’s Scott Warren, Liliana Mason, and Sophia Winner, and YouGov.
- From Protect Democracy, The Civil Service Archive is “an online searchable database that captures Trump-era changes to policies governing the federal workforce.”
- Check out Red Line for Civil Rights, a new project from Democracy Forwarddocumenting the politicization of federal civil rights enforcement.
- The results are in! Here’s what Americans think of civic-related vocab (courtesy of PACE and More in Common’s 2025 Civic Language Perceptions Project).
- A very helpful tool — Voting Rights Lab’s Election Policy Tracker!
- Check out this piece by Aditi Juneja of Democracy 2076 in Nonprofit Quarterly, “The long-term futures work of building a better democracy.”
- In Waging Nonviolence, Daniel Hunter, founder of Choose Democracy, writes about the role of general strikes in the face of oppression.
- In the first episode of his new podcast, “The Art of Association,” Daniel Stid interviewed Charlie Brown of the Trust for Civic Life.
- How can funders repair their relationship with rural America? How should they invest in local civic life? Savannah Barrett, Exchange Director of Art of the Rural, wrote a great piece in The Chronicle of Philanthropy on just that.
- The Renovator’s civic education news roundup is excellent! Here’s the latest.
Events
Here is a 2026 roundup of democracy-related events.
Transitions, transitions:
- Shamichael Hallman is now Senior Director of Civic Health and Economic Opportunity at the Urban Libraries Council!
- Elizabeth Rosen is now Senior Director of Communications at Future Caucus!
- Maloreigh Todd is now Senior Director, Strategic Growth & Impact at Future Caucus!
- Robyn Tomlin started as the American Press Institute’s new Executive Director!
- Steve Smith is now Director of Communications at Citizen University!
- Kelli Herrick is now Associate Vice President, Organizational Effectiveness at Future Caucus! Congrats on the promotion!
- Rosarie Tucci is now Vice President of Citizen Engagement at Issue One!
- Mark de la Iglesia has joined Democracy Funders Network (DFN) as Senior Program Director. Congratulations!!
- Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, has joined the Kettering Foundation board of directors!
- Jessica R. Wolff is now co-Executive Director of DemocracyReady NY!
- Margaret Huang is now Senior Advisor to the President on the Civil Rights Forward initiative at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights!
- Keseb selected twelve democracy entrepreneurs and organizations from Brazil, South Africa, and the United States. The U.S. awardees are:
- Chioma Chukwu, Executive Director, American Oversight
- Tiana Epps-Johnson, Founder and CEO, Center for Tech and Civic Life
- Mary-Pat Hector, CEO, Rise
- Layla Zaidane, President & CEO, Future Caucus
- Dan Vallone is now Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives in the Office of the President at the Carnegie Corporation of New York!
- Nicholas Turner is now Executive Vice President at the Ford Foundation!
- Speaking of the Ford Foundation…former CEO Darren Walker is now President and CEO of Anonymous Content (the company behind Oscar winners like “The Revenant” and “Spotlight”).
- Jenn Baez joined the Knight Foundation as Director of Operations for Community Impact!
- Megan Irving Tyler has joined America Votes as Deputy Executive Director, Network & Partnerships!
- Nicole Weir joins CivicLex as their new Director of Impact!
- Freedom House has a new CEO! Congrats to Jamie Fly.
- Liz Vogel has been named New Pluralists’ Executive Director!
- Laina Levy is now Development & Operations Director at Nonprofit VOTE! Congrats!!
- Vonda McDaniel and Garrett Stark are now Co-Executive Directors of the Highlander Center!
- Laina Levy is now Development & Operations Director at Nonprofit VOTE!
- Summer Lopez and Clarisse Rosaz Shariyf were appointed as co-CEOs of PEN America!
- Mil Dranoff joined A More Perfect Union as Vice President, Development!
- Kara Revel Jarzynski is now Strategic Director of Deliberative State Governance at FIDE – North America!
- Amy Brady is now Chief Development Officer at Solutions Journalism Network!
- Andrew Doty has joined Third Plateau as Director, Democracy!
- Former CEO of PACE, Kristen Campbell, has joined the partnership development team at the Christchurch Call Foundation!
- Teresa Gorman is now Associate Director, Reimagine and Rebuild at Democracy Fund!
- Isabel Munilla is stepping in as Interim Executive Director of Project on Government Oversight.
- Maybree Spilsbury is now Director of Peacemaking at Mormon Women for Ethical Government!
- Garry Pierre-Pierre is now Director of Partnerships at URL Media!
- Michelle Shafer is now Executive Director of the Election Technology Education Fund!
- Daniel Valdez is now the Deputy Director at Welcoming America!
- Roy Speckhardt is now Chief Development Officer at VoteRiders!
- Courtney Chandler is now the David and Lucile Packard Foundation’s Chief Operating Officer!
That’s all for now. Be sure to subscribe to receive Gabe’s receive Democracy Notes regularly.
Gabriel Lerner is Author of Democracy Notes and Editor of Democracy Notes Perspectives.
