U.S. democracy is in rapid decline. The most immediate manifestation is the threat to our system of free and fair elections: What began with then-President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election has metastasized into a systemic crisis in which 60% of Americans will have major party candidates on the ballot in November who deny the veracity of the 2020 elections and often refuse to state whether they will accept the results of their own.
Philanthropy has responded heroically to this crisis of American democracy. In 2020, individual philanthropists and foundations rallied unprecedented levels of funding to register and mobilize voters, protect the right and ability to vote, and deal with election-related emergencies. Many funders are doing the same this election cycle, recognizing that what happens in November 2022 will have a significant impact on our ability to hold a free and fair election in 2024.
This work is vitally important. It arguably saved democracy in 2020 and may prove decisive in upcoming elections.
But it is not sufficient to change the downward trajectory of American democracy. Our democratic decline has actually accelerated since 2020, especially at the state level, despite record voter turnout and elections that ousted an aspiring autocrat and put Democrats in control of the presidency and both congressional chambers.
That is because today’s authoritarian machinations are made possible by our extreme polarization and the sense for many Americans that voting won’t result in any palpable change in their lives. These problems cannot be solved by the election-related interventions every two years that command so much attention from funders. In fact, pouring vast sums into hyper-polarizing political campaigns making promises that aren’t fulfilled exacerbates the underlying drivers of the current crisis.
Funders must therefore dramatically step up their giving, but also widen the lens through which they view this challenge, or democracy will continue to spiral downward even when pro-democracy candidates win elections. Below are five strategies that could work together to point American democracy in a brighter direction.
(1) Enable responsible conservatives to vote for democracy.
Anti-democratic politicians must lose. That is a core motivation for philanthropic voter engagement. However, in the current climate, polarization means too many Republicans find their candidates distasteful but can’t bring themselves to vote for a Democrat.
Philanthropists can help by building a positive, branded social movement for pro-democracy conservatives so candidates and voters have an aspirational identity that doesn’t require them to abandon their ideological beliefs or force them to assume the identity of “RINOs” or “Never Trumpers.” Meanwhile, these pro-democracy conservatives will be blocked from the ballot without donor support for reforms to the primary system, from ranked choice voting to proportional representation.
(2) Address the status loss that is driving illiberalism on the right.
Anti-democratic politicians will remain competitive in American elections unless we address the social demand driving votes against democracy. Men, white people and working-class individuals (including men of color) feel they are losing status in a zero-sum social hierarchy.
Rural America needs particular focus. Solid working-class jobs and the dignity they bring have been decimated, while business owners feel bossed around by regulations unsuited to rural life, and many families are breaking under the opioid epidemic and endemic loneliness. Our constitution is structured in a way that grants vast political power to rural voters, while our economic institutions destroy their wealth and our institutions of status denigrate them. This is a recipe for political disaster.
Philanthropy has long treated these problems as economic issues to be solved by strategies like providing healthcare and child care. But these policies are often divisive in the communities they are intended to help, because the issue is not simple economics, but a sense of status that involves multiple identities.
So philanthropy needs to think in terms of bolstering positive identities. For instance, philanthropy can invest in positive notions of masculinity: Two-thirds of men in the U.S. have no college degree, and nearly half of white men claim not to want one. Addressing status loss thus means restoring status, dignity and fair pay to traditionally male jobs involving manual labor, and not just ones requiring a college degree. Men need to feel that they hold roles that are valued in society, not in spite of but because of who they are. Similarly, men must perceive that empowering women and nonbinary individuals also supports individual men’s wellbeing, and not that the groups are in competition.
Meanwhile, in economics, philanthropy needs to go deeper and think bigger. America is facing a major economic realignment and incremental solutions won’t help. We need to revive a tradition stretching from Aristotle to the founders — and now under study by the Hewlett Foundation — of rigorous inquiry into the economic structures that support our democracy.
(3) Help democracy deliver for poor Americans and Americans of color.
Vast philanthropic sums are directed toward low-income communities and communities of color. Yet few can argue that they are much better off than they were 20 years ago. Voter engagement campaigns regularly claim that voters’ schools will be better, their streets will be safer, and their kids will be healthier if they vote — and yet very little changes. Democracy donors must tie abstract, institutional changes to real reforms that deliver concrete, immediate value to these communities.
Meanwhile, donors should be asking what a real transformation would require so we can make good on these promises to Americans. That leads to strategy four:
(4) Build a broad-based movement around a positive future vision, grounded locally.
International experience is crystal-clear: Galvanizing major change in polarized democracies requires generating broad-based support across societal divisions of party, age, race, religion and profession.
Such a coalition can’t be built around staving off doom. Americans need to be inspired by what their country could be in its next chapter. Philanthropists can help Americans envision what an abundant, aspirational future together could look like. This is not just a messaging exercise. It is a call to break out of the very narrow politics of today and realize we are in a historical moment that requires a big, creative shift to build the next chapter of our democracy and economy.
America needs narratives that let people exist in their full complex identities, not the thin, static caricatures of the far-right or left. We need economic and tax policies that support democracy. These ideas must be concretized in lived experience, which is best achieved locally, where trust remains greatest.
We need deliberative democratic exercises on issues from schools to severe weather that break out of polarizing national narratives and help people solve real problems. And instead of bridge-building for the few self-selected people who think it’s fun to talk across partisan differences, we need local activities that let people roll up their sleeves and remember how it feels to work together on projects of mutual interest, where partisan affiliation is secondary to shared goals.
(5) Support legal efforts to hold Americans accountable for the violence, misinformation and illegal acts that are destroying our democracy.
Many donors are funding the use of criminal and civil law against Americans who commit acts of political violence and break democratic rules. But alone, this strategy may be dangerous. In polarized environments, accountability can look like partisan point-scoring, and judging from international parallels, it often generates blowback, undermining rather than restoring democratic norms.
Supporting accountability is crucial. But it must be done in tandem with strategy 4 (above). A broad community of Americans who will vocally support efforts to hold wrongdoers responsible across political ideologies and other divisions allows accountability to support democracy.
Enacting these strategies will not be easy. They are expensive, and they will require funders to rethink some of their preferred approaches. But just as the U.S. learned in Afghanistan that fighting 20 years of one-year battles was not a path to success, the philanthropic community must admit that a recurring series of two-year duels won’t save our country either.
Donors interested in exploring new strategies will find that they are not alone: Communities like the Democracy Funders Network (which Mike leads), Leadership Now, Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement, New Pluralists, and the Unite America Fund can provide strategic support and connect funders to one another to amplify impact.
Our democracy hangs in the balance. Let’s get to work.
Mike Berkowitz is a philanthropic consultant and Executive Director of the Democracy Funders Network. Rachel Kleinfeld is a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the recent author of Five Strategies to Support U.S. Democracy.
