With seven months until the 2024 general election, the urgency of our current moment cannot be overstated. Across the country, rights have been stripped away and major policy decisions are now being determined at the state level. Within this landscape, advocates and lawmakers are increasingly turning to ballot measures as a viable tool to regain and further protect our rights.
In the last two years, voters in Michigan and Ohio successfully enshrined abortion rights in their constitutions through ballot measures, and voters in Kentucky and Montana also beat back state-level attacks on reproductive freedoms through ballot measures. And this year, abortion rights advocates in states including Florida, Colorado and Nevada are campaigning to let the voters protect reproductive rights. Not to mention, come this November, voters in places like Ohio will have the option to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour, as well as reform the state’s redistricting process.
Philanthropy has a role to play at this critical juncture, both donors and funders. Funding movement-building efforts that undergird these initiatives and catalyze voters to participate is a must. This can seemingly present a challenge to 501(c)(3) organizations, but there are ways to move forward. For instance, at Tides Foundation, we deploy 501(c)(3) lobbying-unrestricted funds in ballot measures at scale. This includes $5.7 million through our Healthy Democracy Fund (HDF), which supported ballot measures that protected the simple majority threshold for future constitutional amendments and abortion access in Ohio.
Leveraging individual contributions to pooled funds like HDF, which do not carry lobbying restrictions, lets resources flow to policy advocacy and ballot measures, and then reserves funds that do carry lobbying restrictions, including donor-advised funds (DAFs), to support nonpartisan voter registration and education, ultimately maximizing the effectiveness of philanthropic dollars.
Individuals and organizations can contribute to pooled funds through many vehicles. Funders and donors can use private foundations, DAFs, stock transfers and required minimum distributions from individual retirement accounts to make tax-deductible contributions into pooled funds at public charities like Tides. Then, program officers can make informed decisions to fill the largest budget gaps across organizations, state ecosystems and programmatic areas and allow grantee organizations to scale their voter engagement and deepen leadership development in their communities.
At Tides, we have also taken steps to invest greater amounts in the nonpartisan programs of 501(c)(4) organizations. For instance, in 2023, the HDF supported projects that mapped faith influencers who can stem the flow of election disinformation to diverse religious communities; increased voter registration by setting up campus chapters at historically Black colleges and universities and Hispanic-serving institutions in Texas; and educated Black voters about local elections in rural North Carolina through conversations in beauty salons.
For funders to do this type of grantmaking, it is important to have a legal, risk and compliance infrastructure to conduct comprehensive due diligence on grants to non-(c)(3) entities, including 501(c)(4) organizations, for charitable, nonpartisan programs. But for those for whom it is feasible, this grantmaking is a key component to helping 501(c)(4) organizations maintain their funding during non-presidential election years.
Building the infrastructure to support political movement organizations is an investment. But organizers and campaigners can’t do it alone. We urge more funders to use unrestricted funds to provide critical resources to the doers on the ground — coalitions, social change organizations and movement leaders. And those who cannot earmark funds for lobbying, such as private foundations and DAFs, may support early research efforts, litigation and implementation of ballot measures.
At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, the fate of our very democracy hangs in the balance of this year’s election, and the philanthropic community has a role to play in bringing it back from the brink. Now is not the time to stand around hand-wringing about the potential further erosion of rights in our country. Now is the time to take the additional step, do that extra work, and find real, meaningful ways to support state-based campaigns and ballot initiatives that will take us forward, not backward.
Beth Huang is the program officer of civic engagement & democracy at Tides. In this role, she leads the Healthy Democracy Fund, a pooled fund that seeks to close racial voter turnout gaps and has granted over $46 million to over 150 organizations since its inception in 2020. In addition to managing the Healthy Democracy Fund, Beth oversees a portfolio of partners focused on civic engagement, democracy and organizing.
