Since its inception in 2011, the Foundation for a Just Society has gifted more than $350 million around the globe to progressive organizations that elevate the leadership, vision and missions of women, girls and LGBTQ+ people, especially people of color.
Established in New York City by Audrey Cappell, daughter of the late hedge-fund founder and megadonor Jim Simons, Foundation for a Just Society also has a U.S. focus. Its domestic programming has been centered on supporting feminist and LGBTQ+ organizations in the American Southeast, an area of the country with a history of injustice and white supremacy that today continues to face challenges — from racist policing and mass incarceration to economic exploitation and environmental disasters.
A key part of that work in recent years has been supporting pro-democracy efforts, broadly defined.
“Defending democracy is at the foundation of what so many of our grantee partners do, even if their core work is not rooted in election cycles,” said Nicky McIntyre, CEO of the foundation in a recent interview. “Our grantmaking and perspective on pro-democracy work is deeply intersectional.” A number of the groups it supports “position themselves as doing work to advance democracy” and “support people in their communities to access the ballot and organize around issues that directly impact them,” she said.
The private, endowed foundation believes that making long-term investments can lay the groundwork for both power-building and transformative change, and to that end, favors multi-year, flexible, multipronged strategic philanthropic support. It also understands that civic engagement groups need support not just during election years; foundation grants range in size from $50,000 to $500,000 a year.
Many of the groups the foundation supports in the U.S. organize around issues such as reproductive justice, the rights of low-wage workers and LGBTQ+ concerns. These concerns are just as critical to maintaining and protecting democracy as get-out-the-vote tactics employed during election years, noted McIntyre. Southeast grantee partners also engage in a variety of strategies during election years, including voter education, participation and protection; nonpartisan GOTV activities; combating misinformation and toxic polarization and electoral defense work.
”We need to move away from thinking of pro-democracy funding as narrowly focused on election cycles and voter engagement,” said McIntyre. “Much of the work we are funding is community organizing and engagement because when people feel empowered, connected and civically invested, they are powerful change agents in their communities. This contributes to a healthier democracy and a better, more representative version of the U.S.”
Building community, power and capacity among state-based nonprofits
In practice, that means sustaining collaborative infrastructure — including cross-issue coalition-building and strategy development, joint educational programming, and investing in so-called state tables that work to coordinate the flow of both 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) progressive funding, as well as to coordinate electoral efforts and other work. State tables act as crucial hubs for exchanging information and key intermediaries between donors who want to support work in specific states and leading progressive groups working there. The goal is to help organizers share resources, tools, strategies, data and best practices — all in the service of coordinating campaigns, building power and making progress with an intergenerational, multiracial, collective vision and voice.
The foundation tends to eschew big-name, national organizations. Instead, it focuses on state-based groups that can reach new audiences and bring different perspectives and energy into the pro-democracy movement.
A key example is ProGeorgia, which the foundation has supported for several years. A Black, feminist-led organization that brings together 62 civic engagement partners, ProGeorgia is a multiracial coalition dedicated to protecting fair and open elections and tackling pervasive voter suppression tactics in the critical swing state, where a third of the population is Black. ProGeorgia is committed to building the long-term infrastructure required to sustain diverse, inclusive, multi-issue struggles that affect the electoral power of Southern communities, which makes it an excellent fit for the foundation, said McIntyre. ProGeorgia has also proven to be well positioned, according to McIntyre, to deploy nonpartisan voter engagement strategies that center residents in the region, including those that have been impacted by incarceration, immigrant detention, poverty, unemployment and state violence.
Since 2017, Foundation for a Just Society has granted around $1.7 million to ProGeorgia; about $1.3 million of that has been “pass-through funding” — gifts that go on to support partner organizations and state tables, explained ProGeorgia Executive Director Tamieka Atkins.
This show of sustained support gives a “kind of certainty and confidence” to nonprofit advocates and grants them the ability to make long-term plans, said Atkins. In this way, the foundation is adept at nurturing both people and movements, and the investment in women — particularly women of color — has served to allow for more nuanced, broader conversations about voter engagement and voter education, added Atkins.
The support is not simply financial. Atkins noted that foundation Program Officer Paulina Helm-Hernández has deep roots in the South, including organizing and infrastructure-building, specifically in queer communities of color. “She understands our work, and when I’m having roadblocks, she’s a thought partner. I don’t have to have all the answers. I can actually call her and say, ‘Here’s the particular challenge,’ and she’s very helpful,” said Atkins. “The reality is that — and it’s no shade — but not all foundations do that. It’s both a very tangible and intangible thing: She’s easy to talk with about some of the difficulties and gives really good advice.”
The foundation also understands the type of community-building that is necessary to produce the low-propensity voter turnout that occurred in 2020 (including BIPOC, queer, young, single, rural and recently naturalized/immigrants), said Atkins. Democracy work can look different in different locations, she noted, and as just one example, raised engaging with the Black and African diaspora immigrant community who frequent braiding salons as a place of outreach and connection.
Atkins cautioned funders not to get caught up in an “either/or” mentality around giving. (As in: Do we support democracy efforts or address housing insecurity?) “They go together. Voter registration and voter turnout is integral to whatever issue donors want to support,” she said. “FJS understands that it is a ‘yes and’ situation. I want to see more funders think like that.”
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Funding for democracy work is vital beyond presidential election years
In 2023, FJS joined the Collaborative for Gender + Reproductive Equity (CGRE), a pooled funding initiative that started in 2018, as both a donor and a member. Other funders that support the New York City-based collaborative include heavy hitters such as Bloomberg Philanthropies, Ford Foundation, JPB Foundation, Hewlett Foundation and MacKenzie Scott.
Foundation for a Just Society provides “generous” multi-year general operating support, which allows the collaborative, in turn, to provide flexible and long-term funding to groups in states doing critical work, according to Trishala Deb, director of national programs at CGRE. “FJS is an important connector to many movements and leaders at a time when multiple elections have the potential to either protect and expand gender justice or erode protections to bodily autonomy,” she said.
There’s a clear connection between the concerns of the day and protecting democracy. “Gender, LGBTQI+, racial and reproductive justice issues are being used as wedge issues to mobilize people toward broader anti-democratic goals,” added Deb. “As donors, our ability to understand attacks and power-building from an intersectional perspective, and not be divided amongst each other, is crucial. Democracy is not a race that we win and then it’s over. It’s more like an evolutionary process that we need to engage in again and again.”
To that point, grantees maintain that it’s important always to fund democracy work — not just during election years. “We can’t do the work we need to do in 2024, unless people are willing to invest in the work we do in 2021, 2022 and 2023,” said Atkins. “It’s vital to build authentic versus transactional relationships so that voters will entertain a text message, call or door knock from someone they trust, which will increase the likelihood of participation.”
One of the most challenging aspects of pro-democracy funding now is addressing the rampant misinformation, counter-organizing, and physical and systemic barriers that prevent people from participating in the civic process in the first place, according to McIntyre.
To address this issue, Foundation for a Just Society is supporting organizations that develop strategies to address misinformation hyperlocally. Take Dream Defenders, a youth-led organization based in Florida. This nonprofit has a voter engagement program that conducts widespread education and outreach on college campuses so that young Black and brown voters can understand how to differentiate political platforms and avoid voting for candidates just because they look like them, even if their values aren’t a match for their own beliefs, said McIntyre.
Countering challenges on the pro-democracy front
The foundation also supports organizations uncovering the structural and systemic barriers to getting people to the polls — from waiting in long lines in the intense Southern heat to a lack of childcare — and addressing those barriers so that communities can show up to vote while still getting the support they need at home or at work. McIntyre added that the foundation is leaning into a strategy around protection and care for its grantee partners who are facing threats that can jeopardize their work and their safety around the election.
While grantees are striving to counter disillusionment, cynicism and disenfranchisement, many organizations that the foundation supports in the region remain optimistic heading into election day.
Consider the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable. FJS began supporting the roundtable in 2019. Its most recent gift: a $600,000 general operating grant over a three-year period in support of the group’s racial and gender equality, economic justice and pro-democracy work. “With its support, we’ve been able to scale, bringing in new staff, and reach further across the state in critical areas where we work to bring infrequent Black women voters to the table — and build our Black youth voting programs across the state, as well,” said Tomika Anderson Greene, the roundtable’s head of communications. She echoed how helpful it is to have a former Southern-based grassroots organizer as a program officer.
Mississippi has many challenges on the pro-democracy front. The roundtable spokesperson detailed a list of obstacles such as voter ID laws, voter purging, voter suppression, polling place closures and consolidation, gerrymandering and disenfranchisement as very real impediments to electoral freedom. The state’s conservative environment is rooted in white supremacy and right-wing religious and political ideology, which pose unique challenges for women in the state, added Anderson Greene; many of the most vulnerable face economic inequalities, domestic violence and persistent poverty. Further, women, particularly Black women, are severely underrepresented in the state’s legislature, she said.
Still, the roundtable believes that the power of change starts at the ballot box. The Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable is working to bolster the civic engagement of Black women as voters to transform communities and promote concrete policy changes at the state and local level. Recent developments on the federal front have fueled cautious optimism, with the emergence of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee. “The possibility of our nation’s first woman of color president has galvanized Black women voters and young voters like never before, with measuredly hopeful outcomes,” said Anderson Greene.
It’s important, say pro-democracy leaders, to keep that hope alive. “We are living at a time when we are in great danger of moving backwards — not just years, but decades. In fact, in many ways we already have,” said McIntyre. “Women, girls and LGBTQI+ people, particularly those who are Black and brown, increasingly can’t make decisions about their own bodies; education that celebrates diversity and teaches this nation’s history is outlawed; transgender and nonbinary people are experiencing physical and emotional violence and harassment simply because of who they are; access to affordable healthcare is extremely limited; gun violence has claimed thousands of lives.”
That’s not all. “So many of these attacks are propelled by an extreme minority that is consistently undermining our institutions of democracy to accomplish its goals. We see this with terrifying crystal clarity in Project 2025,” she said. “Protecting democracy and advancing racial justice, reproductive justice, LGBTQI+ rights, worker’s rights and climate justice have become urgently intertwined. As funders, now is the time to recommit to pro-democracy work, and to broaden its definition.”
