If Erica Teasley Linnick had one message for the foundation world it would be this: Every philanthropic organization should be donating to protect democracy. Put simply, participation in elections for all citizens should be a right, and everyone’s voice should be heard without fear of threats, intimidation or concern that their vote could be discounted.
“There are many different ways to show up for democracy,” says Linnick, the newly appointed director of the State Infrastructure Fund (SIF), which works to increase civic participation and advance voting rights among people of color and other historically marginalized groups. “It’s a critical time; so much is at stake. Funders need to get on board.”
Not only is participation a basic right, says the former senior program officer for Open Society Foundations, but safeguarding the democratic process also sets the stage for every other issue philanthropy wants to address — including social justice, immigration, healthcare, climate change, education, reproductive rights and gun control.
While it remains mostly a niche cause, there has been a spike in philanthropic efforts to protect democracy in the United States in recent years, including from mega-donors, private foundations and other civic-minded charitable collaboratives like SIF. Even so, the project of NEO Philanthropy stands out for its longevity in tackling this hot-button issue. The fund gets high marks from grantees and grantors for providing consistent support — as opposed to just dropping funding bombs in election years — and connecting big and small funders to advocates in the field.
SIF has a solid track record. It has been engaged in this work for more than 10 years, effectively making the case for the intermediary model of philanthropy to get the job done. But Linnick sees no room—or time—for resting on their laurels. Far from it.
“There is so much work to be done — I can’t exaggerate how much there is to tackle,” she says. “We keep seeing new ways to target communities with voter suppression, manipulation, confusion, misinformation and disinformation. We should all be concerned about finding ways to support and educate our citizenry so they can fully participate in the democratic process of voting for elected officials in their communities and the country.”
A growing threat
Democracy in the U.S. remains under unprecedented threat. In November 2020, 159 million Americans voted in the presidential election — turnout not seen in more than a century. In what some call a civic miracle, citizens showed up during a deadly pandemic, economic recession and racial uprising, many queuing for hours to have their voices heard at the ballot box. That should have been reason for celebration — a win for democracy, and the defeat of an anti-democratic president running a campaign fueled by messages based not on facts but on lies.
There was scant time for festivities, though, as the victory was followed by a slew of proposed legislative changes aimed at making it more difficult to vote. Since that election, more than two-dozen states have introduced hundreds of measures to restrict ballot access and reduce turnout, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy organization focused on protecting constitutional democracy.
No surprise here: These kinds of restrictive efforts disproportionately impact Black, Indigenous and people of color, relying on unsubstantiated claims of rampant voting fraud as justification. The bottom line, according to democracy advocates: If upheld, such laws will reduce voting access for vast segments of the electorate, including voters who are BIPOC, young and old, urban and rural.
“Every citizen should have the opportunity to cast a vote for the candidate of their choice without interference or suppression,” says Linnick, a former civil rights lawyer. “That’s one of the greatest challenges our grantees on the ground are up against.”
How SIF funnels support into the community
That’s where the State Infrastructure Fund comes into play. Launched in 2010, this donor collaborative fund supports state and national organizations that engage communities through advocacy, organizing and litigation. (See IP’s 2019 account of their work.) The fund is among both the top grantmakers and recipients of funding in this field. (See IP’s 2021 Giving for Democracy and Civic Life report for details.) To date, SIF has raised more than $140 million from more than 30 foundations and other funders to support its mission. In the 2020 election period alone, it granted $56 million to 140 organizations that serve underrepresented communities in 17 states across the country.
SIF is housed under the umbrella of NEO Philanthropy (formerly Public Interest Projects), a rare bird in the charitable giving world. For more than 35 years, the public, Manhattan-based organization has served as an intermediary between foundations and grantees. Intermediaries are growing in popularity as a way to help funders get closer to their goals, but NEO’s been in this game for decades, and SIF has become one of its key vehicles.
Why the middleman model? Both national foundations and smaller funders say they appreciate SIF’s deep knowledge and expertise at the state level, and value that SIF staff have a finger on the pulse and relationships at the community level. Grantees appreciate SIF’s fast, flexible and sustainable financial aid, typically in the form of unrestricted general operating funds, in addition to technical assistance, communications advice and other hands-on support. In 2020, in a nod to its standing, SIF received $10 million from MacKenzie Scott’s first round of giving, funds that swiftly found their way to grassroots voter rights advocacy efforts.
Foundations sing SIF’s praises; new funders come mostly via word of mouth. “SIF is a good way to leverage funding in one place versus having to manage grants for many organizations, which is especially helpful to small foundations with little or no staff,” explained Angela Cheng, senior program officer at the JPB Foundation, in a recent SIF report. “Big foundations benefit, too, though, because they’re learning about state or local efforts that they may not hear about otherwise.”
As part of its strategy, SIF intentionally invests in small, BIPOC-led organizations in its priority states (think South, Southwest and Rust Belt). Historically, many of these organizations have been unable to access large national funding sources, which hindered their ability to build capacity or grow their programs. Currently, 87% of SIF’s grantees are led by people of color.
“Nonprofits doing this work need the breathing space to forge relationships with BIPOC communities to engage them on issues affecting them every day, not just before elections,” noted Malika Redmond of Women Engaged in a 2021 SIF report, “Slow and Steady Wins the Race.”
“They’re trusted messengers who reduce the transactional nature of voting and make it more relational, something that’s critical to building a strong civic infrastructure and keeping BIPOC voters civically engaged between elections,” she says.
Redmond, founder and CEO of the Atlanta, Georgia-based social justice group, recently told IP, “SIF/NEO Philanthropy provides resources well in advance to deeply invest in holistic approaches to authentic engagement and power-building strategies on the issues that are most important to BIPOC communities.”
In short, SIF gets that civic engagement isn’t just an election-year thing. Those in the field say the group understands that democracy work requires unwavering support, funding, and more, over a long period of time, in key states and communities where such assistance is otherwise lacking.
“Traditionally, funders interested in supporting civic engagement tended to fly in right before high-profile presidential elections, provide funds for voter registration and turnout efforts primarily in selected states, and then leave,” said Geri Mannion, managing director of the democracy program at Carnegie Corporation of New York, in SIF’s recent report. “It’s a ‘boom-or-bust’ model of philanthropy that some of us saw as short-sighted and ineffective in ensuring a strong democracy in which everyone has the opportunity to participate.”
Donations and democracy for all
Foundations have a history of backing work to protect and expand voting rights. But amid alarming reports on voter suppression, extreme gerrymandering and election interference — both foreign and domestic — during the 2020 election and since, funders appreciate that the fairness of forthcoming elections remains anything but certain, especially after the world was stunned by the attack on the U.S. Capitol in 2021.
Still, this is tricky territory for philanthropy, given strict rules around 501(c)(3) giving, political activity, and direct engagement with elected officials regarding legislation. That can make funders shy away, even from perfectly legal activity. SIF is nonpartisan, but the group’s giving favors grantees intent on helping more folks get to the polls, work that, tellingly, tends to align with one political party. The effort involves a lot of door knocking, phone banking, media campaigns, virtual and in-person town halls and digital outreach, but it also often plays out in challenges over abstruse laws and rules that govern elections.
NEO Philanthropy, along with similar progressive organizations that engage in nonpartisan voter registration, has received criticism in conservative circles for favoring the registration of voters likely to vote for Democratic candidates. History shows, however, that voter suppression has a long and tarnished history in the U.S.—not tied to one political party but instead to one racist ideology. SIF’s voter engagement efforts are directly aimed at combating that legacy. And besides, if recent polling is any indication, the communities SIF supports aren’t necessarily as beholden to the Democratic Party as that conservative narrative might suggest.
SIF’s support also goes beyond community nonprofits, backing some heavy hitters in the democracy arena. The fund largely flies under the radar, quietly supporting efforts to protect voting rights with little media fanfare. It funds a collaborative of public interest law organizations with strong civil rights bona fides as part of its mission to protect the election process. The collaborative includes the ACLU, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the Native American Rights Fund. In 2020, litigation related to this cause concerned ballot drop boxes, voter purges, voter ID and proof of citizenship requirements, polling place closures and challenges to election results certification.
Beyond grantmaking, SIF shares resources as a member of the like-minded philanthropic affinity group the Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation and with the Election Protection Coalition. SIF’s members include major foundations—Carnegie, Ford, JPB, Kresge and OSF — as well as smaller funders such as the Bauman, Grove, and Mertz Gilmore foundations.
These funders come to democracy issues with different points of entry, as IP has noted in the past. Some, like Ford — the largest giver in this field — have been funding such work for decades. Others, like Unbound Philanthropy, which focuses on immigration, bring an issue-focused lens to voting rights. What they have in common: They realize to strengthen their agenda, they need an engaged electorate. Still, there can be a lot of overlap and duplication in this arena. To do this work well, funders find pooling resources through an intermediary like SIF allows them to pivot fast in a dynamic environment, assuring that money goes where and when it’s needed most.
“SIF has the flexibility and ability to make grants quickly. If something happens in states, they can get out an email to or talk on the phone with grantees immediately,” explains Lissick. “They can then communicate that information — what’s happening on the ground and what folks need — to the funders.… There is no question that responding quickly and thoughtfully to challenges and opportunities is something SIF does really well.”
Finding grantees in the field
Another advantage of funding intermediaries is their capacity to serve as liaisons between donors and grantees, dulling the funder-recipient power dynamic and bringing financial, legal and movement expertise to the table. (Read more in IP’s 2015 profile of NEO Philanthropy.)
National funders don’t have to become experts or develop separate strategies for every state they fund in, and SIF sniffs out the best groups in the trenches, giving them visibility, validation and credibility with local and national funders who may not know about the organization or the specific concerns of the communities they serve.
“SIF... came through for us at a time when we didn’t have a lot of funding,” noted Emily Zamora, executive director of Silver State Voices, a Nevada coalition of organizations that helps increase voter participation and civic engagement in the Latinx community. “That’s different from what national organizations tend to do, which is parachute in and decide what the priorities are. The funding comes, but after the election is over, the organizations and people being supported by it have to be let go, which doesn’t allow us any capacity to sustain and build for the next election,” she stated in the recent SIF report.
In the case of Asian Americans Advancing Justice – AAJC, SIF has been the primary, and at times sole, supporter of its Asian language voter protection hotline, which the nonprofit hosts in partnership with APIAVote. The hotline offers voters a resource in multiple languages, including Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Vietnamese, Hindi, Bengali, Tagalog and Urdu. That helps to ensure that many voters in the community with limited English proficiency receive information in culturally and linguistically accessible ways, says Terry Ao Minnis, senior director of census and voting programs for the Washington, D.C.-based group. Minnis, who describes SIF as a strong, consistent supporter, sees new obstacles ahead for the Asian American community in upcoming elections.
“The ongoing pandemic-related increase in anti-Asian rhetoric and violence will likely lead to increased voter challenges and intimidation against Asian Americans at the polls,” she says. “Increased restrictions on voter access policies, such as voting by mail and no-excuse absentee voting, will limit options to voting access and will impede participation by voters.”
Clearly, the work continues. Burnout and fear of reprisals is common. The struggle is real and ongoing. There’s no quick fix here, says Lisa Versaci, who served as SIF’s director until March.
“The system was under significant threat, and it held in 2020,” says Versaci. “That was a huge relief; it was also not because of some magic bullet. There was a lot of hands-on, hard work at many different levels to make that a reality.”
As for upcoming elections in 2022 and 2024? “Fasten your seatbelt,” she says, “this is a critical moment for our country and our democracy.”