The Framework for a Healthy Democracy: A Guide for Philanthropy
There are plenty of voices — and data — that amplify a trend of declining confidence in democracy among Americans today. At PACE, we are encouraged by the efforts we see making proactive steps to reverse those sentiments.
One such effort was launched by University of Pennsylvania’s Center for High Impact Philanthropy (CHIP). Earlier this fall, they released We the People: A Philanthropic Guide to Strengthening Democracy, which creates a framework for anyone looking to strengthen the democratic system. It outlines the five elements of a healthy democracy (empowered citizens, fair processes, responsive policy, information & communication, and social cohesion) and offers a framework to guide philanthropic action. A companion piece, We the People: Nonprofits Making an Impact to Strengthen Democracy, features nonprofits making a difference in civic engagement and local media, as two high-impact focus areas to strengthen democracy.
CHIP has been developing this guide for over a year (disclosure: I was invited to offer feedback at various points along the way). I was interested in their framing for many reasons, not least of which because their “5 elements” became something we utilized to frame PACE’s Democracy Primer last spring. That primer serves as a resource to help our community understand “What is Democracy?” and how we see civic practices fitting within the system of republican democracy. When CHIP’s guides became public earlier this fall, I jumped at the chance to sit down and dig deeper with one of the primary architects behind it, Conor Carroll.
Kristen Cambell: Can you start by telling a little about the Center for High Impact Philanthropy (CHIP) and what inspired you to want to focus on democracy?
Conor Carroll: CHIP is a research center based at the University of Pennsylvania dedicated to producing knowledge and education to help donors achieve greater social impact with their philanthropy. We cover many cause areas, and we recently worked on issues such as global health, early childhood education, and disaster relief. Democracy and a well-functioning government are central to all of these issues. Democracy Fund approached us in 2017 because they were hearing from so many donors who were concerned about the state of our democracy but didn’t know how to help. CHIP’s focus on providing evidence-based and actionable guidance for philanthropy made us an ideal partner for orienting new donors to the field and equipping them be impactful with their giving. That’s what this project is about.
KC: How did you go about framing or defining “democracy” for the purpose of your exploration? How did that lead you to the five elements as you’ve articulated them?
CC: A lot of research and grantmaking organizations that work on democracy issues have published their own definitions or frameworks, including Democracy Fund, Freedom House, and the World Bank. We started by reviewing these existing frameworks as well as academic literature on democracy to find recurring themes. We also used Candid (previously Foundation Center) data on foundation grants in the US because we wanted to understand the specific kinds of programs that were being funded in the name of strengthening democracy. Our goal was to describe — in the broadest possible terms — the social impact that philanthropic support for democracy can achieve, and we identified four areas of focus:
- Empowering citizens through civics education, grassroots organizing, and other forms of civic participation
- Ensuring fair processes through oversight, transparency, and political reform efforts
- Advocating for responsive policy and engaging with the public sector agencies who implement those policies.
- Supporting information and communication systems that foster productive conversations
At that point in our research, we convened a group of 20 people across academia, nonprofits and philanthropy to get feedback on our work. They pointed out something major missing from our framework, the idea that a democratic society depends on its members seeing each other has having shared interests and a legitimate right to a voice in the process. So we added social cohesion to our framework, which accounts for philanthropy’s role in bridging the cultural divides that have become so apparent in our politics.
KC: Within those five elements, you highlight civic engagement and local media as two of the most promising strategies. Why did you choose those, in particular? What do you see as their potential to contribute to a healthy democracy?
CC: Academic evidence identified the nationalization of our news and declining civic participation as key drivers of the polarization and distrust that characterize today’s politics. There is also significant philanthropic interest in supporting these programs, especially given the place-based approaches of many funders. More generally, we think these topics together emphasize the importance of rebuilding the local layer of political participation. Our democracy is a massive, multi-layered system, and we spend a disproportionate amount of time and energy on the top of the pyramid: decisions made by the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court. Those are things individual citizens get only a tiny and indirect say over. Meanwhile, there are a lot of important decisions made locally that impact our lives directly and also influence national politics. It’s on these issues that a few dedicated citizens working together can change outcomes, but most people are barely aware of their existence. Support for local media and civic engagement organizations can keep people informed and active in a political domain where their participation is powerful.
KC: Do opportunities for funders differ based on their size or geographic focus? If so, how?
CC: Great question! Many of the organizations we highlight emphasize that gifts of all sizes can help them expand their programming. City Bureau, for example, a Chicago-based nonprofit newsroom, has a program called Documenters that pays $15 an hour for community members to go to public meetings and take notes. That established program can translate small gifts into increased coverage of local policy making. But donors from outside Chicago might be interested in replicating this program in their own community. For a news organization to pilot the Documenters program from scratch, the cost is close to $200,000.
In terms of geography, we emphasize interventions that are implemented locally, but many of them are backed by national organizations. The League of Women Voters, for example, has state and local chapters as well as a DC-based office doing national advocacy work. That federated structure is a real asset because it connects policy expertise and professional advocacy to grassroots efforts in hundreds of communities across the country. Funders with a national focus can have more impact if they find ways to connect existing efforts to the work of local organizations with similar missions, and the reverse is also true.
KC: You started this project intending it to be a funders’ guide, but realized during the course of development that you needed a companion piece for funders that profiled specific nonprofits as well. How did that come about? How do you see the role of each institution (grantmakers and nonprofits) being different and/or complementary in its ability to contribute to a healthy democracy?
CC: We published both an overall guide and profiles of specific nonprofits because we think both are necessary to make our guidance evidence-based and actionable. The guide is purposefully broad because we wanted to provide something that could inform donors’ decisions regardless of their programmatic priorities. There is such a tremendous breadth and diversity of issues, populations, geographies, and values that people support in the name of democracy. Advancing social cohesion could mean hosting an inter-faith conversation about values in your community, or it could mean trying to promote more inclusive rhetoric from national politicians. Our framework is an attempt to describe the full range of those initiatives in a way that helps donors understand how they can contribute to a strong democracy.
But the guide also needed to be actionable, so that donors didn’t just have a way to think about democracy, but had some specific things they could do. That is why profiles of nonprofits are needed; they show what responsive policy, empowered citizens, etc. look like in practice. They could support the organizations we highlighted, or use insights from their work to identify other opportunities to strengthen democracy.
KC: What would you say are the implications of (or the call-to-action from) this project? What do you hope it accomplishes?
CC: Our message is that democratic participation is not just an election-day activity, and that nonprofits are really important avenues for engaging citizens on an ongoing basis. By serving as a platform for private citizens to come together to solve common problems, nonprofits are “doing democracy” whether they know it or not. Our call to action is for donors to embrace that fact by thinking about how their grantees can support the five elements of a strong democracy. This need not lead to mission-creep. For example, a hunger nonprofit can empower more citizens by inviting volunteers and beneficiaries to participate in board meetings and other aspects of running the organization. They can register the people they serve to vote and advocate for policies that address hunger issues. They can engage with local news organizations to make sure their communities are aware of food access challenges and how individual citizens can help. They can organize events that allow members from different faith-based groups, age groups, and socioeconomic classes to work together.
You don’t need to try Supreme Court cases or lobby Congress. The everyday work of philanthropy in communities across the country offers plenty of opportunities to strengthen our democracy.
The full guide, We the People: A Philanthropic Guide to Strengthening Democracy, can be found on the Center for High Impact Philanthropy’s website.
Conor Carroll is a Social Impact Fellow at the Center for High Impact Philanthropy and manages the We the People project. He joined the Center from Gartner, an IT research and advisory firm, and previously held research roles with the Treasury Department and the Joint Economic Committee for the U.S. Congress. An alumnus of Penn State and Princeton’s MPA program, Conor’s first full-time job was coordinating volunteer programs as an AmeriCorps VISTA in New York City.
