Virus-Proofing the Vote: Democracy Funders Respond to COVID-19

Photo: Linda Parton/shutterstock

By all accounts, 2020 was already going to be a tough, contentious election year. Then COVID-19 struck. While public attention—and philanthropic dollars—have understandably revolved around direct relief over the past few weeks, November 3rd looms ever closer, lending an atmosphere of partisan strife to what might otherwise be a unifying public health crisis. Meanwhile, states are postponing their primaries for fear of the virus, the presumptive Democratic nominee is broadcasting from his basement, and President Trump remains as divisive a figure as ever. 

Given what we know about how the rest of 2020 might look, how is philanthropy responding to the challenges COVID-19 poses to elections and voting? And what do advocates need from funders, both now and over the next several months, to ensure that the contest is fair and accessible to all? 

To get a sense of where the field’s at, we sought input from a range of funders and nonprofits already active around democracy and elections. The prevailing feeling is one of urgency. November may be months away, but the logistical challenges COVID-19 poses to the vote are substantial and must be addressed now. Even though philanthropy cannot directly fund election expenses, what it can do is educate voters, advocate for state-level changes, back journalism, and support nonprofits that monitor elections on the ground and mobilize communities to vote. For funders who’ve already committed long-term resources toward those goals, virus-proofing the election is a priority project, even if success is by no means assured.

CARES Act Funding “Just a Start”

Although elections help determine the course of literally trillions in public spending, election-related philanthropy is, in fact, quite modest. In the post-2016 era, foundations spent only around $160 million on election-related advocacy, research and organizing. That might seem like a fair chunk of change, but bear in mind that the sum covers work across 50 states and multiple years, including funding around the 2018 midterms. As a fraction of philanthropy’s overall largesse, spending to secure and improve elections is a drop in the bucket.

Fast-forward to March 2020 and COVID-19. To support the integrity of the 2020 election cycle, the federal government’s $2 trillion CARES Act allocated $400 million to the Election Assistance Commission for distribution to the states. That’s “just a start,” given the challenges at hand, according to a writeup from the Bipartisan Policy Center. Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, had stronger words: “Congress failed to include sufficient, urgently needed funds in the stimulus to help states run elections in a time of pandemic. This could wreak havoc in November.”

Many of the funders we heard from cited the Brennan Center, as well as a new bipartisan National Task Force on Election Crises, as go-to places for guidance on what needs to change—and fast—to address COVID-19’s impact on voting. According to the Brennan Center, protecting the election on a state-by-state basis will require not $400 million, but a full $2 billion in federal funding to let state officials modify their voting procedures in time. And the sooner those changes begin taking place, the better. 

In that sense, one of the best things funders can be doing right now is advocating for additional federal spending on the election. “What matters most is that Congress substantially scale up support to the states so that they can implement what policies work best for their constituents,” said Laura Silber, director of communications at the Open Society Foundation. Brian Kettenring, co-executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, believes an even larger sum will be necessary to safeguard the election—$3 billion. “Just like our healthcare system and our economy,” he said, “our elections infrastructure needs a massive infusion of resources to ensure that elections can proceed and every voter has access to the ballot during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Give Flexibility, Get Flexibility

Two or three billion dollars sounds like a lot, but it pales next to the staggering sums D.C.’s doling out these days. And even through philanthropy can’t fund state election costs, there is plenty it can do to ensure a fair and valid vote. For many democracy funders already in the ring, one first step reflects what we’ve been seeing across the field: flexible funding, looser requirements and more general operating support. 

“We've seen many of our members reach out to their grantees with messages of support and flexibility, showing understanding of the need to shift certain programming and goals away from in-person activity like canvassing and meetings,” said Kristin Purdy, executive director of the Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation (FCCP). Daniel Stid, who heads the Hewlett Foundation’s Madison Initiative, noted that while most of Hewlett’s democracy grants already come in the form of unrestricted, multi-year funding, “we are flexing project grant restrictions as well as reporting schedules in order to make life easier for grantees amid this crisis.”

Meanwhile, nonprofits with get-out-the-vote operations are seeking greater assurance that existing funders will have their backs. “Many of our general support revenue events (fundraisers, dinners, receptions, etc.) are now impossible to hold, so we are going to be losing significant revenue in the short term,” said Arturo Vargas, CEO of the NALEO Educational Fund. Given the uncertain fundraising outlook going forward, he said, learning about grant renewals earlier would help.

A number of well-established civic engagement funders, including Ford and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, were already making moves before COVID-19 to free up funds for nonpartisan voter engagement and to address threats to democracy. With ongoing market shocks likely to depress individual giving over the coming months, RBF’s Keesha Gaskins-Nathan emphasized that “foundations have a critical role to play to ensure that grantee organizations that have poured years, if not decades, into democratic reform and citizen engagement can continue their work and build on their momentum.”

Socially Distancing the Election

Beyond making life easier for existing grantees, many foundations say they’re listening closely to the field as ground-level organizations help communities get ready to vote in the age of COVID-19. Several themes emerged, and they largely reflect the recommendations of the Brennan Center and the National Task Force on Election Crises.

The first is expanding vote by mail to secure the franchise for voters unable or unwilling to vote in person. As of right now, vote by mail is only the default option in five states—Washington, Oregon, Utah, Colorado and Hawaii. The rest of the country has adopted mail balloting to varying degrees, and many states still do not allow absentee voting without an excuse. Advocacy groups like the Center for Popular Democracy and the Brennan Center argue that to get around the challenges the virus poses, all voters should have the option of casting their ballots by mail. Advocates are also calling for expanded online registration in states that lack it. 

At the same time, doing away with in-person voting is a non-starter. For one thing, some groups, like people with certain disabilities and some Native Americans, cannot access mail service from their homes or must rely on voting machines. Others may wish to vote in person despite the potential risks. To keep in-person voting locations safe and accessible, advocates recommend expanding early voting to cut down crowds. They’re also asking states to implement vote centers (for use by any voter residing in a given county) as well as same-day registration.

The Democracy Fund is one funder that’s been leading the charge on all of those fronts. It’s supporting organizations like the National Vote at Home Coalition, Common Cause and the League of Women voters, which “are moving quickly at national and local levels to argue and articulate how to ensure safe early voting, vote by mail procedures, and how to ensure access for all Americans,” said Adam Ambrogi, elections program director.

According to Erika Wood, program officer for civic engagement and government at the Ford Foundation, “a broad coalition of voting rights, good government and civil rights organizations is working to [ensure] that states have adequate funding to create voting options for the November elections,” including by implementing the strategies above. 

“We are hearing lots of questions about how funders can engage around the types of recommendations offered by groups like the Election Task Force,” said Kristen Campbell, executive director of Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement. “Place-based funders have also inquired about opportunities to partner with local elections administrators.”

In the age of coronavirus, voter education and get-out-the-vote campaigns must move from community centers, churches and schools onto social media, email, phone and text. “We will be expanding our field organizing online in order to ensure that Latinos are heard this election cycle,” said Héctor Sanchez Barba, CEO and executive director of Mi Familia Vota. For funders, he said, that might mean training organizers in digital methodologies or paying for software, hardware and data management. 

In addition to bolstering nonprofit digital capacity, the Democracy Fund is supporting digital fluency among election officials themselves, backing remote trainings held by the Center for Technology and Civic Life. And venture philanthropy shops like Propel Capital and New Media Ventures are funding digital organizing tools that may have a bigger role to play this year. “The groups in our portfolio are especially relevant in a socially distanced world. Things like relational organizing are much more relevant in a world where you can’t canvass,” said New Media Ventures’ incoming president Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman. 

The corollary to all of that is the need to stem the tide of mis- and disinformation in an election year already rife with it (not to mention a public health crisis in which the facts are hard to find). A remote election conducted mostly by mail may defang some attempts to suppress the vote by disinformation, i.e., by providing voters with false polling place locations or hours. But other bids to mislead voters will no doubt take their toll, especially if we’re all still spending so much time online. One way funders can combat misinformation around election day is to prop up local news. An economic nosedive spells trouble for already-fragile local journalism, said Josh Stearns, public square program director at the Democracy Fund. “Grantmakers should drive dollars to local newsrooms to ensure coverage right now and to strengthen their resilience to weather the coming storm.”

The Power of Zoom

Even though elections in the U.S. are administered locally, protecting them is one more area where coordinated funding is key. COVID-19 has prompted funders to take up collaborative rapid response funding in a major way, and it’s easy to see that pattern extending into the electoral arena. Already, new collaborative funding efforts are emerging to support necessary changes to voting. 

One nexus for coordinated funding is the Democracy Funders Collaborative, an informal network of interested grantmakers currently chaired by Adam Ambrogi of the Democracy Fund and Ilona Prucha of the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund. Along with the Spitzer Trust, those organizations have set up a new Trusted Elections Fund, bringing together “philanthropic partners and funders who want to ensure free and fair elections and pool resources to mitigate the disruption of COVID-19 in November,” as Ambrogi put it. The plan is to make rapid response funding available around “election crises” throughout the year.

The Democracy Alliance is another site of frequent coordination between left-leaning funders looking to get out the vote. Its secretive donor base appears to be mobilizing in response to COVID-19, and elections are on the agenda. Progressive givers like the Democracy Alliance’s membership have spent vigorously since 2016 to build organizers’ capacity, including in the digital realm. Although not all of that work fits into the 501(c)(3) bucket, nonpartisan voter engagement among people of color, women and young people is certainly a theme. Expect to see even more activity on the left as donors roll out funding to make sure those demographics can access the vote.

Indeed, protecting voting rights is one area where funders and advocates really benefit from coordination and collaborative platforms. Especially since Shelby County v. Holder, the 2013 Supreme Court decision that gutted the federal government’s power to curtail discriminatory voting practices in the states, new threats to voting rights arise every election year. Tamping them down requires vigilant, coordinated effort from nonprofit litigators like the Campaign Legal Center and a “post-Shelby litigation collaborative” of legal advocacy groups backed in part by joint funding through the State Infrastructure Fund at NEO Philanthropy. Just a few of the foundations involved include Ford, Kresge, Carnegie, JPB, OSF and Bauman. 

In an election year marked by COVID-19, voting rights advocates will face more challenges around voting by mail, which has its own ways of getting suppressed. According to Jason Jaffery, chief development officer at the Campaign Legal Center, “A dramatic expansion of voting from home and early voting requires a massive and coordinated effort with substantial resources, since so many states are currently able to throw away absentee ballots for something as simple as the handwriting on a voter’s registration application.”

Staying the Course

Funders’ overall strategies around voting aren’t likely to change too much through November, though we may very well see new grant commitments and tactical shifts as the pandemic’s trajectory becomes clearer. One challenge advocates may face this fall is the perceived illegitimacy of election results. In many ways, the above methods for virus-proofing the election aren’t too different from where many (mostly liberal) activists already wanted to steer American voting. To guard against the perception of partisan overreach, it has been suggested that jurisdictions approach these rule changes as emergency measures rather than permanent policy.

At the same time, while most of the funders mentioned here are progressive or left-leaning, the conservative vote isn’t exactly immune to COVID-19. Older voters and rural voters—two demographics that trend Republican—will find it more difficult to participate without well-oiled vote-by-mail systems in place. An optimist could even point to ways this terrible pandemic might foster bipartisan cooperation around better election administration or the value of civic education—a recent focus of the Philanthropy Roundtable. 

It’s worth noting that despite talk to the contrary, the general election will most likely proceed in November. Changing the date would require almost impossible-to-pass legislation from a divided Congress. And even then, any postponement would fall within a short time frame dictated by constitutional requirements that new presidential and congressional terms begin in January. As Abraham Lincoln wrote of the 1864 contest, “We cannot have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forgo, or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.”

If the Civil War didn’t derail U.S. elections, a virus probably shouldn’t either.