Type of Activity: Project
Grantee: State Power Action Fund
Amount: $400,000 in 2023

What is State Power Action Fund?

State Power Action Fund (SPAF) is a 501(c)4 that supports innovative and effective public interest projects to eliminate poverty, improve living conditions for low-income Americans, strengthen public education, and increase participation in local, state, and federal elections.

SPAF achieves this mission through activities that support organizing and state-based power building, increases democratic participation, alleviates racism, improves conditions for low-income and working class people, and serves to better understand the impact of various public policies on reducing poverty. In addition, SPAF conducts training activities that equip organizations to undertake community engagement and civic action, and convenes coalitions of organizations working on similar issues to encourage broad, collective impact in states.

Why do we think this project is important? 

SPAF’s core goal with the Movement Politics Accelerator is to support the development of independent resource generation models for movement organizations. SPAF’s work represents the culmination of the pipeline that helps power-building organizations establish new and effective entities, develop operations hubs that create efficiencies and alignment in a state or region, and ultimately enable movement organizations to establish new businesses to supplement their traditional fundraising efforts and redirect cyclical, results-driven spending into lasting, movement-oriented power while disrupting the often extractive funder-grantee dynamics.

How is Democracy Fund Voice supporting State Power Action Fund? 

In 2023, Democracy Fund Voice approved a one-year grant of $400,000 to State Power Action Fund to support their Movement Politics Accelerator project.

Type of Activity: Project
Grantee: re:power
Amount: $375,000 in 2023 over three years

What is re:power?

re:power is a 501(c)4 with a team of organizers, strategists, and technologists dedicated to building a liberated multi-racial democracy. re:power exists to build a critical mass of social justice movements and their leaders who embody the ideology and practice of liberatory organizing, an organizing practice that is pro-Black and grounded in community, collective action, and abundance.

Why do we think this project is important? 

Democracy Fund Voice supports movement-building work to improve training infrastructure, leadership development, and cohort based learning opportunities.

How is Democracy Fund Voice supporting re:power? 

In 2023, Democracy Fund Voice approved a three-year grant of $375,000 to re:power.

Type of Activity: Project
Grantee: New Left Accelerator
Amount: $600,000 in 2023 over three years

What is New Left Accelerator?

New Left Accelerator (NLA) empowers progressive leaders to transform their ideas into impact. They accomplish this by running an accelerator program, providing technical assistance, and serving as a resource clearinghouse for promising, new, progressive organizations.

Why do we think this project is important? 

NLA believes that in order to create the change we want to see in the world, the entire progressive ecosystem must evolve to better support multi-entity power-building organizations led by the communities most impacted by injustice. NLA seeks to deliver multi-entity informed technical assistance and to develop a multi-entity praxis and resource hub that will serve as a central home for tools, training, resources, and knowledge specifically designed to address the most complex and common multi-entity strategic and operational needs of power-building organizations.

Democracy Fund Voice supports NLA’s work to strengthen movements and state ecosystems that use multi-entity infrastructure to build power.

How is Democracy Fund Voice supporting New Left Accelerator? 

In 2023, Democracy Fund Voice approved a three-year grant of $600,000 to New Left Accelerator.

Type of Activity: Project
Grantee: Iconico, LLC
Amount: $50,000 in 2023

What is Iconico?

Founded in 2016, Iconico has worked with organizations and communities of all sizes to incubate innovative campaigns and organizations that work to build power in low-income and communities of color.

Why do we think this project is important? 

Since Iconico was founded, its focus has been to build sustainable capacity in advocacy organizations in Arizona, and beyond, as well as long-term solutions for issues affecting communities. In the last five years, Iconico has incubated some of the most critical organizations in the building of durable progressive political infrastructure with BIPOC communities in AZ. Since then, they have identified a new gap that goes beyond the political landscape, and it presents a unique opportunity to start a conversation and a plan of action for the coming changes of America’s desert lands.

The world is constantly changing, and now more than ever we see rapid environmental changes in communities across the globe, especially those most impacted by heat, water scarcity, and migration. To meet this challenge, and continue building resilience within our communities, particularly with those most impacted by social inequities, Iconico is developing a climate adaptation project called Rumbo. Democracy Fund Voice’s support of this work will help Iconico assess the best places to add value in an area that needs capacity and focus.

How is Democracy Fund Voice supporting Iconico? 

In 2023, Democracy Fund Voice approved a one-year grant of $50,000 to Iconico, LLC, to support their Rumbo project.

Type of Activity: Project
Grantee: Center for Empowered Politics
Amount: $300,000 in 2023 over three years

What is the Center for Empowered Politics?

The Center for Empowered Politics (CEP) is a capacity builder, field builder, and project incubator focused on people of color-led organizations, movement infrastructure, particularly around racial justice, organizing, and power building strategies.

Why do we think this project is important? 

CEP works to close critical gaps in local movement infrastructure and to support better coordination around organizational capacity development for grassroots people of color-led organizations. These needs must be addressed with greater and more coordinated direct investment to movement organizations. This requires cross-pollination of ideas and operational practices between regions and states, and resources to support the long-term development of these structures that can reduce movement reliance upon cyclical and inconsistent funding practices.

Democracy Fund Voice supports work to strengthen infrastructure that serves organizers’ interests, including supporting projects that enable organizations to conduct more sophisticated multi-entity work that ultimately allows for the development of more sustainable fundraising models. CEP equips grassroots organizational leaders with the skills, resources, and technical expertise to conduct multi-entity work, and partners with state-based organizations to develop sustainable local and statewide back-end operations hubs that increase alignment and create efficiencies within local movements.

How is Democracy Fund Voice supporting the Center for Empowered Politics? 

In 2023, Democracy Fund Voice approved a three-year grant of $300,000 to the Center for Empowered Politics in support of their Multi-entity Infrastructure Building project.

Type of Activity: Project
Grantee: Advance Democracy
Amount: $200,000 in 2023

What is Advance Democracy?

Advance Democracy (ADI) is an independent, non-partisan, not-for-profit organization that conducts public-interest research and investigations. Taken as a whole, ADI’s efforts help create a more just, democratic, and environmentally responsible society.

Why do we think this project is important? 

Democracy Fund Voice support’s ADI research efforts to serve the pro-democracy field through the provision and synthesis of information for organizations working toward a more just and inclusive multiracial democracy.

How is Democracy Fund Voice supporting Advance Democracy (ADI)? 

In 2023, Democracy Fund Voice approved a one-year grant of $200,000 to Advance Democracy to support their Strengthening Democracy Research project.

Type of Activity: Project
Grantee: Common Defense Civic Engagement
Amount: $100,000 in 2022

What is Common Defense Civic Engagement?

Founded in 2016, Common Defense Civic Engagement (Common Defense) is the nation’s largest grassroots organization of US military veterans and the only one that invests in the leadership of its members through training and deployment in campaigns that connect directly to their history of service, including voting rights, climate justice, and anti-militarism.

Why do we think this project is important?

Building on the deep organizing model of voting rights work launched in 2021, Common Defense is continuing its efforts to leverage the power of the veteran voice to change the status of Afghan refugees, so that this vulnerable population is not subject to the fear of deportations, but instead can feel secure in building lives as new Americans.

How is Democracy Fund Voice supporting Common Defense Civic Engagement?

In 2023, Democracy Fund Voice approved a one-year grant of $100,000 to Common Defense to support their Common Defense Civic Engagement project.

In 2022, Democracy Fund Voice approved a one-year grant of $100,000 to Common Defense Civic Engagement to support their Veterans for Democracy campaign.

Type of Activity: Project
Grantee: Shared Ascent Fund
Amount: $30,000 in 2020

What is the Shared Ascent Fund?

Shared Ascent Fund is a nonprofit designed to provide sustained support for efforts to confront the growing threat to our democracy. This work cannot succeed without advancing economic, racial, and gender equity. Shared Ascent Fund assists skillful leaders and organizations as they strive to move beyond the zero-sum economics and politics that impoverish communities and deepen divides.

Why do we think this project is important?

In order to defend the ability of 501(c)(3) organizations to share resources with their partner 501(c)(4) organizations without jeopardizing the tax status of the (c)(3) organizations, Shared Ascent Fund mobilized a congressional response to the IRS’s private letter rule 134894-18.

In January 2020, the U.S. Internal Revenue (IRS) released a private letter ruling that could undermine the ability of 501(c)(3) organizations to share resources, including office space and employees, with their partner 501(c)(4) organizations without jeopardizing the tax status of the (c)(3) organizations.

Through this project, the Shared Ascent Fund defended this long-established, legally sound practice, which has been integral to the growth and effectiveness of nonprofit advocacy. As is the case now, the (c)(3) and (c)(4) organizations would continue to observe the legal formalities of their separate incorporations and separate financials to avoid violating their different lobbying and electoral rules. The existing legal structures have allowed non-profit organizations to pursue outcomes that serve the public interest on a range of priorities that are core the future of an open and just democracy.

How is Democracy Fund Voice supporting Shared Ascent Fund?

In 2020, Democracy Fund Voice approved a grant of $30,000 to Shared Ascent Fund.

Type of Activity: Project
Grantee: NILC Immigrant Justice Fund
Amount: Updated to $200,000 in 2021 — originally approved as $100,000 in 2020

What is the NILC Immigrant Justice Fund?

In 2013, the National Immigration Law Center created an affiliate organization, the NILC Immigrant Justice Fund (NILC IJF), to advocate more directly for federal immigration reform policies that provide a road to U.S. citizenship for all aspiring citizens. IJF’s work is guided by a mission focused on building immigrant power, and advancing smart, effective, and fair immigration policy by executing civic engagement campaigns.

Why do we think this project is important?

Despite devastating attacks on immigrants’ lives and livelihoods over the last four years, immigrants and immigration are all too often the last issue on the policymaking agenda. IJF and its sister organization, the National Immigration Law Center, litigates in court and lobby with allies in state houses and Congress to advance immigrant justice. Last year, IJF relaunched its political arm, and developed the 2020 Project to advance smart, effective, fair immigration policy by: 1) shifting how immigration is covered by the media; 2) transforming the way policymakers and political influencers talk about immigrants and immigration; and 3) building enough political power to hold leaders accountable.

The civic engagement strategies of NILC-IJF accomplished these goals including engaging and building their list of activists, preparing activists and voters for advocacy efforts in 2021 and beyond, continuing to produce social media ads using immigrant inclusive messaging to build broad support for immigrants, and continuing to engage the press to tell the story of an inclusive, thriving vision for the United States that includes a fair and humane immigration system.

How is Democracy Fund Voice supporting the NILC Immigrant Justice Fund?  

In 2020, Democracy Fund Voice made a grant of $100,000 to NILC Immigrant Justice Fund. In 2021 an amendment was approved to increase the amount of the grant by $100,000 for a total of $200,000.

Type of Activity: Project 
Grantee: Arizona State University
Amount: $60,000 in 2018

What is the 2018 Language Access Convening?

The annual Language Access for Voters Summit, hosted by Arizona State University, brings together election officials, advocates, and other experts to share ideas, techniques, and resources – all in service of meeting the needs of voters for whom English is a second language or those who simply prefer to communicate in a language other than English.

Why do we think this event is important?

This convening brings together multiple stakeholders around the issue of language access in elections. Legitimate election outcomes are predicated on a process that is free and fair for all qualified citizens. Accommodating different language needs is essential to ensure that elections are free in fact, and not just in theory.

How is Democracy Fund Voice supporting Arizona State University?

In 2018, Democracy Fund Voice approved a grant to Arizona State University in the amount of $60,000.