How Will Philanthropy Impact the 2024 Election? Here's a Bird's-Eye View

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Election Day 2024 will be here in under nine months, the culmination of a contest that might just spell the end of American democracy as we know it. This nation’s electoral institutions and its public square are on particularly shaky ground right now, under continuous strain after the events of 2020 and early 2021 shook them to their core. And the time since then has done little to heal those wounds — it’s opened up new ones. 

Even if this year’s contest remains relatively clean and clear, Americans will still be left with a bitterly divided public square and an uncertain way forward. But a messy, underresourced election may very well speed the U.S. on the path that other great powers throughout the ages have taken away from nominally representative government and toward autocracy. 

Democracy funders may not have a raging pandemic to contend with like they did four years ago, but in an era of profound danger for the republic, no election is business as usual. As a rush of political money fuels the thrust and parry of campaign rhetoric and partisan attack, election-adjacent philanthropy will also play a significant part in determining how secure and how representative this election will be.

Over the next nine months and beyond, we’ll be taking a close look at how philanthropy is helping to shape this election, and being shaped by it. That includes watching how funders are working to mobilize voters, secure the vote, ensure access to the franchise, address attempts to limit that access, and push back against a tide of election-related misinformation.

We’ll be monitoring the key issues that are motivating philanthropic donors to fund election-adjacent advocacy, outreach and organizing, including abortion and reproductive rights, climate, guns and the culture wars swirling around education, censorship and free speech. 

We’ll also be mapping out the key philanthropic players involved. That includes foundations and major living donors, as well as the rapidly evolving constellation of intermediaries, donor collaboratives and networks that have sprung up across the democracy funding arena.

Emergent challenges to civil society and the high stakes across a host of issues make this a particularly consequential contest, whatever the outcome. And as we’re seeing with pretty much every major election these days, nonprofits and philanthropic funding are playing an increasingly pivotal role – for good or ill.

The vote

The last time Joe Biden and Donald Trump faced off for the White House, COVID was in the process of upending the entire globe. Virus-proofing the vote was the order of the day here in the U.S., efforts that drew in copious philanthropic funding and were largely successful come November. 

This year, even though COVID no longer complicates voters’ paths to the polls in the same way it did during the pandemic’s peak, it’s unlikely the vote will be as secure, accessible and representative as it should be. Problems like aging voting infrastructure, and logistical and legal barriers to voting, haven’t gone away. And in the wake of 2020’s turmoil, extremist actors continue to target election officials.

Even if the election ends up being relatively well administered, it won’t be anywhere near representative if only certain groups show up to vote — or are permitted to. For many funders, the ongoing legal fights around voting rights are a key part of that, as is voter engagement and get out the vote (GOTV) work writ large. As active efforts to disenfranchise voters continue on the state and local levels, philanthropy will be key to pushing back. Sometimes, it’s also part of the problem. 

Meanwhile, pervasive misinformation on social media and other channels also looms over the public square and complicates voter engagement efforts, with AI exacerbating that threat further this year. Right-wing financial backing, some of it through 501(c)(3) channels, has been a part of that story, as are media platforms controlled by top billionaires – many of them philanthropists – who have been anything but shy about taking pointed political stances.

There are some signs that funders will successfully mobilize to address those challenges. In its recently released deep dive on democracy philanthropy, the Democracy Fund found signs of increased and sustained attention among the funders it surveyed. Forty-five percent of respondents planned to increase their funding this cycle compared to 2021-2022, and, as the report puts it, “Surprisingly, the majority (57%) of survey respondents reported having increased funding in 2021–2022 relative to 2019–2020.”

However, doubts persist about whether those commitments will materialize and if they’ll be enough. Last year, Billy Wimsatt of the Movement Voter Project compared the “funding shortfall of 2023” to “an extended nationwide drought” and called on funders to dramatically increase their support for grassroots voter engagement. Earlier this month, a high-powered cadre of progressive funders did the same via “All By April,” a campaign to move democracy dollars out the door early in the cycle, hosted by the Democracy Fund.

In all of these cases, the efforts that philanthropic funders back are legally nonpartisan and distinct from electoral funding for candidates and campaigns, which cannot come in the form of 501(c)(3) support. However, c3 funders can and do support efforts to get out the vote and educate voters, which often end up focusing on particular geographies and populations. Support for 501(c)(4) groups, meanwhile, can back lobbying and partisan political activities, and c3 organizations often operate alongside c4 affiliates that engage in that work. 

Despite those distinctions, left-leaning funders’ growing efforts around election infrastructure and voter engagement have drawn criticism from conservatives who frame them as partisan and claim they prioritize Democratic-leaning constituencies. Depending on how things shake out in Congress, the debate around tax-deductible philanthropy’s role in civic engagement work could have ramifications for the sector extending well beyond 2024.

The causes

Democracy funding may be minuscule next to philanthropic spending as a whole, but it can be a powerful lever to pull, even for funders not focused on civic engagement. Democratic processes, after all, undergird the juggernaut that is public spending and public policy — or are supposed to — and when those processes aren’t working, philanthropy’s job gets exponentially harder. 

Funders seem to recognize that. The Democracy Fund’s survey picked up on an influx of cause-focused philanthropies into the democracy space over the past eight years, a trend that tracks with our own reporting. In 2024, cause-based 501(c)(3) voter education and engagement will be an important driver of turnout, especially since the presidential candidates themselves aren’t likely to inspire much enthusiasm beyond the ranks of their core supporters.

Pretty much every cause-focused funder in the U.S (and many abroad) has a stake in this election, but certain issues come to the fore. One that’s getting much more attention compared to four years ago is abortion and reproductive rights. Since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in 2022, abortion rights advocates have successfully parlayed the resultant anger into election wins across the country. Pro-choice nonprofits will certainly be looking to continue that trend come November, and they’ll have the backing of key reproductive rights philanthropies. 

Similarly, climate is a huge issue this year — and will be for the rest of our lives. It’s also one that’s drawing in an ever-escalating stream of funder dollars as climate concerns continue to deepen across the electorate. For the growing array of philanthropies prioritizing climate in their grantmaking, this election may well decide whether the U.S. government deepens its commitments there, or concedes its leadership entirely. 

Another area that’ll spur voter engagement spending this year is education — specifically, the roiling culture wars engulfing both K-12 and higher ed. For the former, debates over book bans, “critical race theory” and the representation of marginalized groups in school curricula have turned once-sleepy school board meetings into pitched battlegrounds, with 501(c)(3) funders active in both camps. Meanwhile, full-on donor revolts have erupted at top universities following the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza conflict, with last year’s anti-affirmative action Supreme Court decision further inflaming the higher ed culture wars.

Relevant in all these cases are the broader currents around racial justice and the post-2020 backlash against the racial justice movement, which animate so many of this nation’s touchiest political debates. Philanthropies that stepped up for racial justice following George Floyd’s murder have a lot at stake. At the same time, statistically significant numbers of voters of color are edging to the right, complicating the picture further.

The players

Familiar faces will certainly be among the biggest democracy funders active this year, including stalwart legacy foundations like Ford, Hewlett, Carnegie, Rockefeller Brothers Fund and others that engage in nonpartisan 501(c)(3) funding. Then there are the major individual donors, who back c3 democracy work and also often write big checks to boost actual campaigns. 

Last year, we put together a list of the most influential philanthropists shaping national policy in D.C. Expect to see continued big moves from the likes of Mike Bloomberg, Pierre and Pam Omidyar (who back the Democracy Fund), Laurene Powell Jobs, Charles Koch, Eric and Wendy Schmidt and many more. 

Also appearing on our list were Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, whose fortune has skyrocketed again after a period of decline. The couple were perhaps the most consequential election donors of the 2020 cycle, deploying a last-minute mega-gift of over $400 million to boost election infrastructure. That donation has been under sustained attack from the right; in any event, it was an unprecedented philanthropic move. Although Zuck and Chan are unlikely to repeat it this year, have they opened the floodgates to similar overtures from other mega-billionaires?

Beyond individual donors and foundations, the list of players also includes an array of intermediary groups active at the intersection of policy and philanthropy. Quickly growing in both number and stature since 2016, these funding intermediaries run the ideological gamut — for example, both DonorsTrust on the right and Tides on the left sponsor DAF giving with a policy bent. 

Funding intermediaries are also employing a range of strategies in service of their goals. Fiscal sponsorship is a key tactic, for instance, at places like the New Venture Fund and NEO Philanthropy, which host and incubate a variety of democracy-related efforts. 

Other national intermediaries, including those focused on galvanizing smaller donors (like the Movement Voter Project) and larger donors (like Way to Win) seek in part to ensure underrepresented groups can make their voices heard at the polls. 

Meanwhile, state-based and regional funding entities, including vehicles like donor tables that shepherd both c3 and c4 support for democracy work, are poised to carry forward the collaborative funding trend that showed up so prominently in 2020. The growth of such efforts, especially ones with a progressive bent, has been a key story in democracy philanthropy for the past eight years.

A bumpy road forward

A year from now, we’ll be just past the inauguration. Hopefully, U.S. democracy will be just about intact. But whatever the situation at the start of 2025, the impact of philanthropic funders and other civil society actors will have been hard to miss. 

Each election year, the bulk of the media attention goes to the political donors — the deep-pocketed folks chucking tens or hundreds of millions into PACs and super PACs to boost their favored candidates and blast the candidates they don’t like. But despite formal prohibitions against campaign spending and overt lobbying, nonprofit funders have plenty of leeway to make things happen.

That’s been true for years, but the scale of the nonprofit funding directed toward democracy causes nowadays — and the fact that pretty much everyone’s doing it — really marks out today’s environment. The lines between policy and politics, between 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4), are increasingly blurry. Organizations not already engaged in c4 efforts are under greater pressure to do so, and funders are being called upon to pitch in — which they can do without disclosure. All the while, a good amount of tax-deductible c3 work is also being conducted without transparency via DAFs.

All of this — and maybe another Zuckerberg-style mega-donor election gift or three — raises the prospect that when this contest’s finished, philanthropy will come under the kind of regulatory scrutiny it’s managed to sidestep for decades, and which Congress has been flirting with lately. In the wake of a make-or-break election for U.S. democracy, what that might mean for U.S. civil society remains to be seen.