Tory Gavito, a born-and-raised Texan with a background in labor law and immigrants’ rights, is the cofounder, president and CEO of Way to Win, a philanthropic intermediary with a data-driven approach and a focus on power-building among communities of color and other historically underrepresented voters. Gavito, who also cofounded and previously led the Texas Future Project donor collaborative, has a unique perch on progressive politics and civic engagement strategies in the South.
An umbrella LLC, Way to Win aims to “harness our community’s collective power” across four vehicles:
- Way to Rise is an independent, donor-advised 501c3 that works to protect multiracial democracy, with an emphasis on Sun Belt states. Its donors include General Service Foundation and the Posner Foundation of Pittsburgh.
- Way to Win Action Fund is a social welfare 501c4 organization that funds work to stabilize and scale state-based organizations and encourages narratives that center BIPOC Americans.
- Way to Lead PAC is a hybrid PAC that operates independently of Way to Win to support progressive candidates in several key states.
- The Valiente Fund, launched in 2021, is a donor collaborative housed at the 501c3 Way to Rise and designed to strengthen Latinos’ economic, civic and cultural presence in the United States. This year, the Valiente Fund aims to move more than $2.2 million in funds to Latino-led organizations in Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Nevada. Valiente Fund supporters have included the Democracy Fund, the Ford Foundation and Open Society Foundations.
Since its founding in 2017, Way to Win has moved and advised on more than $250 million in commitments, and supported more than 450 organizations across the country through its vehicles. It was a key player in the progressive funding boost that accompanied President Donald Trump’s first term in office, and we’ve tracked how it’s leveraged that support across its many channels in the years since.
In the 2023-2024 election cycle, the organizational strategy hub — which has a donor community of around 200 individuals and institutions — distributed $57.7 million. Sixty-eight percent of that went to state organization partners, the rest to national groups. Civic engagement and education 501c3 grantees supported by Way to Rise include Be The Ones, a South Carolina-based grassroots group that works to remove barriers to democratic participation in the Southeast; Mississippi Engaged; and Rural Arizona Engagement (RAZE).
Gavito spoke with IP via Zoom. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
How prepared is philanthropy to meet this moment?
Now is the time to just start moving. In the wake of the election, it has been important that we take a pause to gather data and analyze where we made an impact and where we fell short. We will continue to do that work; however, philanthropy needs to move out of the paralysis of analysis and begin to move into action.
It feels quite overwhelming that the shock and awe that Donald Trump promised is real. It’s just incredibly challenging. We are playing in a new arena where the cross sections of climate change, big tech and an oligarchy are in charge. I am finding solace in figuring out what spheres of control I have and being specific about that work.
How can philanthropy respond to the immediate threats posed for vulnerable groups?
There’s understandably a feeling of wanting to rush to the defense of the most vulnerable. What we are hearing from the American people writ large is they all feel some level of vulnerability. A colleague of mine in the immigrants’ rights space framed the moment we are in really well, saying: “We know the battle is coming, we just don’t know where the front line will be.” The reality is, we cannot wait to see where the front lines will be, we need to arm those likely in the crosshairs of these threats now, so that they are equipped to respond when the front line shows up on their doorstep.
How can democracy donors best support progressive grantees on the ground?
It’s important that we all, within this donor ecosystem, take a moment to listen to these groups on the ground and really hear and understand what they’ll need from us to engage in what will be a long-term fight for their survival.
As an intermediary, we’re uniquely positioned — we’re not just a grantmaker, and we’re not just a donor network. We’ve built decades-long, robust and trusted partnerships with donors and front-line organizations leading the work.
To succeed, we believe we’ll need to work in partnership to fund winning strategies at scale, particularly interventions to disrupt the spread of misinformation and false status-threat narratives. And that means funding now, not waiting until we are staring down the barrel at 2026, if we have any hope of mounting a resistance, rebuilding a winning coalition and carrying on the fight for multiracial democracy.
There’s an idea that I’m thinking about right now around scale and depth. Given the challenges we see in the media environment, I think that going big at scale, working with communicators and influencers online makes a lot of sense. If we leave it there, then I still don’t think we’re solving the problem of where to plug in the group that’s ready to do something beyond showing up to a Zoom call or a march.
Civic engagement funders sometimes play a role in giving money to deep organizing groups to scale GOTV operations. And maybe that’s not their role. Maybe they should just stay in the depth and give people very clear marching orders about how to stay civically engaged in this moment and then rely on other institutions to come in to help at GOTV time. It’s two different muscles, and we’re asking them to perform them both equally perfectly and it’s not fair.
What takeaways are there from the 2024 election from a democracy donor perspective?
Saving democracy as a platform fell flat because people clearly feel the system is failing them. Most people have people they know who are struggling, the system is not working for them, and when we talk to them, do we talk to them first about fighting for democracy?
Roughly 19 million people who voted for Biden in 2020 skipped the 2024 election. It’s the sole reason Trump ended up winning the popular vote by a hair. We have a disengagement problem, and while Trump poses a real threat to the system, vast swaths of working class voters feel left behind by that system — the very system that they felt Kamala Harris was vowing to protect. So serving as a bulwark against destroying that system, while it worked for some voters, particularly high-information voters, didn’t work for broad swaths of the electorate.
What we must remember about the so-called “rightward shift” is that a ton of voters didn’t actually shift, they just stayed home.
That said, Trump did improve his margins among some traditionally Democratic groups — working class voters of color, in particular. And what our exit polling showed is that voters across race and class prioritized the economy and jobs. Trump made gains with these voters because they were deeply moved by the affordability crisis, and they believed they would be better off financially with him at the helm.
But several distinctions are very important: There’s little to no evidence that these voters actually shifted more conservative or more MAGA in their thinking. And Trump’s gains weren’t deep — they were broad. He made small gains across a fairly broad swath of the electorate. That was partly a function of voters prioritizing the economy, and partly a function of a bunch of Biden 2020 voters sitting out the election.
What we learned about the Sun Belt is what we’ve known all along — it’s absolutely critical for Democrats to put it in play. It’s the future. The Blue Wall states [historically Democratic, mainly midwestern states] have been a game of inches for the past three presidential elections and, by 2032, winning their electoral votes alone will not be sufficient for securing the path to the White House.
Among those voters who may have migrated or stayed home, including BIPOC and Gen Z voters, we are researching if maybe they took a chance on Trump because the system isn’t working for them. Many of the voters who took a chance on Trump 2.0 live paycheck to paycheck, and as we have heard over and over again in focus groups and polling, they think their pocket books were slightly better when Trump was president, the pandemic aside.
The other thing that we learned was about the media. If you are someone who reads the newspaper or reads a magazine, you voted, and you probably voted for Kamala Harris. If you are someone who gets the majority of your news from YouTube, you voted for Donald Trump. If you look at the cross section of how voters of color particularly are receiving information, then you start to see some trends. There are very concerted efforts to present culture-first content on social media platforms: culture-first is sports, cars, food, comedy, fashion, this kind of thing. The politicians come onto these culture-first niche communities, then ramp up the mis- and disinformation, specifically around trans communities, women and anti-immigrant sentiment.
What strategic reappraisal is necessary for the next elections?
We know that 19 million people who voted for Biden in 2020 didn’t vote in 2024. We need to understand and map out who those 19 million voters are. We know that many of them may have been reluctant Trump voters. We need to work on how we win them over, what messaging works with them, how we meet them where they are.
We need a plan that meets this moment, or we risk losing them forever. Way to Win believes the 19 million who didn’t vote in 2024 are not a lost cause — they’re reachable by 2026 and 2028. However, reaching them will require leadership from those who know how to break into this modern, rapidly shifting media landscape.
We need a plan that meets this moment, or we risk losing more people who might choose alternatives to Trumpism forever.
That’s why our LLC is launching our new 19M for 19M Campaign. We are raising the first $3 million now to kick off this effort. We will use these funds to identify the 19 million lost voters to understand how those numbers overlay vulnerable congressional districts and critical states in advance of the 2026 midterms. We need to make sure they understand the dangers of Trump’s actions and win them over now with a digital media blitz.
Way to Rise and the Valiente Fund are committed to understanding why so many voters, particularly in the Sun Belt, chose not to participate in the 2024 election. By conducting in-depth research, they aim to uncover the barriers to civic engagement and find meaningful ways to connect with these voters. This effort will help shape strategies to encourage greater participation and ensure that more voices are heard in the democratic process.
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How has the first Trump presidency prepared the movement for Trump 2.0?
Last time, we were unprepared — and so were they. However, through massive grassroots organizing efforts, our movement was able to disrupt much of their policy attempts. There was a strong push for resistance.
Now, this Trump administration is much more prepared. That’s obvious when we look at the onslaught of executive orders and dangerous policies that are disrupting and harming American lives. When they shared Project 2025, they gave us their roadmap, and we have insight into what they hope to accomplish in this new term. We must keep pushing forward, shoring up and funding local organizations that work to protect our democratic institutions and ideals.
How is your organization responding to concerns about the new administration’s targeting of progressive philanthropic and nonprofit groups’ tax-exempt status?
Way to Win is not the only organization to use multiple legal entities to build power, secure wins for their communities and maximize its impact. There are huge benefits, but there are also risks and complications.
During the first Trump administration, we saw how they wielded government agencies against social movements and nonprofit organizations. We are already seeing these same threats re-emerge in a second administration. The difference is that now, we are prepared and have a plan.
We need to support movement leaders and their organizations to build the operational capacity to withstand attacks that seek to undermine free speech and people-powered movements. For example, in 2025, Way to Rise is partnering with other movement leaders to provide Black-led organizations in the southeastern U.S. assistance and coaching to strengthen their operational capacity, ensure legal compliance and support their scaled power-building work.
House Republicans have already been calling major philanthropic leaders into question about funding different movements last year. Any immigrant rights group is going to be questioned. DEI is also a bogeyman. So anyone doing any sort of racial justice work should be careful. But I don’t think we should back down. It’s inviting a level of scrutiny that I know not all of us want.
And so we just have to get calculated about it and lawyer up. Lawyer up, folks. We are triple checking our compliance. We are working with cybersecurity experts. But it’s not failsafe. Funders need to figure out ways of working together collaboratively — to the extent legally allowed — to share legal resources, which is going to be necessary. This is a time when understanding how to share legal resources could be really important.
Is there anything else you’d like to share on democracy philanthropy right now?
Philanthropy needs to figure out its division of labor, and it’s hard to divide labor. Philanthropy tends to be a pack animal situation: There’s a couple of head wolves, and we all follow those alphas because it gives us more bang for the buck. If we’re a small family foundation, we understand what we can give doesn’t meet the necessary scale, so we follow suit with others who are giving big. But if all of us are following some leaders and the leaders haven’t figured out this division of labor, then we’re not actually covering all the bases.
I think intermediaries, though, cannot wait for someone to tell us where we need to pivot. It is probably unacceptable in this day and age, with the amount of work that has to be done, that in any sector, you have seven intermediaries all kind of doing the same things. So I’m taking the time to reflect on what our best and highest use is to make sure that when I approach the donors in our network, and when we approach our grantees n community, what we are asking of both of them is for something that no one else can do.
So for example, if philanthropy really is doubling down on protecting the most vulnerable, on the evil actions of this administration — a very important cause, really happy somebody’s doing it — maybe we can play the role of supporting the groups and being the storytellers about what’s happening to a broader audience using media platforms.
One of the things that Way to Win did quite well in the last election cycle was we built out a network of hundreds of creators on TikTok and connected them with local leaders and grassroots organizers so that we could start to scale the storytelling and the organizing that is happening locally, to give more organizers an opportunity to frame the issues of the time. We’re going to double down on that.
