Once a Republican stronghold, Georgia has emerged as a key battleground state. It also serves as a microcosm of the overall challenges facing American democracy, given the state’s central role in recent battles over voting rights, redistricting, election administration, voter roll purges and false claims over the legitimacy of election results.
Coupled with shifting demographics and rapid population growth, it can hardly be a surprise that the state has drawn interest from advocates and organizers — as well as philanthropy itself. And although national funders have poured significant resources into nonpartisan democracy work in Georgia, there’s also an important ecosystem of local and state-based funders supporting democracy in the state.
Backed by philanthropic support, some of the best-known voting and civic engagement organizations — including ProGeorgia, Fair Count, Black Voters Matter Capacity Building Institute, GALEO Latino Community Development Fund, Georgia Muslim Voter Project, and the now-closed New Georgia Project — have played critical roles in registering hundreds of thousands of new voters and helping to drive record-breaking voter turnout.
Maintaining that level of engagement, however, requires ongoing and sustained support. While Georgia set a new record for turnout during the 2022 midterm elections, — which it then surpassed during the 2024 election — participation still fell short of the levels seen during the presidential election in 2020. That pattern isn’t unique to Georgia, but as this year’s midterms approach, funders are again supporting voter registration, education and mobilization.
At the same time, advocates and some funders continue to emphasize that the work cannot begin and end with election cycles, and instead requires year-round investment to keep communities engaged between elections. Local and state-based funders are especially well positioned to do this work on an ongoing basis.
But encouraging voter turnout is only part of the work. Georgia nonprofits also engage in election protection, defending voting rights, expanding voter access, monitoring voter rolls and building civic power. To that end, here’s a look at five Georgia-based funders who are supporting democracy in the Peach State.
Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation
Backed by the Home Depot cofounder and led by its influential (and now outgoing) president, Fay Twersky, the Atlanta-based Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation has grown into a confident, professionalized philanthropy operating over a range of issue areas — including democracy. It funds through a dedicated Democracy program, whose goal for the next decade is to increase “effective, constructive and responsible leadership” in both Georgia and Montana, where the foundation also operates. According to the foundation, ensuring that democracy works for everyone in the U.S. is at the heart of its democracy work.
The program is focused on three key areas: advancing reforms that make elections fairer and better reflect voters’ preferences, building a pipeline of future leaders who prioritize the nation over party, and helping to create the conditions necessary for cross-partisan collaboration among elected officials. In 2025, the foundation also launched a two-year learning portfolio to increase civic education and engagement among young people.
According to its latest annual report, within its Democracy program, the Blank Family Foundation awarded a total of $16.9 million for its Good Governance portfolio and $7.7 million for its Civic Education and Engagement portfolio, for a combined total of $24.6 million in democracy funding for 2025. Some of its grantees include New Politics Leadership Academy, Women’s Public Leadership Network, Center for Effective Lawmaking and Unite America.
Sapelo Foundation
Named after one of the barrier islands along the Georgia coast, the Savannah-based Sapelo Foundation funds democracy work under its Social Justice portfolio. One of the foundation’s goals is to increase the number of Georgians who can shape public policy and fully participate in a just and effective democracy. The foundation supports voter education and ballot access, work around the U.S. Census, youth participation and leadership, civic power-building in underresourced communities, and First Amendment issues, especially freedom of speech and assembly.
Sapelo’s new strategic plan for 2026-2030 includes expanding year-round organizing, leadership and civic infrastructure, especially in communities of color, rural communities, and other underrepresented communities. Recent grantees include ACLU Foundation of Georgia, Black Voters Matter Capacity Building Institute, Deep Center, Fair Count, GALEO Latino Community Development Fund, Georgia Alliance Education Fund, Peach Concerned Citizens.
Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta
The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta engages in democracy-related funding through its Power and Leadership TogetherATL Fund. The fund seeks to ensure all Atlanta residents have a voice and are empowered to use it, focusing on voter registration and mobilization, increasing civic engagement and voter engagement among youth, increasing organizational capacities in the region, and backing local and traditional media coverage, as well as civic journalism to ensure community voices are heard.
The foundation has also partnered with the now-embattled Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on the “Vote Your Voice” initiative, which provides two-year grants to organizations in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi working to advance full voter participation and achieve equitable representation. The initiative is managed jointly. SPLC sponsors the initiative — in 2021, it pledged $100 million through 2032 in the form of a reinvestment from its endowment — and the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta hosts the initiative and administers the grants.
Georgia Alliance Education Fund
The Georgia Alliance Education Fund (GAEF) is a statewide donor collaborative and intermediary whose mission is to build an inclusive progressive movement in the state that advances a racially just democracy. GAEF is the 501c3 arm of an umbrella entity, the Georgia Alliance, which also has an affiliated 501c4 arm called the Georgia Investor Action Fund.
The Georgia Alliance Education Fund pools money from local and national donors, and then regrants it to organizations throughout the state. At the same time, it also provides capacity and programmatic support to several other organizations, with the aim of helping strengthen Georgia’s broader democracy field.
From 2026 through 2028, the fund is prioritizing year-round voter education and engagement as well as leadership pipelines for organizers; base-building in rural, Black Belt, Latino, AAPI, Muslim and immigrant communities; and deep canvassing and civic circles at the neighborhood level.
GAEF’s 2026 organizing partners include: Black Voters Matter Capacity Building Institute, Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, Asian American Legal Advocacy Center, New Disabled South and Equality Foundation of Georgia.
Southern Partners Fund
Based in Atlanta, the Southern Partners Fund (SPF) is a public foundation that supports grassroots, community-based social justice organizations in 12 states across the rural South. One of the fund’s primary focus areas is Voter Rights and Engagement, which made up more than half of the fund’s total grantmaking between 2022 and 2024.
Its Georgia grantees include GA Shift, Economic Justice Coalition, Georgia Muslim Project, Peach Concerned Citizens, Women Watch Afrika, and Migrant Equity Southeast.
In addition to that support, SPF also provides special initiative funding for two areas: election protection and the Census. The fund’s Social Justice Institute, which typically serves as its leadership development and capacity-building arm, conducts the two programs. The election protection program involves supporting organizations that are working to mitigate voter suppression activities.
Meanwhile, the Census and redistricting program began in 2019 when SPF worked to ensure that chronically underfunded and hard-to-count areas were included the following year. It then shifted its work to redistricting, offering a webinar series and creating the Redistricting Cohort: people who were professionally trained to draw and present fair maps to local redistricting committees.
According to SPF, the program’s work is ramping up again ahead of the 2030 Census. This work may prove to be especially important, given that the Trump administration recently proposed major changes ahead of the next count, which, if implemented, could have significant political consequences throughout the nation.
Note (9/22/26): A previous version of this piece incorrectly listed ProGeorgia as a recipient of the Georgia Alliance Education Fund.
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