How Family Philanthropies Can Support Community Organizing to Strengthen the Fabric of US Democracy
Family philanthropy is uniquely positioned to support a healthy democracy by funding community organizing, which often aligns well with their values and can fill funding gaps in meaningful ways, argues Loren McArthur.
Many family donors are worried about the state of American democracy. Today, just 34 percent of Americans are satisfied with the way democracy is working in the United States, compared to 61 percent in 1984. Young people are especially skeptical: an alarming 42 percent of members of Gen Z are uncertain whether democracy is the best form of government. The erosion of trust in democratic systems is part of a global trend that is fueling the rise of populist authoritarianism in countries across the world.
The roots of our democratic crisis are complex, and there is no single or easy solution to solving it. However, there is one domain that contributes to a healthy democratic culture, has received scant donor attention and resources, and is an area where family philanthropies can make distinct and valuable contributions: community organizing.
Organizing teaches people the skills of democracy and helps them build the collective power they need to hold government accountable and ensure it serves the public interest. If a strongman politics gains traction in people’s cynicism about a government that works only for the few, community organizing helps build trust in democracy by showing people they can make government work for their communities. By providing flexible funding to organizations engaged in community organizing, family foundations can seed a culture of grassroots democratic practice in communities across the country where civic life has languished.
Community Organizing Fosters Democratic Skills, Agency, and Accountability
Community organizing is the craft of uniting regular people around their shared interests and values and helping them build power and gain a seat at the table with decision makers in government (and sometimes the private sector). Organizing groups develop civic leaders who lead campaigns to address critical challenges in their communities: housing affordability, the lack of childcare and quality jobs, the need to improve public schools, and more. Through organizing, people work collectively to change policies, laws, and institutional practices. And community organizing brings people into relationship with others, often across partisan, racial, and other differences, fostering social trust and solidarity and reducing the social isolation that fuels authoritarianism.
What does organizing look like?
- In rural North Carolina, Down Home North Carolina organizes community members to influence county budget decisions. Through these campaigns, residents have won funding for school supplies for local teachers, repairs for low-income homeowners, and eviction prevention programs. Down Home also brings leaders together in wider campaigns to influence state policies in health, education, and other issues.
- In Ohio, the Ohio Organizing Collaborative (OOC) has united childcare workers, parents, and families to advocate for expanded access to affordable childcare across the state. Through thousands of one-on-one conversations and public actions such as the group’s “Day without Childcare” at the state capital, OOC has won support from business leaders, state legislators, and Republican Governor Mike DeWine for measures to expand eligibility and funding for state-subsidized child care.
- In rural Wisconsin, GrassRoots Organizing Western Wisconsin has organized community leaders to win local ordinances protecting communities against pollution from agribusiness operations and zoning changes accelerating housing construction amid an acute housing shortage.
These are just a few among thousands of examples of grassroots organizing campaigns that enable Americans to gain a voice in the democratic process and drive solutions to their shared challenges.
Community Organizing and Family Philanthropy Share Core Values
Kelly Nowlin, who is an advisor to family philanthropies that invest in organizing and was deeply involved in leading her family’s 100-year-old private foundation, believes that family philanthropies’ values are highly aligned with community organizing.
“Many family philanthropies are rooted in the family’s legacy in and love for a specific place. Despite any political differences the family may have, they share a desire to take care of that place and to help others. Community organizing is also rooted in specific geographies and in a commitment to bringing people together to improve the place where they live.”
Family foundations and community organizing also share a focus on developing next-generation leaders.
According to Nowlin, “Family foundations are frequently engaged in training and preparing the next generation, instilling family values and inspiring them to take those values and new ideas forward into the future. Organizing groups are also focused on preparing and training the next generation of civically engaged leaders to carry mission-oriented work forward. Organizing is resonant for family philanthropy and families should see it as a key strategy in supporting community resilience and sustainable social change.”
Family Philanthropies Can Fill Important Gaps in Funding for Community Organizing
Despite the important role of community organizing in our democracy, organizing groups are under-resourced. According to data from Candid, foundations gave $886 million for community organizing in 2023—a significant investment, but far less than they provided for traditional philanthropic priorities like higher education ($25 billion) and the arts ($12 billion). Additionally, most of the money allocated for community organizing goes to national organizations and networks rather than smaller local and state-based organizations. Funding also often comes in the form of restricted project grants tied to grantees’ work on specific issues. This type of funding can hamstring organizing groups’ ability to respond to the changing and dynamic needs of their local communities.
Family philanthropies can help fill these gaps. They have greater flexibility than many national foundations to provide unrestricted, multiyear funding, including to smaller organizations that large donors tend to overlook. Combined with organizational membership dues and other forms of community-based funding, family philanthropy grant support can anchor the financial sustainability and independence of local organizing groups, ensuring they have the resources they need to carry out their work and the autonomy to prioritize the needs and interests of communities rather than those of funders from outside the community.
For example, Cricket Island Foundation is a three-generation family foundation committed to supporting youth leadership and youth-driven social change. The foundation supports organizing and is, according to its executive director Liz Sak, “completely issue agnostic.”
“We trust our grantees to make decisions that best meet the needs of their organizations and communities…. The magical thing about family philanthropy is that it doesn’t have to be bureaucratic in the way a larger foundation is. There are a smaller number of decision-makers; it’s easier to move things quickly, take risks, and adopt less traditional practices. We are less bureaucratic. We can find and support small, local organizations that may not have the fanciest proposal, but are doing good work.”
Molly Schultz Hafid is the executive director of the Butler Family Fund, a small family foundation with a long-time commitment to organizing as a core strategy for advancing its priorities of reducing homelessness and addressing over-policing and incarceration.
“We support organizing and advocacy because we need to change the rules of the game. We could spend our entire endowment and not build enough units of affordable housing to make a dent in the housing and homelessness crisis.”
According to Schultz Hafid, family philanthropies can be crucial, early-stage supporters of community organizing and leadership development efforts.
“We have more flexibility than large, institutional donors and we can be more nimble and responsive. We have a unique role in the broader philanthropic sector to move from idea to execution quickly. We can be the risk capital for community-led, innovative solutions and visionary leaders.”
Place-based, small- and mid-sized family foundations can also have a big impact by channeling resources into the many regions and areas of the country that national funders neglect. Currently, the lion’s share of resources goes to organizing in major cities. For example, according to data from Candid, funders deployed $84 million in grants to organizing in New York City in 2023, nearly double the total funding they gave for organizing in Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, and New Mexico—four states whose combined population is twice as large as New York City’s. Small organizations in mid-sized cities, small towns, and rural states and places rarely secure grants from national funders.
The challenges in our democracy right now can feel overwhelming and intractable. Community organizing is an important way to nurture democratic practice, accountability, and trust. And family philanthropies, who are stewards of resources that are in the public trust, can have a huge impact with modest dollars by supporting the organizing groups in their own backyards.
Loren McArthur is a Principal at LM Consulting LLC
The views and opinions expressed in individual blog posts are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the National Center for Family Philanthropy.