Rockefeller Family Fund

Democracy

The Democracy program (formerly called the Institutional Accountability and Individual Liberty program) encourages the active participation of citizens in government, seeks to make government and private institutions more accountable and responsive, and supports efforts to ensure that individuals’ rights and liberties under the Constitution are protected. Past grants have included support for work to overcome roadblocks to registration and voting; efforts to expand access to government information; advocacy to promote electronic disclosure of campaign contributions; and a broad range of program initiatives aimed at holding government agencies and public officials accountable for their actions.

Initiatives

Democracy and Power Innovation Fund
The Democracy and Power Innovation Fund is a vehicle for collaborative grantmaking in support of research and innovation at the intersection of organizing, civic engagement, and power. While many people recognize the value of community organizing to the work of building durable movements, little has been done to understand and evaluate the impact of base-building, narrative, and structural democracy reform on voting and other forms of civic engagement, particularly in communities of color. We want to learn more about these civic engagement strategies to improve practice and increase impact. Our theory is that policy change is rooted in the ability of community-based organizations to build authentic constituencies that they can move to action. At the DPI Fund, we are building a community made up of leaders from organizing, political science, and philanthropy to act together to support work to build a multi-racial democracy that works for everyone.

Representative Grants

2020

Faith in Action Fund
To support POWER Action’s Black Voter Narrative Project in Pennsylvania

New Georgia Project
To increase NGP’s digital ad presence to encourage greater civic participation by Black voters in Georgia

CASA
To support research on vote-by-mail civic engagement efforts in Pennsylvania

New Florida Majority
To support its Black Voter Project

Allied Media Projects
To support the Kairos Fellowship’s Social Ambassadors project

Updates

Latinx values research featured in the Medium :

Several RFF grantees with large Latinx constituencies partnered with Equis Lab and other senior researchers to survey Latinx people, measure their sense of influence, and develop values segmentation clusters to improve efforts to communicate with and organize this important group. The study uncovered social and psychological factors that impact voting habits of Latinx people; Equis also published a companion piece to inform how organizers can better develop relationships with Latinx constituencies.

◀

Back to All Programs