{"id":21610,"date":"2019-07-25T13:03:23","date_gmt":"2019-07-25T17:03:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=21610"},"modified":"2019-07-25T13:03:25","modified_gmt":"2019-07-25T17:03:25","slug":"less-than-a-penny-a-year-for-grassroots-civic-organizing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=21610","title":{"rendered":"less than a penny a year for grassroots civic organizing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

(DC) The Foundation Center’s database and analytic website entitled Foundation Funding for US Democracy<\/a> is full of interesting information and worth detailed exploration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drawing on tax forms, the site categorizes $5.5 billion in grants made to strengthen democracy in the USA since 2011. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ideological range is wide: the DeVos and Mercer foundations are in the database, along with Open Society and many more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the distribution of grants by very broad categories, with a somewhat more detailed look at the pie slice devoted to “civic participation” (which interests me most).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
My graphs based on Foundation Center data<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I estimate that $1.73 billion of the $5.5 billion (31%) has gone to nonprofits headquartered in DC or the surrounding counties in Maryland and Virginia. With some exceptions, these are professional organizations without a grassroots membership base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within the category of “civic participation,” $2.1 billion has been distributed for the following purposes. These categories are non-exclusive; a grant can serve more than one purpose. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A total of $23 million–.0.43% of all democracy funding and a little less than one cent per American per year–has been spent on grassroots organizing for civic participation<\/em>. I think that marks a major deficit. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(DC) The Foundation Center’s database and analytic website entitled Foundation Funding for US Democracy is full of interesting information and worth detailed exploration. Drawing on tax forms, the site categorizes $5.5 billion in grants made to strengthen democracy in the USA since 2011. The ideological range is wide: the DeVos and Mercer foundations are in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21610"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21618,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21610\/revisions\/21618"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}