Upcoming Events in The Commons
Next up in The Commons in Conversation interview series:
- Hollywood screenwriter Erik Bork talks about the bridging themes and philanthropy behind his soon-to-be-released The Elephant in the Room, a red-blue romantic comedy. October 2 at 12:30 p.m. ET. Free registration required.
- Nealin Parker of Common Ground USA will report on nonprofit efforts to head off political violence in advance of the November elections. October 16 at 12:30 p.m. ET. Free registration required.
We typically bring you short news items in this section, but there’s something today worth lingering on for a bit.
The Democracy Funders Network this morning debuted a new data platform with a first-of-its-kind accounting of the funders and nonprofits focused on election reform, bridge-building, fostering belonging, and other work toward a healthy democracy.
Democracy Hub features data on more than 4,500 nonprofits and nearly 30,000 funders. It was built with Impala, a tech and data company for grant makers, nonprofits, and others in the social-impact world. Some tidbits from the data:
- Foundations, fiscal sponsors, donor-advised funds, and other grant makers spent $9.7 billion on democracy efforts in 2022, nearly twice the total from 2018.
- The Ford Foundation is the largest funder, having made grants totaling $1.2 billion from 2018 to 2022.
- The average grant size over the five years was $133,000. The median size was $15,000.
We’ll explore Democracy Hub in an upcoming story along with other new ventures to map the field of work that The Commons covers. The platform is designed in part to replace and enhance Candid’s work to track the field, which was discontinued earlier this year.