By the year 2044, our nation will no longer have one racial majority. This is just one measure of the many ways in which America continues to evolve and change. In order for us to build a thriving, inclusive democracy where we all recognize and honor our connected futures, we know there is great need for innovation and adaptation. While our democracy has never fully delivered and cared for all of its members, we have seen a continued fraying of democratic norms and in communities connecting to improve our shared future. Over the last five years, we have seen and invested in an amazing, diverse set of democracy entrepreneurs and organizations who are painting a picture of what’s possible—leading organizations that connect communities, strengthen our civic capabilities, and honor our interdependence.
In 2019, New Profit launched Civic Lab, the nation’s first nonpartisan venture philanthropy initiative to invest in proximate democracy entrepreneur-led organizations. Civic Lab makes unrestricted, capacity-building investments in cohorts of democracy entrepreneurs and supports them with vital strategic resources.
In 2021, New Profit conducted a data analysis based on Civic Lab applications in order to learn how we can better support democracy entrepreneurs. We emerged with five key takeaways for the philanthropic sector:
- An inclusive country depends on an inclusive application process.
The democracy ecosystem is rich with innovative organizations led by proximate leaders from diverse backgrounds and identities. But we can only support them if we let them find us. Transitioning from an invite-only or referral-based investment selection to an open process has required more robust capacity and intentionality, but it has enabled Civic Lab to reach a more diverse set of organizations. We believe an open process is crucial to practicing inclusive philanthropy. - Democracy organizations are in strong need of post-election and sustained philanthropic investments.
The boom-and-bust cycle of philanthropic investments in democracy organizations continues to hold with money following election cycles and leaving organizations with limited support to build sustainable organizations. While Civic Lab applications generally showed a spike in organizational budgets in 2020, many are starving for capital in the post-election season, often requiring them to dismantle the infrastructure they built during the election year. To address the structural and systemic inequities in our democracy, philanthropy needs to (1) make democracy investing a priority pillar similar to education or poverty alleviation and (2) provide unrestricted and multi-year support to organizations. - Philanthropy needs to close the funding gap—particularly for women of color.
The voice of women of color is critical to a multiracial and inclusive democracy, yet their leadership in the democracy entrepreneurship sector is vastly underrecognized and undercapitalized Following a highly competitive 3-month investment selection process, New Profit awarded six of the eight investments in the third Civic Lab cohort to leaders of color who identified as women, trans, or nonbinary. We urge institutional and individual philanthropists to join Civic Lab in continuing to shrink the investment gap. - Democracy entrepreneurs need peer learning communities.
Building civic trust and strengthening our Democracy takes more than capital. Our 25 years of investing in and working with entrepreneurs have taught us that entrepreneurs require a strong network, including a community of peers. In the relatively nascent field of democracy entrepreneurship, there are very few ongoing learning and nonpartisan convening spaces. Civic Lab is designed to create a powerful peer learning community in addition to 1:1 capacity building support. - The democracy sector isn’t just underinvested; it’s under-researched.
A dearth of entrepreneur- and practitioner-focused research has resulted in frequent duplication of efforts, redundancies, and high levels of inefficiency. It is precisely because of these challenges that Civic Lab is sharing our findings from the investment selection cycle. We invite others to join us in collecting robust data to uncover insights from the democracy entrepreneurship ecosystem.
New Profit’s Civic Lab is committed to sharing its data analysis and insights from future investment selection cycles and from its deep partnership with proximate democracy entrepreneurs.
Written in collaboration with Yordanos Eyoel