The Democracy Funders Network (DFN) is a community for donors who want to learn together, build and strengthen relationships, and ultimately identify opportunities for coordination and collaboration. We convene and connect funders, curate programs, develop informational materials, and advise donors on their democracy investments. DFN serves new and existing funders in the democracy field.

operating principles

DFN’s work is guided by four key operating principles:

  • We provide learning and engagement opportunities for individual philanthropists and donor advisors (not just institutional foundation professionals) who are motivated to support democracy work.

  • We are cross-ideological, helping to disrupt hyperpolarization and to maintain a cross-ideological commitment to fundamental democratic norms, values, and institutions.

  • We elevate authentic relationship building as a key component of effective long-term field building.

  • We are partnership-oriented and aim to animate, rather than divert attention from, aligned and effective donor networks.

 
 

Focus Areas

DFN takes a big-picture view of the challenges facing American democracy and the approaches to solving them. We do not believe there is a silver bullet that will enable American democracy to thrive over the next fifty years and beyond. On the contrary, many approaches will likely play a role in fixing what ails us. We help donors better understand and respond to the long-term challenges facing U.S. democracy, with a programmatic focus in six primary areas:

 

Toxic Polarization

America is hyper-polarized, with politicians on the right and the left abandoning democratic moderating norms like forbearance for win-at-all-cost tactics, and the American public sorted into increasingly oppositional tribal groups. How do we help heal the deep divides that have formed in order to repair, rebuild, and sustain a democracy that allows individuals and groups to live alongside one another and work together across lines of difference?

Authoritarian Populism

Authoritarian populism is on the rise around the globe, with populist figures in countries big and small, rich and poor, undermining the rule of law, quashing dissent, attacking the media, and questioning the legitimacy and loyalty of their opponents as they profess to speak for “the people” to the exclusion of vulnerable groups or those with different views. What is this phenomenon? What is causing it? And how do we combat it?

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Civic Culture & Learning

The civic fabric of the United States is unraveling amidst growing social isolation, deteriorating civic institutions, mistrust of experts and elites, and insufficient civic education. What cultural forces at the individual and communal level drive fragmentation? How can we build a vibrant civic culture that is relevant to the twenty-first century? And how can we ensure citizens understand and participate in the practice of American democracy?

Inclusive Multiethnic Democracy

The United States is an unprecedented experiment in large-scale multiethnic democracy. As the country further diversifies and more Americans acquire rights that were once restricted to a privileged few, democracy faces a new set of challenges and opportunities. What stands in the way of realizing a truly inclusive multiethnic democracy, and how can we get there?

Democracy Reform

Across the country reformers are working on structural and policy reforms aimed at creating greater representation, fairness, participation, transparency, and predictability in the American political system. While many of the underlying challenges democracy reforms aim to address are embedded in DFN’s other focus areas, reform work itself constitutes distinct area of focus. What is happening in the reform space at the federal, state, and local levels? What kinds of reforms are being tested, and what are the anticipated (and potential unanticipated) consequences of these policies?

The Information Environment

The world has been permanently transformed by the new ways information can be accessed and shared. How do we both harness the opportunities digital technologies offer, such as new opportunities for interpersonal connection, greater transparency and information-sharing, and a higher degree of collective action, while also protecting democracy from the growing threats of misinformation and disinformation, fragmentation of news and information, social manipulation, and loneliness, anxiety, and depression?

News & Events

 

Team

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Mike Berkowitz, Executive Director

Mike Berkowitz is Executive Director of the Democracy Funders Network and co-founder of Patriots & Pragmatists, a cross-partisan convening space for politically engaged individuals committed to defending, rebuilding, and sustaining fundamental democratic norms, values, and institutions. Mike is also co-founder and Principal of Third Plateau, an integrated social impact strategy firm. An experienced strategist and passionate believer in long-term solutions that drive social change, Mike leads much of Third Plateau’s philanthropic advisory practice and its work on strengthening U.S. democracy. He is a 21/64-certified philanthropy consultant and has counseled numerous individual donors, family foundations, and institutional foundations on their philanthropic strategies. A native of New York City, Mike lives in San Francisco. He has a B.A. in History, magna cum laude, from Brown University, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

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Emily Thielmann, Deputy Director

Emily Thielmann is Deputy Director of the Democracy Funders Network, where she supports network programming and resource development and works to advise funders looking to get oriented or invest in the democracy space. Emily is also a Senior Director at Third Plateau, where she leads strategy and network building projects with social change-oriented organizations across the country. Her background is in public systems reform, youth and community engagement, and network management. Emily grew up living in the Soviet Union, Virginia, and Brazil. She holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Vassar College. She has a Master’s in Public Policy and Management from the Muskie School of Public Service at the University of Southern Maine. She lives with her husband and daughter in Oakland, California.

Rachel Kleinfeld, Senior Advisor

Dr. Rachel Kleinfeld is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.  She is a leading expert on how troubled democracies facing violence, polarization, and other forms of failure can improve.  Her work internationally and within the United States includes service on the National Task Force on Election Crises and on the boards of the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, and States United for Democracy, as well as the advisory board of Protect Democracy.  She previously served on the Foreign Affairs Policy Board, which advised Secretary of State Hillary Clinton quarterly, and co-founded the Truman National Security Project, which she led for its first decade, for which Time Magazine named her one of the top 40 political leaders under 40 in America.  Rachel has written three books and numerous articles; her TED talk on violence in democracies has been translated into 17 languages and viewed more than a million times.  She attended Yale University where she was a Truman Scholar and received her M. Phil and D. Phil from Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar.  She is not expert in her husband and two young, fierce daughters.

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ari eisenstadt, senior researcher

Ari Eisenstadt is a Senior Researcher at the Democracy Funders Network, where he supports the network in its learning and resource curation. Ari is also a Senior Researcher at Third Plateau, where he leads research and evaluation work within and across projects, and supports the firm’s clients with strategy and operations. Ari has a varied background. As a participant in the Coro Fellows Program in Public Affairs, Ari collaborated with various clients in the St. Louis area on projects varying from reviewing web platforms to generating disposition plans for vacant land. Ari has a B.A. in Physics from Washington University and has worked with particle physics data from the Large Hadron Collider. Ari lives in Berkeley, California.

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Carly straus, Program Director

Carly Straus is Program Director at the Democracy Funders Network, where she supports network programming, operations, and communications. She is also a Senior Associate at Third Plateau, where she supports a number of the firm’s complex network and coalition projects. Carly joined Third Plateau with a background in philanthropy, public health, and community development, and holds a B.A. in Peace and Conflict Studies from U.C. Berkeley. She grew up splitting time between the Bay Area and Arizona, and currently lives in Oakland.

 
 

Sydney Simpson, Administrative Assistant

Sydney Simpson is the Administrative Assistant for both the Democracy Funders Network and Third Plateau, where she coordinates, communicates, and conducts projects on behalf of the DFN team. She recently graduated from the University of South Carolina with a degree in political science and criminal justice. She currently lives in South Carolina with her fiance and dog, Archie.

 
 

Interested in learning how to invest your resources in American democracy?