Building Public Support for Democracy: A Funder’s Guide to Audience-First Strategy
This guide is designed to help democracy funders understand and support audience-first communications, a strategic response to the challenges of the modern information ecosystem that enables those invested in American democracy to reach and persuade new audiences of its value.
Along the way, this guide will introduce some of the concepts that underlie modern communications programs and strategies. While funders do not need to be experts in communications to make good funding decisions, an understanding of how communications strategies have responded to the demands of the modern information ecosystem will make it easier and likely inform other areas of work as well.
This guide is the product of DCC’s staff of communications experts, conversations with an extensive network of communications practitioners representing more than 125 democracy organizations, a first-of-its-kind 2025 survey of the needs and challenges facing the democracy communications field, consultations with funders in the Democracy Funders Network and the expertise of DFN staff.