Nearly a year ago, the Democracy Alliance released its 2020 Vision Investment Portfolio, a collection of organizations and efforts that not only comprise a robust “progressive infrastructure” but whose work, taken together, has the potential to combat the structural obstacles (economic and democratic inequality and climate change) that serve as the focal point for the DA’s 2020 Vision Strategy.
The portfolio includes a number of organizations that are well-known to the DA community, as well as a number of new organizations that fill critical capacity gaps, expand the DA’s toolkit (recognizing, for example, the importance of grassroots organizing in meaningful and sustainable social change), and provide new vehicles for DA Partners to go deeper into states and leverage one another’s funding. The 2020 State Funds provide an opportunity for Partners to support strategic state plans designed to win elections, enact progressive policy, and build the power and leadership of the New American Majority.
One of the central concepts from our 2020 Vision Strategy was that of alignment – that we can achieve exponentially more when we layer our investments in a common set of target states, delineate the ways that investments in organizing, issue advocacy, and elections are mutually reinforcing, and develop comprehensive plans that depict how these discrete pieces of work add up to a coherent whole.
Ten years ago DA Partners came together to help build a national progressive infrastructure – the policy ideas, legal networks, data capacity, civic engagement coordination, and media monitoring – that was needed in order to break the Right’s seemingly intractable lock on power. Today, DA Partners are providing the early leadership and seed funding for this next level of work, taking back our country by taking back our states. Our charge over the next year is to fully build out our plans, share our strategies widely with Partners and allied donors, and to work tirelessly to identify new and additional sources of support to take this work to scale.
The New American Majority Funds
By DA Managing Director Julie Kohler, Black Civic Engagement Fund Director Cietta Kiandoli, Youth Engagement Fund Director Austin Belali, and Latino Engagement Fund Consultant Eddy Morales
The Climate Fund
By DA Managing Director Julie Kohler and Senior Strategy & Planning Officer for Climate Roger Kim
The Democracy Fund
By DA Managing Director Julie Kohler and Strategy and Planning Manager Shehn Datta
The Inclusive Economy Fund
By DA Managing Director Julie Kohler and Zoe Hudson
The State Engagement Initiative
By DA Managing Director Julie Kohler, Committee on States Executive Director Scott Anderson, and DA Political Director Frank Smith