Joyce Foundation: Democracy Grants

The Joyce Foundation's Democracy Grants aim to enhance participation and representation in the electoral process across the Great Lakes region. With a focus on combating voter suppression, gerrymandering, and disinformation, the Foundation supports policy changes that protect voting rights and ensure fair representation. Through public engagement and litigation, it seeks to empower communities of color and young voters, fostering a more equitable democracy for all residents.

Note:
The Joyce Foundation welcomes new ideas, but primarily funds on an invite basis.The Joyce Foundation accepts grant inquiries online throughout the year. Letters of inquiry should be submitted at least six to eight weeks prior to the proposal deadline for a given grant cycle. See Deadlines here represented by full proposal deadlines above.Applicants should anticipate the application process to take approximately four to six months from the initial submission of the letter of inquiry to the receipt of funding.Applicants should anticipate the application process to take approximately four to six months from the initial submission of the letter of inquiry to the receipt of funding.Grant proposals are considered at meetings of the Foundation’s Board of Directors in April, July, and December. Applicants are strongly encouraged to plan their application and proposal submission process for the April or July meetings, since most grant funds will be distributed at those times.
Program Area: Democracy
"Building a more equitable democracy by striving for participation and representation by all people who call the Great Lakes home."
Election administration is inconsistently funded, and voter experiences vary widely from zip code to zip code. In addition, a long-overdue national reckoning with systemic racism compels us to examine the ways in which government processes exclude rather than include all residents.
The results of these and many other such actions are unequal and unfair representation, disenfranchisement predominantly of communities of color and young voters, reduced voter participation in local or mid-term elections, increasingly toxic levels of partisanship, and crippling mistrust of government. Through a combination of research, policy development, litigation and public engagement efforts, the Joyce Foundation will invest in policy change to protect and expand voting rights, fair representation, and ensuring census data accurately reflects all of our communities.
Voting Rights & Elections
Protecting voting rights and well-run elections are the very heart of a functioning democracy. Elections should be free, fair, accessible, and trusted.
Policies related to the ease or difficulty of registering to vote and accessible options for casting a ballot impact turnout. Voters’ experiences vary widely by zip code—some communities face polling place closures and long lines, while others have new top-of-the-line technology and an abundance of voting options. Voter suppression and disinformation efforts erode trust that elections are fair and accurate. This focus area seeks to increase participation in our democracy by all voters - especially voters of color and young voters.
Census Data Accuracy
The 2020 decennial census experienced multiple complex problems that impacted census operations and, ultimately, appear to have impacted the quality of census data. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Census Bureau operations and timeline, displacement or limited access to certain populations, cancellation of quality control tests, reports of inadequate staffing, first-time use of online and phone response options, and controversial executive policy decisions resulting in litigation all disrupted a process that is typically planned and tested down to the smallest detail.
Following 2020, census experts will need to conduct a data quality assessment to determine how flawed the final census data is and where it is flawed, law and policy experts will need to determine possible options for remedial action, and the field will need to learn from this experience to avoid (or at least better plan for) such problems in the future.
Fair Representation
A true representative democracy will not be realized until the rules and structures for determining representation are reconfigured to redistribute power to the entire electorate, so that communities choose who represents them. As such, the Foundation invests in redistricting reform to remedy the severe gerrymandering prevalent in Great Lakes states and to identify solutions to other laws that undermine voters’ ability to determine who represents them.

Eligibility

Does Joyce fund voter registration or get out the vote work? Yes, but only within certain limitations. Joyce has to follow special rules that apply to private foundations, which generally cannot make project grants to fund voter registration unless the project meets very narrow exceptions – it must take place in five or more states and during more than one election cycle (note a primary and general election for the same office counts as the same cycle). Joyce does support other permissible, related activities including public education about the voter registration process and advocacy to improve voter registration policy. The Foundation funds efforts to address state and local public policy in the Great Lakes region, which we define as Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin; and national public policy designed to have impact on these Great Lakes states. Both the Foundation’s Democracy Program and Education and Economic Mobility Program support student voter engagement.We do fund litigation if it aligns with our Democracy Program focus areas.

Ineligibility

The only exception is if a project is part of an education and engagement strategy related to one of our three focus areas or is focused on addressing barriers to voting that are a by-product of systemic racismWe do not fund work on other democracy subjects such as money in politics, fair courts, government accountability, or civil discourseOther than by direct invitation, the Foundation does not fund:Capital proposals Religious activities Scholarships.