Co-sponsored by the Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, and Piper Fund.
The money in politics field stands at a potentially transformative moment. Since Citizens United and with each successive election, there has been growing bipartisan public understanding of the corrosive role that money plays in our politics and increasing engagement of the New American Majority around the issue. The current presidential election has raised public awareness of campaign finance reform as a solution to curb the undue influence of corporate and special interests campaign contributions on our democracy. At the local, state, and national levels, a field of traditional and new—or new to money in politics issues—organizations are rising to this challenge, seeking to capture that public energy and channel it toward positive change. With that backdrop, in 2015 we embarked on this field scan as one way to answer some of the most common questions funders have as they consider investing in the money in politics field: Who are the actors? What are the principal strategies and possible solutions? Where are the gaps, and what might funders do to fill them?
In the report, Erik Peterson, Bending the Arc Strategies identifies:
- Seven core capacities for winning systemic change, with preliminary recommendations about what the field needs in order to achieve them
- The approaches and geographic concentrations of these organizations nationwide.
- Key challenges and opportunities facing the movement for money-in-politics reform