Launching, Building, Reaching for a Democratic Future

Rooted in a long tradition of advancing ever-compelling challenges to economic equity, democratic rights, and civic participation in the United States, the New World Foundation (NWF) strengthens community-based organizations and local leadership. As a national community foundation, we work from the bottom up to build coalitions around issues that converge in place, creating alliances locally and building movements nationally: the essential ingredients of a working democracy.

Restoring Inclusive Participation

  • We believe in targeting issues where they converge “in place,” support organizations at the grassroots with a nimble and flexible on-the-ground approach to build local bases and national movement capacity.
  • We value the essential truth that the people who suffer injustice are crucial to overcoming it, and invest in people who come from — and can most effectively represent — their local communities of need to build strong alliances and identify key opportunities for change.
  • We affirm the efficacy of long-term vision by giving sustained support to advocacy and organizing with an openness to test and incubate programs over time that produce transformational results.

Building New Power at a Local Level

Since 2007, NWF has spent $15 million at the state level to advance our vision of a fair, just, and inclusive America. Today, many of the hard-won gains of the past 60 years are at great risk. The New Majority Fund has helped create threshold state capacity and a stronger cross-sectoral national force to contest:

  1. Voter suppression
  2. Economic inequality
  3. Anti-union assault on labor
  4. Attacks on public education
  5. Environmental abuse & deregulation

Our opponents are racing ahead, channeling millions of dollars into long-term efforts all over the country to suppress voter participation, dismantle basic environmental protections for workers, weaken organized labor, and eliminate desperately needed social services. They have learned from progressives about the importance of local, organizational, and leadership voices while progressive philanthropy has sadly lagged in supporting the local force out of which successful movements have historically been built.

Claiming Our Rights

We are at a critical turning point, and must redouble our efforts to ensure that every American can meaningfully participate in our democracy.

In the face of new assaults on equality and justice, NWF remains committed to its strategy of investing in strong networks of leaders and organizations capable of fending off assaults on full democratic participation and wide scale economic security. We are encouraging old and new philanthropic partners to join NWF’s grantmaking—aiming toward an integrated community development framework that focuses simultaneously on individual opportunity, movement-building, and community renewal.

People see and feel the impacts of local politics while local institutions allow them to become engaged and active. Getting back to the basics of inclusive democratic participation is more important now than ever before.