Democracy Works, a nonprofit focused on advancing civic engagement through projects like TurboVote will get a $1.4 million funding boost from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The support kicks off Democracy Works’ second round of fundraising, which began in late 2014.
Knight Foundation is committing $1 million, adding to $1.26 million in previous support. The MacArthur Foundation is investing $400,000.
Knight support will go toward expanding the TurboVote platform to provide citizens with easier access to voting information, extending its reach to more colleges and securing additional partnerships with civic-minded nonprofit organizations.
“This support puts us on track to become financially sustainable and to continue building innovative technology that helps Americans become more actively engaged in our democracy,” said Seth Flaxman, Democracy Works co-founder and executive director.
Flaxman wrote a blog post on the Knight Foundation website explaining what he hopes to do with the funding – “Over the years, our partners at Knight Foundation learned alongside us, and we decided that to scale our impact, we had to work hand in hand with the public servants who actually run elections: local elections administrators. So we launched our second program, Ballot Scout, a tool designed with input from elections officials across the country to help voters and administrators track mail-in ballots through the postal system as easily as someone can track an Amazon package.”
The Knight Foundation has also launched a News Challenge focused on driving more elections centered innovations. Applications for the elections challenge are open now.