Agree that effective (data-driven, …) democracy interventions are probably still neglected. Curious if you or anyone else here has specific initiatives they’d recommend people donate to, volunteer or work for.
For my home country Germany, some things that come to mind:
- making government more effective (better comms, less bureaucracy, tax reform, ..) --> citizens trust their government more (like in Norway) --> less susceptible to anti-democratic forces - making institutions to safeguard democracy more effective, like the Bundesverfassungsschutz (German equivalent to FBI, domestic intelligence service to protect the constitution) - investigative journalism like correctiv.org - campaigning and movement building— maybe also election campaigns & comms work for specific pro-democratic parties, if that’s your comparative advantage (Greens, Volt, Linke, SPD, …) - social media regulation to reduce polarization, maybe? - fundraising for all the above—most of them seem funding constrained, and democracy is a “hot topic”, that could reach many more potential donors
For international democracy promotion, I would stick to the recommendations from Power for Democracies. To my knowledge, they are currently the only ones that are sufficiently empirically grounded. Unfortunately, Power for Democracies doesn’t have recommendations for Germany and, as far as I know, they also won’t publish any, because compared to many other countries, the German democracy is still quite stable at the moment.
However, before Power for Democracies published their recommendations, there was a beta donation fund by Effektiv Spenden with recommendations that didn’t have quite as strong an evidence base, but were still selected based on expert judgment. They supported the following organizations, all of them in Germany:
I haven’t looked into all of them in detail, and there are a few I’m not a big fan of, but I think they’re worth considering if you want to support democracy work in Germany through donations. In general, when it comes to political causes, I’d always recommend looking into organizations yourself and not relying only on recommendations, because your own political orientation will inevitably shape your perspective on them.
If I had to make an intuitive call about what matters most in Germany, democracy support in Eastern Germany and engagement for social media regulation would be at the top of my list. Democracy work in the East because a right-wing extremist hegemony seems at risk of developing there. Social media regulation because, in my view, (1) the issue has a massive impact on how democracy will develop, and (2) it is still heavily neglected. As far as I know, none of the major German parties is currently pushing for it.
When it comes to volunteering, I find it very hard to give general recommendations, because it depends strongly on personal preferences. One thing I would always recommend considering when choosing an organization is what personal impact you can realistically have there. Especially in small political groups or organizations, one additional person can sometimes make a huge difference. If you volunteer for an organization that is already very well staffed, on the other hand, there may be only limited additional value you can add. This includes political parties.
Thanks for writing this up!
Agree that effective (data-driven, …) democracy interventions are probably still neglected. Curious if you or anyone else here has specific initiatives they’d recommend people donate to, volunteer or work for.
For my home country Germany, some things that come to mind:
- making government more effective (better comms, less bureaucracy, tax reform, ..) --> citizens trust their government more (like in Norway) --> less susceptible to anti-democratic forces
- making institutions to safeguard democracy more effective, like the Bundesverfassungsschutz (German equivalent to FBI, domestic intelligence service to protect the constitution)
- investigative journalism like correctiv.org
- campaigning and movement building—
maybe also election campaigns & comms work for specific pro-democratic parties, if that’s your comparative advantage (Greens, Volt, Linke, SPD, …)
- social media regulation to reduce polarization, maybe?
- fundraising for all the above—most of them seem funding constrained, and democracy is a “hot topic”, that could reach many more potential donors
For international democracy promotion, I would stick to the recommendations from Power for Democracies. To my knowledge, they are currently the only ones that are sufficiently empirically grounded. Unfortunately, Power for Democracies doesn’t have recommendations for Germany and, as far as I know, they also won’t publish any, because compared to many other countries, the German democracy is still quite stable at the moment.
However, before Power for Democracies published their recommendations, there was a beta donation fund by Effektiv Spenden with recommendations that didn’t have quite as strong an evidence base, but were still selected based on expert judgment. They supported the following organizations, all of them in Germany:
CORRECTIV – Recherchen für die Gesellschaft gGmbH
campact Democracy Foundation
HateAid gGmbH
Flow Fund for Eastern Germany
#ReclaimTikTok
Verfassungsblog gGmbH
RAA Saxony
Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte (GFF)
Alliance4Europe
I haven’t looked into all of them in detail, and there are a few I’m not a big fan of, but I think they’re worth considering if you want to support democracy work in Germany through donations. In general, when it comes to political causes, I’d always recommend looking into organizations yourself and not relying only on recommendations, because your own political orientation will inevitably shape your perspective on them.
If I had to make an intuitive call about what matters most in Germany, democracy support in Eastern Germany and engagement for social media regulation would be at the top of my list. Democracy work in the East because a right-wing extremist hegemony seems at risk of developing there. Social media regulation because, in my view, (1) the issue has a massive impact on how democracy will develop, and (2) it is still heavily neglected. As far as I know, none of the major German parties is currently pushing for it.
When it comes to volunteering, I find it very hard to give general recommendations, because it depends strongly on personal preferences. One thing I would always recommend considering when choosing an organization is what personal impact you can realistically have there. Especially in small political groups or organizations, one additional person can sometimes make a huge difference. If you volunteer for an organization that is already very well staffed, on the other hand, there may be only limited additional value you can add. This includes political parties.