Why the Ford Foundation Has Committed $60M in New Funding to Protect Elections
Ford leader Heather Gerken, a constitutional law scholar, outlines a grant-making strategy designed to battle polarization’s gale-force winds.
By Heather Gerken
Contributor
April 14, 2026 | Read Time: 5 minutes
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At a moment when many Americans are deeply distressed about the state of our democracy, I see hope.
Even as the gale-force winds of polarization pull us apart, the American people still agree on the fundamentals: Our elections should be free and fair. Our processes for casting and counting votes—safely and securely—should function without partisan interference. The will of the voters should prevail.
The work to ensure that the United States honors these basic principles—and our shared democratic values more broadly—has been the work of my life. It has also been the work of my first months as the Ford Foundation’s president, as we announce today that we are investing $60 million in new funding to defend the rule of law, fortify voting rights, and boost civic participation.
And for 75 years and counting this has been the work of the Ford Foundation. Across the last decade alone, the Ford Foundation has made more than $1.1 billion in grants to shore up our democracy.
This work began during the late 1940s, as the Ford Foundation gained scale and significance, when Henry Ford II posed a seminal question: What should our institution do?
He asked one of the most revered business leaders of the era, H. Rowan Gaither, to convene a blue-ribbon panel to answer this question and imbue an expansive mission, to “promote the public welfare,” with specific meaning.
What followed was the Gaither Report, published by our trustees in 1950, which defined our modern purpose. It affirmed that the “human welfare” requires “freedom be enjoyed under a rule of law.” It affirmed that “democracy must do more than declare its principles and ideals; it must constantly translate them into action.”
The free and fair administration of elections is this act of translation. It ensures that every eligible voter can participate in public life and hold elected officials to account.
Unfortunately, today, this nonpartisan system—and the people who administer it—are strained like never before.
Fighting Confusion and Distrust
Our polarized, fragmented media ecosystem has rendered election administration exponentially more challenging. Misinformation and disinformation spread quickly. Routine procedural mechanics attract suspicion. Self-interested actors make it all worse by manipulating confusion into distrust and apathy.
The ordinary people doing the extraordinary work of conducting our elections need a chance to do their jobs—consistently, lawfully, without intrusion. They need the space to follow established procedures without political attacks. They need legal processes to run their usual course. They need the rule of law to hold.
Indeed, during this challenging time, these unsung heroes of our democracy—delivering the basic, nonpartisan work of democracy—need support from everyone, including those of us in philanthropy. After all, our sector holds a special ability—and obligation—to help ensure fairness, with accountability and without exception. We can and must be bridgebuilders.
At the Ford Foundation, we are proud to help meet the moment. To date, my team and I have worked as quickly as possible to add new resources to Ford’s already expansive investment in our democracy. This additional $60 million in funding went to nonpartisan organizations from across the ideological spectrum, augmenting support for existing grantees and adding important new organizations to our roster.
A Reason for Hope
This collective push fills me with faith in and for our democracy—and our country. Why? Because we are partnering with leaders of both parties and no party.
We are working, for instance, with Pillars of the Community, led by co-chairs Ben Ginsberg and Bob Bauer. These prominent election lawyers found themselves on opposing sides of countless campaigns but have now united to mobilize a nonpartisan movement to restore trust and confidence in the American election system and its officials.
We also are supporting the work of the Campaign Legal Center, founded by Trevor Potter, a Republican former commissioner of the Federal Election Commission and longtime Republican campaign official. The Campaign Legal Center is devoted to affecting the legal and policy changes needed to strengthen election administration at the local, state, and federal levels.
We’re supporting veterans’ groups in the vanguard, too, as veterans consistently demonstrate a remarkable ability to work across divides and safeguard the democracy that they once risked their lives to defend. Veterans for All Voters, for example, is leading the charge, in their words, to make our elections fair, functional, and free of partisan gridlock.
All of these efforts protect our future, even as they carry out Henry Ford II and Rowan Gaither’s charter of our second founding. More encouraging still, these efforts represent merely a fraction of the work underway by foundations, civil-rights groups, and nonprofits across the country.
Even as individuals, we all can do something—whether double checking potentially-false information before clicking “share,” or volunteering at the polls, or simply encouraging friends and neighbors to have confidence in and patience with our election systems as they await returns and results.
Ultimately, we—all of us, as Americans—cannot allow election administration to be distorted into yet another partisan tool. We must unite to shield it—and our democracy—from a tempest swirling around us.
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