Money has never played a bigger role in our elections and brazen attempts to politicize and influence the courts are also growing—from repeals of public financing to unprecedented amounts of money being spent on judicial races. Our immediate future only promises more money, given the floodgate unleashed through the Supreme Court rulings of Citizens United v. FEC and McCutcheon v. FEC.

Despite its clear, corrosive impact on our political and judicial systems, money in politics rarely rises to the level of “most important issue” on voters’ minds, and the advocacy field as a whole has often focused on seemingly esoteric policy debates over arcane details, byzantine processes, and abstract notions of good government.

The public also knows the current system is broken. When it comes to money in our elections people think the system is rigged and know their voices are absent in the halls of power. Recent polls show an extraordinary 84% believe that money has an undue influence in politics and drowns out voices like theirs.

In the report, Erik Peterson, Bending the Arc Strategies identifies:

  1. Seven core capacities for winning systemic change, with preliminary recommendations about what the field needs in order to achieve them
  2. The approaches and geographic concentrations of these organizations nationwide.
  3. Key challenges and opportunities facing the movement for money-in-politics reform

Co-sponsored by the Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, and Piper Fund.

Read the full report on money in politics from Funders' Committee for Civic Participation