What is the most important challenge or opportunity facing American democracy over the next ten years? What role can philanthropy play in addressing that challenge—or in seizing the opportunity?

We are not disinterested observers. The Kettering Foundation and the Knight Foundation are independent organizations that invest private funds in pursuit of the public interest. Both foundations operate on a core belief that an informed citizenry is critical for an effective democracy, and we fund a range of ways to get there.

Rebuilding and reforming our democracy will require interventions that respond to both our near-term challenges and the underlying long-term phenomena. We need to get control of Covid-19. We need to provide economic relief to struggling Americans. We need to ensure free and fair elections and get back to a point where the results are regarded as legitimate by the vast majority of Americans. We need immediate action to reverse racial oppression. Addressing these challenges now is necessary.

Necessary—but not sufficient. We must also do the hard, involved work of structural reform. There is substantial and reasonable debate about what this process entails and whose interests it should serve. There is less debate about the need: vast swaths of the American public believe our institutions are failing.

Some features of our democracy should be reimagined, not just reformed. This imperative is most profound in response to the ways that technology and, in particular, social media have reordered our lives. The reality of always-on, many-to-many, ubiquitous, often anonymous communication has upended centuries of assumptions about information, truth, knowledge, and association. How creatively our democracy responds may well determine its vitality and longevity.

Read the full article about rebuilding democracy by Alberto Ibarguen and Sam Gill at Knight Foundation.