Deep Democracy: Values, Data, and Trust Building
At Rivera Consulting, Inc, our non-partisan and partisan political research demonstrates that the ground is most favorable to long-term civic engagement organizing and powerbuilding in “Deep Democracy”¹ counties. These are counties largely in the sun belt with above-average population shares of people of color, women heads of household, college-educated people, and immigrants. Since 2018, we have used these four population screens to identify priority counties using census and American Community Survey data to inform political giving and grantmaking strategies. In 2022, we identified 125 counties that meet at least three of these four screens, and these are our Deep Democracy Focus Counties.
We used this framework as a foundation for advising The Cedar Tree Foundation on their grantmaking giving strategy. Established in the mid-1990s, Cedar Tree is a family foundation focused on grantmaking that invests in the capacity and agency for people and communities to actualize social change. Since its founding, it has focused its programming and grantmaking primarily on environmental issues. Leveraging our Deep Democracy framework, we were able to identify counties that overlap with its current grantmaking to create an ecosystem map of overall potential giving. As a result, Cedar Tree Foundation is using $1.9 million in general support grants over two years to fund the hyperlocal infrastructure of movement organizing on a multi-year basis. Some of their grantees include Texas Organizing Project, Center for Civic Policy in New Mexico, and Beloved Community in North Carolina.
Deep Democracy was created with a national framework, but as a Massachusetts based firm we are working now with local partners like the Massachusetts Voter Table (MVT), Massachusetts Community Action Network (MCAN), and Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center (MassBudget). Like our work with Cedar Tree, we are harnessing the power of relational trust building across the ecosystem with a data-driven planning approach that identifies the strengths and connective tissue across a diverse range of movement organizations and their affiliate partners. Using an asset-based Deep Democracy framework in partnership with the coalition, we will co-create plans for both short-term electoral needs alongside a longer-term vision and strategy. Stay tuned for updates on how the collective vision is built, and how you can plug in.
Year after year, our Deep Democracy research framework provides a values-based, data driven approach to investing in BIPOC led and/or focused movement organizations. This approach creates a targeted and movement-driven lens for our partners to invest in long-term capacity building within communities at the nexus of this dynamic power shift across the country. Concurrently, it’s laser focused on promoting long-term civic engagement for these Deep Democracy countries in the short term to affect real time change at the local level. For power to take shape in new ways, we cannot tie giving to election cycles that always has our communities taking one step forward and two steps back. To truly build and shift power requires us to invest in the groups and communities that hold the relationships to remake our politics for generations to come.
Stay tuned for how we’re bringing this data-driven equity and trust building approach to work in municipal planning spaces across city governments next month.
¹ Deep Democracy is a political giving strategy that identifies counties across the United States in search of the American Rising Electorate, college educated voters, and movement organizations. Established in 2018 by our founder and President WIlnelia Rivera, our research uses a quantitative framework to identify the American Rising Electorate as an indicator for where building movement power is possible and happening.