Identifying and Addressing Election Related Chaos Factors with Democracy Fund’s Joe Goldman and Crystal Hayling
About This Episode
As Election Day looms, anxieties run high. How can we navigate the uncertainty and potential chaos surrounding this pivotal moment for American democracy? Carrie Fox, CEO of Mission Partners, sits down with Joe Goldman, president of Democracy Fund, and Crystal Hayling, Democracy Fund board member, to explore these critical questions.
Drawing on their recent paper, "On Black Swans, Gray Rhinos and the 2024 Election," Joe and Crystal offer a framework for resilience in the face of unpredictable events. They emphasize the importance of listening to frontline communities, who often recognize the warning signs of looming threats – the "gray rhinos" – long before they reach the mainstream, highlighting the overturning of Roe v. Wade as a prime example, noting that activists on the ground had foreseen the danger and stressed the critical link between voting rights and reproductive rights.
The conversation turns toward the concerning rise of political violence, a potential gray rhino demanding attention. Joe and Crystal underscore the importance of heeding the alarms raised by those most vulnerable to such threats, emphasizing that preparedness is not about predicting the future, but about empowering communities to respond effectively.
They discuss the crucial role of philanthropic funding in supporting these efforts. Crystal advocates for general operating support, giving organizations the flexibility to adapt to evolving challenges. They champion the "All By April" campaign, which encourages early funding disbursements to maximize impact, and introduce a new initiative, "Election Day to Every Day," aimed at providing sustained support beyond the election cycle. This sustained support is vital, they argue, particularly given the possibility of delayed election results and the need for ongoing work to protect democratic integrity.
Finally, the fundamental question: Is American democracy possible? They agree that its survival depends on active engagement and a commitment to building a more inclusive and just system and urge listeners to join the fight. The responsibility for safeguarding democracy rests with all of us.
Links & Notes
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Speaker 1:
Breaking news.
Speaker 2:
Breaking news.
Speaker 3:
It's the year of the chatbot.
Speaker 4:
The latest setback for climate action. The latest Supreme Court ruling.
Speaker 5:
In the latest Supreme Court ruling. The court is set to redefine.
Carrie Fox:
Hi there and welcome to the Mission Forward podcast. I'm Carrie Fox, your host and CEO of Mission Partners. So election day in the US is now less than two weeks from today. Voting is well underway and we are coming down to the wire, which is why I'm really glad to be able to share this conversation with you today. So as you might know, a few weeks ago we hosted our 10th annual Mission Forward live event in partnership with the Chronicle of Philanthropy. We had a series of incredible speakers who are all addressing the issues of the day, and among them were Democracy Fund's Joe Goldman, and Crystal Hayling. We took on a fantastic and critically important conversation about identifying and addressing election related chaos factors.
So if you, like many, are feeling anxious as we're coming into election day, determining how to manage and lead your team through the unknowns ahead, listen to this conversation. There are a series of fantastic tips and guidance that they share as well as a very robust report that supports this conversation and we will link to that in the show notes. So again, enjoy this conversation. I hope you find as much value in it as I did, and I will see you on the other side. All right, welcome back to this third conversation lab on election related chaos factors. We're going to be joined shortly by Joe Goldman, president of Democracy Fund and Crystal Hayling, a Democracy Fund board member. But first I want to give you a little bit of background.
So for those unfamiliar, Democracy Fund is an independent nonpartisan foundation that confronts deep-rooted challenges in American democracy while defending against new threats. Can't think of a much more important mission than that these days. We have been honored to support their work for the past many years and I wanted just to tell you a bit about their impact to date. Since its inception, about 10 years ago, Democracy Fund and Democracy Fund Voice have committed more than $425 million to support organizations working to create a more vibrant and diverse public square, free and fair elections, effective and accountable government and a just and inclusive society. Welcome Joe and Crystal, thank you so much for being here with us today.
Joe Goldman:
Great to be here, Carrie.
Crystal Hayling:
Thanks for having us.
Carrie Fox:
Absolutely. So I've got to tell you too, that this conversation is in many ways the conversation that prompted this entire event, whether you know it or not. Since reading Democracy Fund's paper called On Black Swans, Gray Rhinos and the 2024 Election, we will link to that in the chat. I read it earlier this year and then I had this wonderful opportunity to interview you two about it as part of our work. And I have been wanting to have a public conversation with you both on this topic since that moment. Since I find this topic so relatable to just about all of the conversations, Joe and Crystal, we are having across all sectors, philanthropy and otherwise, right? So a critical part of your work is preparing and readying the field of philanthropy, and that's where the new paper comes in.
But I think folks who are listening will find that the insights you provide go well beyond philanthropy too. All right, so let me set up this first question for you. You all wrote this paper for pro-democracy funders who were concerned about election day. As noted though, the reality is that funders and otherwise across all parties and politics have some pretty big concerns about this election day and what could happen in its aftermath. The strategy that you suggested is one grounded in resilience. We've already heard that word today and I know we will hear it more. We need that resilience as we come up to the election cycle and beyond. I'd love you to give us a top line of this paper and what you want readers to take away from it.
Joe Goldman:
Thanks Carrie. The starting point for the paper is a pretty basic idea, that we are living in highly uncertain, you could say, scary times, where the range of possible outcomes are just so wide that they become debilitating for groups that are trying to develop good strategy. And I think what we wanted to argue is that rather than getting paralyzed by the diversity of possibilities that we're up against or trying to predict the impossible, we're arguing that funders need to do a better job listening to leaders on the front lines because they're actually pretty good at seeing what's coming at us. No one can predict the future, but often the most unexpected scenarios are really right in front of us if we know where to look from.
Crystal Hayling:
I just wanted to give an example. We particularly talk about gray rhinos, unlike a black swan, which is something that you can't predict, right? And really and truthfully, as Joe said, nobody can predict the future, but the gray rhinos are the things that we can see from a distance, they're charging right at us, but we somehow or another just don't prepare for them. We can't get out of the way of them. We don't really quite know how to react. And a really great example of that, quite honestly is the overturning of Roe. We know that we had... We sort of saw all the pieces that went into a court that was really primed to make this choice, frankly many people who were funding them in order to make that choice.
So it really became an area in which so many funders who worked in women's rights and reproductive rights were not seeing the larger picture. Even though many activists in Alabama and other states on the ground were saying, "If we're not focusing on voting rights, if we're not stopping voter suppression, then we are going to see Roe overturned." That's really the process that we are trying to ask people to think about. On the ground, frontline folks have much fewer silos than we do, and they really see the gray rhinos coming at us and they see the interactions between the issues. And if we're listening to them and funding them to be able to respond to them, we think we'll all be much better off in terms of being able to have that resilience you spoke about.
Carrie Fox:
Crystal, that is such an important example because there's this line in the paper that talks about how the people who are often on the first lines are both the defense, but they also have the greatest impact. Too often, however, the people closest to the harms aren't at the decision-making tables. Their valid concerns and forewarnings are cast aside by people in positions of safety and power. So there's something else I'm going to read you and then ask you the next question because this I think sets up... That was a great example of what we have seen, a gray rhino in the past, but there's information in the paper that talks about what could be ahead of us. Political violence, maybe the next gray rhino that will cross our path.
Communities that have been under the threat of state-sanctioned violence are keenly tuned in to the warning signs of authoritarianism and anti-democratic actors. All the warning signs in our election environment are there, including an alarming rise in threats against frontline leaders, election administrators and public officials. Movement leaders are raising the alarm and lives are at stake should we continue to ignore their warnings.
Joe Goldman:
People have talked a lot about how surprising and chaotic these last few months of this election cycle have been, right? We had Supreme Court rulings on presidential immunity that really shook the system. We had a presidential debate that revealed the frailty of one of the presidential candidates that eventually led him to step down. We had effectively two assassination attempts against one of the candidates for president and now we've got these two hurricanes, one of which has already brought devastation and another that soon will. All of these things are shocking and hard to take in, and in some ways unprecedented and completely predictable.
Those who work on of political violence, those who are out there on the front lines in communities, they've been seeing the warning signs about political violence, they've been seeing the degree to which threats are on the rise, the degree to which weapons are showing up in places they shouldn't be, right? People understand the risk that somebody's going to get shot. So the fact that we actually have now seen two assassination attempts against a presidential candidate, for those who are out there, it's not actually surprising. And I think it is incumbent upon those of us who want to make sure that we maintain the integrity of our elections, maintain free, fair representative elections.
We need to pay attention to these kinds of signals and do something about it.
Carrie Fox:
So that tees up the next question perfectly because it doesn't take a futurist to know that threats to American democracy are looming. But with all of those threats you just mentioned, some of them very much in clear line of sight, why are we often so unprepared when they strike?
Crystal Hayling:
Speaking for myself from having run a foundation, I think that we're overwhelmed by today and so we really feel like, "I've got so much going on. I have no time, no bandwidth to really be thinking about what's coming." But I think that when we fund general operating support dollars to frontline organizations, we're actually giving them the time and the space to have the thoughts about what's coming and what's looming. So I think that's one of the ways that we can actually address that as funders because it really doesn't require that we come up with an answer. It requires that we support those who do.
And I think that it is also, it's not predicting, that's not what we're saying that we need to do, but when we listen. So I would give the example of the Solidaire Network, which Democracy Fund has supported and others that in 2020 created the movement Protection Fund, which was giving small grants to frontline organizations to be able to strengthen their websites, to protect them against being crashed by various folks who didn't want those websites to be there, people who were attacking their executive directors and doxing them and putting their home addresses online.
This has been happening for many years now, and those kinds of funders were funding those organizations and those organizations were really talking to foundations that are in this conversation with them. So we know that it's possible, we know that it's been happening and we just encourage more of us to get into that game as well.
Carrie Fox:
You've got right in the beginning of the paper a series of scenarios, one of which has already played out, which is one candidate ending their campaign. So it's fascinating when you go through this process of taking the time to scenarios plan both what you can see and how you look beyond what you can see to make sure you are prepared and to build that resilience. But very much, what I hear you saying, Crystal, I've heard you say so many times on this paper, it's how carefully we listen and what we do with what we hear. We're living in these times of high stakes and all of this uncertainty.
And you may have heard me say earlier when I was speaking with Stacey, this feeling of waiting on the future of folks who are not sure what they should be doing, and so they put their strategies on hold. You however, Joe, recently had a piece in the Commons and you argued in that piece that if we are to address the concerns ahead of us, we must prepare and we must act. You said we can't ignore the danger signs. So what do you say to those people who are putting their strategies on hold until after election day?
Joe Goldman:
Look, I think the stakes are just too high to wait this out. I think especially when philanthropy doesn't plan ahead, one of two things happens. The first is we're caught unprepared. What happens is we go into a strategy process and that takes six months, nine months, a year. Meanwhile, change is happening, opportunities are being missed, and the folks on the front lines don't have the resources they need. Or the event happens, we're not ready and we react rashly. That often means resources get poorly used, right? They go to the wrong places.
If you look at what came out of the 2016 election, that our entire political environment flipped. Philanthropy was not ready for it and many folks took a very long time to respond or they just pushed all of their resources into the same nonprofits. The ACLU does wonderful work and received hundreds of millions, a remarkable amount of money when it really needed to be spread across multiple organizations. And when we have the time to plan, when we do scenario work, we're able to see where our resources are going to be required and do it in a planful way.
Carrie Fox:
You remind me that later today we have Yada Peng on a panel of just fund, and I know the two of you know and appreciate her platform really thinking about how we democratize philanthropy and get those resources out to some of the folks who don't typically get those resources. But I want to pick up on something else you just said, and you may have heard me mention this also when I was speaking with Stacey, AllByApril.
So if you think about 2016 and the way that played out, then this election cycle, you've really changed how you've thought about and acted in the distribution of philanthropic funds. I want you to just tell a little bit about AllByApril and was that part of a scenarios planning for you? Was that the outcome of some scenarios planning?
Joe Goldman:
Well, let me talk about it and connect it to the conversation, not through scenario planning. So AllByApril, the idea behind the campaign was our grantees have been telling us time and time again that they're grateful for our resources, they're grateful for the field's resources, but the resources come too late. Every election cycle dollars are reaching grantees months and months too late. And that means that they are inefficiently used and grantees are not as effective as they could be. And so as an organization, the Democracy Fund decided that we were going to commit all of our resources early, either the previous year as a multi-year grant or to get them out in the first quarter of this year.
And we thought this is an opportunity to challenge our peers who are hearing many of the same things. And as a result of the campaign, we were able to track more than 150 million in grants that moved out earlier than they otherwise would have because of that commitment. That enables grantees on the ground to plan, to hire, to do the kind of work that enables them to be effective. And that's about listening. And for me how that connects to this broader topic, what we need to do is not always try to predict the future, but to put our grantees in a position where they can be resilient to changing conditions where they actually have the ability to pivot.
And early money is one of the things... They were saying, "We need early money so that we can be prepared." We just launched a new campaign today that follows from AllByApril, we're calling election day to every day. And it's a similar idea, right? We've been hearing for years from grantees that it is wonderful to have the resources that we received during election season, but then we reach this fiscal cliff where come January we're exhausted. We just put our hearts into making sure that this election is free and fair and representative. And now we don't know where our funding's coming. We've just seen a major decline in commitments.
And that means at the start of a new political cycle, all of these nonprofits aren't able to plan. They aren't able to pivot to the new challenges that are ahead. And so we've created this campaign election data to every day with the idea that we want funders now to look ahead to next year and start making commitments to their grantees that we've got their back, right? We're going to support them, we're going to make sure they know where their resources are coming from, such that they can be planful and they can engage in a governing agenda. They can resist authoritarian attacks, they can build durable power.
Crystal Hayling:
And I think it's really important. I'm very excited about this new campaign and I really... Hats off to Joe and the team for teeing this up for folks and you'll be able to hear more about it as the campaign unrolls. And part of it is also about understanding where we are with our democracy right now. It is very possible and again, a likely scenario that we won't know the outcome of this election right away. That's actually normal in many different democracies. It's not an unusual thing.
But if nonprofits that are working on election integrity, if nonprofits that are working on the front lines in communities where disinformation may really become very much a tool of authoritarianism and they have really used all their resources all out to get to election day, we are going to be flat-footed again in those days afterwards. And so it's really important for people to put that out there now and understand that we can't go through this bust and boom cycle. We can't ask our nonprofits to do that. We actually need to be preparing them with the resources they need to see this through all the way and then into developing governance and the ability to be engaged with government in creating policy changes we know we all need.
Carrie Fox:
I want to ask you one more thing specifically to the paper and then we're going to zoom out a little bit. But in the paper you've got this chart, you call it Creatures of Chaos. And what I love is it really challenges this traditional view of scenarios planning where you've got an XY axis risk and impact. And instead you're really challenging people to think differently about what the risk is, what the impact is, but how you prepare for things like a gray rhino. Now you've started to talk about one, but I'm going to ask you just to reinforce that for folks because I know there's a lot of interest in this. What's a gray rhino and how do we prepare for one?
Joe Goldman:
To think about what a gray rhino is, you have to first think about what a black swan is. And everybody knows a black swan. A black swan is unpredictable. It is this kind of thing that comes out of nowhere, you can't plan for it and it throws the system into some kind of array. A gray rhino is the opposite. It's the thing that is charging at you that everyone is aware of. Just picture a rhino charging. It is out there in the distant, it's slowly getting larger and larger as it's coming at you and everybody sees it and unfortunately everybody ignores it. Everybody, not everybody, but conventional wisdom doesn't pay attention.
And what we're arguing is that generally speaking, most of the kinds of things that most impact us that feel like surprises aren't really surprises. They're things that somebody was paying attention to, somebody was raising an alarm about. And thus, if we are paying attention, if we are getting out of our silos, if we're listening, we're going to be able to see the gray rhino and we're going to actually pay attention to it. When we put out this paper and I started talking about the idea of the gray rhino call after call, I would say, so what do you think the gray rhinos are in this election season?
And literally every gray rhino that folks identified, which at the time felt scary and uncertain but seemed like it was coming, they've literally all happened, including the notion that NOAA had predicted this was going to be a record-setting hurricane season. This was something that election administrators could prepare for.
Crystal Hayling:
The other great thing about these chaos agents and thinking about scenario planning in this way, as I mentioned before, it helps us to break down the silos. I can't tell you how many climate funders have said to me, "I don't really understand how my work impacts democracy." Well, here we are. There is a very clear connection between climate denying and climate change and a dramatic impact on our ability for states like North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee to participate in this election because of climate change. And so I think that when we suggest that every funder needs to be thinking about the impact of these chaos, factors, agents on their grant making and how they can prepare for it, we really mean every funder.
Joe Goldman:
What's hard is not spotting the gray rhinos. What's hard is understanding the interdependency between them, which we've got two gray rhinos that are charging at. So we all knew that third parties were going to play a role in this election cycle and would be unusual and would create different kinds of dynamics. We all knew that. We also knew that there was going to be an increase in hurricane activity. What we didn't know is that a third party candidate was going to withdraw at the last minute and ask that his name be pulled off the ballot in North Carolina just before a major hurricane hits, which means that ballots didn't get sent out in time.
And thus, we suddenly have this risk of people actually receiving their ballots in some parts of North Carolina. And so actually being able to anticipate how these different unusual circumstances might interact with one another becomes all the more challenging.
Carrie Fox:
Hence, chaos factors, not one chaos factor. And you've both said this so clearly that you really do have to listen very carefully to the people who are feeling it first, who are feeling the harm first. And to your point, Joe, it's not just listening to one community who's feeling the effect of the hurricane, it's also listening to another community who's feeling the effect of an issue with the election. So it's how we listen across those communities carefully and then do something with the information.
Joe Goldman:
Absolutely.
Carrie Fox:
All right, we've got two minutes. So I've got one more question for you. This morning in my weekly newsletter, I shared some words of the late civil rights leader, Vincent Harding. And he lived this question, is America possible? As you know, he wondered whether America's experiment in creating a multiracial democracy could work. And before he died in 2014, he was asked if he thought it was still possible to create this democracy that could work for all of us. And he answered yes, but only as we make it possible. So that's my question for you. Is it possible?
Joe Goldman:
The thing that I think has changed for a lot of people and their relationship to democracy in this past decade is an understanding of the vulnerability of this system, the fragility of the system, and its imperfections. There's nothing inevitable about democracy continuing to become more and more free, more and more representative, more and more fair. That is not an inevitable thing. That happens because people work towards it, people commit to it.
Often those who are facing the greatest harms and vulnerabilities are the ones that are on the front lines of demanding change. I guess is my reaction is it is possible to the extent that we work for it. And if we don't, it is not.
Crystal Hayling:
A hundred percent agree. Joe. And I think many people here know that my father was a civil rights activist. He was confronted by the Klan, he was attacked by them, our whole family was, and he continued to fight for civil rights. He continued to fight for the right to vote to participate in this democracy, in this economy. And that's partly why when I was running the Libra Foundation, we created the Democracy Frontlines Fund, which was really specifically focusing on giving resources, general operating resources, long-term money to Black led organizations that are working around voting rights and all the characteristics that are required for people to participate in democracy.
And so that to me is where we can actually have the greatest impact, is by funding those people who are on the front line, making sure that they who have actually said to us, "We believe more and the most in the promise of America and the promise of this multi-ethnic democracy." That's what I believe that we need to be doing, is to stand behind those people who have actually the most to lose, but have also had the most courage to be at the front lines of this fight. So I really go back to Nelson Mandela's fantastic quote that it seems impossible until it is done. And so I really hope that everybody will join us in this new campaign and really be able to participate in supporting our work to arm our communities to be better able to fight against these chaos agents.
Carrie Fox:
Just like anything or anyone we love, we must care for them. And it's the same with our democracy. We must actively care for it. Thank you both so much for what I knew was going to be a part two of our first conversation, and for all of the work that you're doing, appreciate you being here with us.
Joe Goldman:
Absolutely.
Crystal Hayling:
Thank you Carrie. So great to be here. Thanks for also inviting this conversation and linking it so much to the organization's incredible work. Thank you.
Carrie Fox:
Absolutely. Thank you. And that brings us to the end of another episode of Mission Forward. If you like what you heard today, I hope you'll stop right now and give this show a five-star rating wherever you are listening to this podcast, maybe even forward it to a friend who you think would enjoy today's conversation. And of course, check out the show notes for all of the links referenced in today's show. Mission Forward is produced with the support and wisdom of Pete Wright and the TruStory production team, as well as the wonderful Sadie Lockhart of Mission Partners.
You can learn more about our work over at Missionforward.us, and of course, reach out to me anytime carrie@mission.partners. Thanks for tuning in today, friend, and I'll see you next time.
