Our work

Our portfolio of recommendations for donors will grow as we continue to identify highly relevant civil society initiatives in priority countries. If you’d like to support these efforts, you can donate directly through Effektiv Spenden’s Defending Democracy Fund, a straightforward way to channel your contributions to the initiatives. We are building partnerships with donation platforms in additional countries, so that supporters around the world will be able to contribute with ease. English: https://effektiv-spenden.org/en/defending-democracy/ German: https://effektiv-spenden.org/demokratie-verteidigen/

If you are a research institution, think-tank, or in any other capacity interested in our work, we would love to hear from you. You can either fill in our contact form on this website or email us at [email protected].

Power for Democracies focuses on current and emerging threats to democracy and identifies the most relevant civil society organisations and initiatives working to counter them. If you believe your organisation is one of those, get in touch with us at [email protected].

We seek to evaluate and recommend a wide range of different civil society actors that strengthen crucial aspects of democracy, including journalists, unions, and think-tanks. The groups we will recommend are politically non-partisan, although they may campaign on specific issues.

We focus on civil society initiatives that our systematic research indicates are likely to deliver meaningful democratic outcomes. We assess these initiatives in terms of both their potential impact and the strength of the supporting evidence. Our mixed-methods approach incorporates a variety of sources, including expert insights, research literature, strategic analysis, quantitative data, and other evaluative tools. This ensures our decisions are both informed and contextually grounded.

We understand how valuable the time and energy of civil society organisations is, and we have designed the evaluation process with ease in mind. The process includes an initial call; completion of a datasheet; and a series of follow-up questions.

If your project meets our impact criteria, we will recommend it for funding to our donor network. Our recommendation will include an overview of the national context in which you operate, and more detail on the impact of your work on liberal democracy in your country.

We only approach an organisation for evaluation if we have meaningful indication about its impact and eligibility for recommendation. Once our recommendations have been decided, we work with our donor network and the implementing civil society organisation to coordinate the allocation of funds collected by our donor network.