Ensuring Civic Engagement Grantmaking Guidelines

KAF will invest in organizations committed to expanding the scope of civic engagement, voter education, voting access and fighting legislative battles to ensure all eligible voters have true and equal access to the ballot.

• Organizations serve hard to reach populations, underserved communities and communities of color.
• Organizations serve the needs of communities of color by engaging in deep and meaningful base-building and advocacy.
• Leadership and staff have lived experience aligned with the organization’s mission and/or proximity to the work and are focused on uplifting and engaging communities of color.
• Organizations demonstrate an understanding of the political landscape and their opportunity to impact meaningful and pervasive change. Grantees:
  1. Understand how inequality impacts communities of color;
  2. Envision and articulate what true justice and equity is for their communities;
  3. Identify impediments caused by forces of opposition;
  4. Have strategic plans to overcome those challenges.
• Organizations approach the work using either lens:
  • Voter education and advocacy organizations: focus on voter registration and education, mobilization and grassroots organizing, building and supporting leaders and coalitions.
  • Advocate for improved election access: focus on legislative battles, redistricting and gerrymandering, legally challenging harmful legislation and policies that restrict voting access.

Recognizing that communities are best served when their advocates come from within, Katz Amsterdam strives to support organizations that are community-based, community-driven and community-defined.

• Community based groups:
  • Have a specific purpose of their organizing in furtherance of increased protections and equity for a certain population.
  • Have leadership and staff with lived experience that is proximate to the work.
  • May focus their work on a specific constituency within communities of color (e.g., faith based, POC, women, voters, LGBTQ etc.)
• Organizations have a physical presence in the communities they serve or create (digital or physical) spaces for coalitions in those communities to gather, share resources/best practices and build collective power.
• Organizations have developed strategic planning that demonstrates how their work will (over time and in some cases immediately) build sustainable and transformative change for marginalized populations.