News

Dan Newman, executive director of RBF grantee MAPLight, responds to the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision passed on January 21 by the U.S. Supreme Court in The Sacramento Bee.

Through RBF grantee the Prometheus Institute for Sustainable Development, the Global Observatory Project offers informed and accessible analysis and commentary.

The Campaign Legal Center, Inc., the League of Women Voters, and Americans for Redistricting Reform released a "Statement of Essential Principles on Redistricting" in August.

In July 2008, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund undertook a review of its youth civic engagement grantmaking with the help of two consultants, Brigette Rouson and Hilary Binder-Aviles, from Mosaica: The Center for Nonprofit Development and Pluralism.

How are campaign dollars from the banking industry or energy sectors affecting decisions made in Congress?

RBF grantee Center for Public Integrity was recently awarded a prestigious Knight-Batten Award for Innovations in Journalism.

While the 2008 U.S. presidential election was hailed largely because it put an African American in the White House for the first time, another celebrated success was the explosion in civic participation: thousands of new voters registered for the first time, volunteered, and turned up at the polls to cast their ballots. 

"There is no question about the power of the immigrant vote," says Chung-Wha Hong, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition.  In New York, where more than 4 million foreign-born workers produce nearly a quarter of the state's economic output, Ms. Hong's organization has sought to implement a "community-based electoral machine."

When Deborah Simpson decided to run for a seat in Maine's House of Representatives in 2000, she was an unlikely candidate for elected office: as a waitress and single mother, she lacked connections to deep-pocketed donors. She had, however, heard about the state's new Clean Elections Act and figured she could campaign by talking about issues instead of asking people to write her checks.  Read more

Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement (PACE), has released a new guide that describes strategies and stories of how local civic engagement has developed over the past decade.