Beth Huang, Program Officer, Civic Engagement and Democracy, Tides Foundation
Interviewer: Miranda Wesley, Communications Specialist, Grantmakers In Health
Funders can play a major role in promoting a healthy democracy, and increasingly, grantmakers like the Tides Foundation are investing in civic engagement. To learn more about Tides’ work in this area, along with their support of ballot initiatives on reproductive health, Grantmakers In Health’s Miranda Wesley spoke with the Tides Foundation’s Program Officer of Civic Engagement and Democracy, Beth Huang. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tell me about the Tides Foundation’s Healthy Democracy Fund and your work in civic engagement.
Beth Huang: The Healthy Democracy Fund is a Tides Foundation grantmaking initiative that is committed to building a more inclusive democracy by shifting power to leaders and communities who have been historically excluded from participating in our nation’s future, with three main priorities that are evergreen every year. Our first main priority includes closing the voter participation gap by race, class, and age. Our second major goal of the Healthy Democracy Fund is to expand voting rights and fair representation. Our third major programmatic priority is countering mis- and disinformation, particularly aimed at BIPOC, immigrant, and young voters.
We prioritize funding state and local organizations that have a year-round civic engagement and base-building program. We believe that these are the trusted community leaders best positioned to motivate unlikely voters in their communities. There are a lot of people for whom the public education system, public safety, health care system, housing—all of those systems are not working for them. They are rationally cynical about whether or not their vote really matters.
What are your funding priorities? And how were they determined?
Beth Huang: Because our top priority, our north star, is closing the voter participation gap by race, age, and income, we are funding eight to 10 organizations that anchor voter mobilization connected to year-round grassroots organizing in 11 priority states, which are Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Texas, Arizona, and Nevada.
We fund organizations such as One Pennsylvania because we believe their year-round canvas program develops leaders, motivates Black voter participation in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and prevents voter participation from going down. We fund organizations like Make the Road Nevada because we believe that voter participation among Latinos in Nevada would go down if they did not have sufficient resources. They are the organizations that go both broad [to] mobilize hundreds of thousands of voters, and they also go deep by developing the authentic leadership of residents in underrepresented communities.
Initially, the Healthy Democracy Fund formed a Leadership Council of movement leaders and allies at other democracy funders. This group helped determine this set of priorities and strategy to fund the anchors of civic engagement in these 11 priority states back in 2019.
We do have a set of more opportunistic priorities in 2024. I was so excited to see that the ballot measure that would enshrine abortion access in Florida’s constitution is moving forward. The ruling that the ballot measure can move forward to November was unanimous, actually. On the same day, the Florida Supreme Court upheld the six-week abortion ban in Florida.
This is the story of what has happened after the Dobbs decision. We have extreme abortion bans in dozens of states now, but we also have broad, diverse coalition efforts to enshrine abortion in state constitutions. We saw this in Ohio in 2023, when the Tides Foundation, as a public charity, was able to make $3.6 million worth of grants to the effort to enshrine abortion access in the state constitution.
This year, the Tides Foundation, through the Healthy Democracy Fund [and] leveraging our lobbying unrestricted dollars, have been able to fund the abortion access ballot measures in Florida, Colorado, and Nevada. We are currently moving our largest grant so far of the year to Floridians Protecting Freedom. It’s a $1.1 million grant to the ballot measure.
This year, we also are really excited about the brand-new majority Black congressional districts in Alabama and Louisiana. Those are a product of Supreme Court litigation and the Supreme Court upholding the Voting Rights Act Section 2 last June in the Milligan case in Alabama.
Sometimes, we will slightly shift our funding priorities if there is a one-time, important opportunity for voters to make a big difference in their representation that year, like the new majority Black congressional districts. That is a once in a generation, maybe once in every two generations, increase in Black voters’ representation in Congress in those states.
What role can funders play in protecting access to reproductive health?
Beth Huang: That is maybe not even the million-dollar question, but like a $10 million question this year, right? We believe that funders and donors have a pivotal role to play in 2024, since there are about 10 abortion-related ballot measures this year. We can’t understate the urgency of the moment in 2024.
Florida is one of the only states in the South where people can access reproductive health care. It has also been an important access point for reproductive health care in the entire Caribbean. Florida, as the third largest state, provides the second largest number of abortions in the entire country [at] about 80,000 abortions per year. Florida’s six-week abortion ban, which is taking effect now in 29 days since the Supreme Court ruled on April 1, is an existential threat to reproductive health care for an entire region of the country. Funders’ ability to play a role is critical at this juncture.
The Tides Foundation, through the Healthy Democracy Fund, has been deploying 501(c)(3) funds that are lobbying unrestricted to ballot measures at scale. Tides Foundation in general makes grants to 501(c)(4) organizations for their very impactful nonpartisan projects. Last year, Tides Foundation made 492 project specific grants totaling $7.9 million to support these nonpartisan projects housed at 501(c)(4) organizations. That includes the $5.7 million [from] the Healthy Democracy Fund granted to the ballot measures that protected the simple majority threshold for future constitutional amendments in Ohio, and then the abortion access ballot measure in Ohio in November.
We are able to do that because we leverage pooled funds. In the context of pooled funds at Tides, because they’re not donor directed vehicles, individual contributions into pooled funds like the Healthy Democracy Fund do not carry lobbying restrictions. These pooled funds are a very effective vehicle to ensure that we are conserving lobbying unrestricted dollars and then deploying lobbying restricted dollars to any number of impactful nonpartisan programs that do not involve lobbying to begin with.
What state ballot efforts has the Tides Foundation invested in and where is abortion access on the ballot?
Beth Huang: The ballot measures that Tides Foundation has made grants to so far in 2024 include the abortion access ballot measures in Florida, Nevada, and Colorado. Those contributions currently stand at about $2 million. There are two ways to calculate a public charity’s lobbying limit. Tides Foundation as a public charity takes the insubstantial part test, instead of the 501(h) election, so we have a considerable lobbying capacity and use make grants to ballot measures.
Abortion access is on the ballot in about 10 states, [and] some of them are new and creative ways to enshrine abortion access. [For example,] I live in New York state where the Equal Rights Amendment is on the ballot, which provides a non-privacy-based argument to protect abortion access.
There also is an effort in Missouri this year that we are monitoring. If passed, this measure could provide an important access point for many people seeking abortions in the region.
Then there are some states like Arkansas where [there are] efforts for allowing abortion up to 15 weeks. We are not actively pursuing funding of those ballot measures that have a lower set of standards than Roe v. Wade. We understand that winning abortion access in Arkansas does look significantly different from winning abortion access in even another bordering state like Missouri. We’re rooting for the success of abortion advocates everywhere, and given financial constraints, we are going to prioritize states that at least reestablished the floor, which we think of as Roe v. Wade.
We’re really excited about the abortion access effort and campaign in Colorado to expand access beyond Roe. In Colorado, public employees and Medicaid recipients, as in anyone who has publicly funded insurance, cannot access abortion care or can’t access insurance coverage on abortions. They have like a state-level Hyde Amendment in state, so their abortion access ballot measure would actually expand economic access to abortions. It’s one thing to have rights on paper; it’s totally different to have access in real life. We think of the Colorado efforts as the next phase of expanding abortion access and reproductive health care.
Tell me about the Tides Foundation’s work in protecting transgender rights and its relation to bodily autonomy and choice in health care.
Beth Huang: All of this boils down to bodily autonomy and people’s ability to choose their own health care decisions. Tides Foundation has a pooled fund called the Trans Justice Fund that funds grassroots organizations across the country, related to civil rights for the trans community.
The trans community has been on the leading edge of social change. As the leading edge of social change, the attacks on the trans community have been so immense. I think of Nex Benedict, the trans teenager in Nebraska, who unfortunately will not get justice; that is totally heartbreaking.
Given that there is an often-moneyed opposition to trans rights, to abortion access, and to all kinds of bodily autonomy, the stakes are so high for the trans community, especially as our opponents are going after IVF, they’re going after mifepristone access—all at the courts. I could see a future in which the kind of separation of politics and how the FDA regulates drugs could reach a dangerous point where the next challenge is to [hormone replacement therapy].
While the dam hasn’t broken yet, there have been continued attacks on bodily autonomy [and] people’s access to the medications that allow them to live their most genuine and authentic lives, whether it’s access to reproductive health care or access to hormone replacement therapy. The attacks on gender expression have been extreme. We’re really proud to fund a number of grassroots LGBTQ organizations through the Trans Justice Fund that really focus on protecting and advancing the civil liberties of the trans community at this time.
How do you invest in initiatives protecting abortion access while remaining nonpartisan and/or receiving bipartisan support for your work?
Beth Huang: Abortion access is a bipartisan issue. This is not a Democrats versus Republicans issue. This is an issue of bodily autonomy and the ability to access health care, so we absolutely see bipartisan support for these efforts.
In Ohio, which has long been a battleground state that has continually elected Republicans in statewide elections for the past at least eight years, voters approved the abortion access constitutional amendment with a 57 percent majority. The abortion access ballot measure in Florida has to pass with 60 percent of the vote. These are inherently nonpartisan campaigns because they’re about issues and they need bipartisan support to win. It is impossible to win a 60 percent majority in Florida just through partisan campaigning.
In addition to funding the community organizations to be boots on the ground for these efforts, we also fund the ballot measure campaign itself. The community organizations are doing an incredible job talking to students on campus, voters of color in their own communities, [and] immigrant voters in their own languages, which is an irreplaceable component of these ballot measure campaigns to reach every single voter. These community organizations are never going to pay for the big TV ads, [since] those are often multimillion dollar efforts. We’re funding the campaigns to run the big paid media campaigns on TV, radio, digital, and more.
We also are funding the community organizations that are often on the steering committees or executive committees of these ballot measure campaigns. Because once we hopefully win these campaigns, the implementation really matters. I think of the Missouri ballot measure to expand Medicaid a few years ago. The legislature was able to significantly hamper the implementation of Medicaid expansion, which two thirds of voters supported in Missouri.
It’s important that we invest in both the organizations that are going to do the year round organizing [and] advocacy, plus the campaign which will run all of the TV ads, do all the digital work, and coordinate the entire campaigns. We are often funding two components of the ballot measure effort. One is the short term, [such as] ad buys. Another part of it is the community organizations that will then hopefully build their capacity by talking to voters about a wildly popular issue that enjoys bipartisan support.
Lastly, is there anything else you would like to share?
Beth Huang: Trust is the key factor needed to turn out voters. Organizations can only move at the speed of trust that they have with community members. It’s very different to have a canvasser who reads off a script in the month of October versus a community leader who has volunteered for several election cycles, understands their community’s needs, [and] can speak directly to how voting in this election impacts their community needs. That’s why we are so interested in prioritizing funding for organizations with year-round programs for building a base and then are able to get to scale in their voter mobilization programs. It’s the trust that some of these organizations have that can be leveraged for these abortion access ballot measures; it’s the trust that allows a leader in a community to credibly say that your vote actually does matter—because people have been burned before.
We as funders can prioritize this type of nonpartisan program to build the long-term trust that is absolutely needed for our democracy [and] our health care system.