Grants

The Election Trust Initiative makes grants to a range of nonpartisan organizations to strengthen election administration policies and practices and support election administrators. The initiative does not make grants to government election offices.

Please note that we accept grant proposals by invitation only.

Active grants

Grants are grouped under the initiative’s focus areas.

Engage diverse stakeholders to bolster adequate, reliable public funding for election operations.

• The Edward M. Kennedy Institute and the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics will work together to advance solutions to election administration funding challenges. The organizations will sponsor research on current sources of election funding and highlight promising models that can be employed across the country.

Engage diverse stakeholders who support sound policy and public funding for nonpartisan election administration.

• The R Street Institute and the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University will work to engage community leaders in events that develop state-level, nonpartisan plans to improve election administration and foster confidence in their states’ election systems.
• Sutherland Institute will use a three-year grant to publish research and convene election administrators, policy leaders, academic experts, and other stakeholders in Utah and nationally to develop evidence-based practices to improve election security.

Build a field of scholarship that generates actionable, trusted, empirical evidence for the election policy and practice community.

• The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Election Data and Science Lab (MEDSL) will conduct and coordinate research through multiple initiatives over a three-year period. Projects include supporting academic researchers to assess how election officials can communicate with voters to increase trust; the Mapping Election Administration and Election Science project that assessed the current state of knowledge and practice in seven areas of election administration and recommended future research priorities; the Learning from Elections project that studied the effects of policies and practices during the 2022 election cycle; the Survey of the Performance of American Elections; and an examination of election-night reporting systems.
• The Engineering for Democracy Institute at the University of Rhode Island will launch the nonpartisan STEM for Elections Network, an initiative designed to increase the involvement of engineers in election research.

Grow programs and expertise to help states attract, develop, and retain well-trained election officials.

• The Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) will use a two-year grant to advance efforts to address workforce challenges in election administration, including recruitment, retention, and training. BPC, together with The Elections Group, will publish research that examines the professional elections workforce and states’ training and certification approaches, and will convene a bipartisan advisory council of election administrators, academics, election official associations, and other workforce experts to inform these efforts and develop resources based on the findings.
• The Elections & Voting Information Center (EVIC) will conduct, publish, and promote its Local Election Official Survey in 2024.
• The University of Minnesota will develop a strategic plan to scale up its Certificate in Election Administration program and help prepare students to enter the workforce.

Strengthen networks that bring together election officials, policymakers, and researchers to share knowledge and resources that inform policy and practice.

• The Brennan Center for Justice will support efforts by the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections to strengthen relationships between election officials and law enforcement leaders and create guides, workshops, and other resources to help these leaders prepare for and respond to election security risks.
• The Election Center, also known as the National Association of Election Officials, will use a two-year grant to upgrade its infrastructure for member services and connect bipartisan and nonpartisan state association leaders with best practices and technical assistance to help their organizations grow and collaborate.
• The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) will use a three-year grant to regularly update its public state elections legislation database and other resources. NCSL will also develop nonpartisan programs on election policy and practice for legislators and legislative staff and build connections between policymakers and election administrators.
• The Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions (PLEJ) will work to strengthen its communications capacity to better support members in navigating complexities and challenges associated with organizing and executing large-scale elections. PLEJ will also partner with the University of Rhode Island’s Engineering for Democracy Institute to develop practical, nonpartisan solutions that enhance the operational efficiency and accessibility of electoral processes nationwide.
• The National Association of Counties Research Foundation will undertake multiple initiatives in support of county officials over an 18-month period. Activities will include curating research and programming on innovation in election administration; advancing understanding of key election issues, challenges, and solutions; and exploring networking opportunities for county elections professionals.

Support the use of evidence-based, nonpartisan methods to verify the integrity of the election process from start to finish.

• The Carter Center will use a two-year grant to support nonpartisan election observation programs in up to three states and report findings and recommendations based on data collected by trained nonpartisan observers.
• The Election Law Program will use a five-year grant for a full-time position to assist in the production of election law resources for judges.
• The Elections Group will share best practices and recommendations for a variety of election auditing methods through webinars, conference presentations, and implementation guides.
• Verified Voting will use a two-year grant to increase its capacity to help election offices implement evidence-based election security, accuracy, and transparency practices. The grant will also support improvements to The Verifier, the organization’s free, public repository of information about voting equipment and election administration tools used by each jurisdiction in the U.S.
• The Convergence Center for Policy Resolution will conduct research, interviews, and focus groups on building a collaborative, problem-solving process for establishing cross-partisan agreement on what makes elections trustworthy. This effort will also seek to identify policies and practices for applying those principles.

Information about grants that have concluded is available here.