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 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.

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.

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

• 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.

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.

Information about grants that have concluded is available here.