Climate and Democracy Are in Crisis. Get off Your Assets.

Before Hurricane Helene hit, Down Home North Carolina,  a grantee partner with Tides Foundation’s Healthy Democracy Fund, was mobilizing voters for the November elections. After the storm, those canvassing teams shifted immediately to gathering surveys of people’s needs and getting help — despite the fact that some canvassers were without power or water themselves.  

State Voices Florida, a fiscally sponsored project of Tides Center, spent months educating and empowering voters ahead of the November elections. When hurricanes Helene and Milton devastated the state, State Voices Florida called for an extension of the state’s voter registration deadline, but was denied by Florida’s governor. They’re now providing direct relief to Floridians without shelter — food, water, and emergency lodging — and advocating for better evacuation support in the short term and climate change mitigation and infrastructure in the long term.  

For more than a decade, PODER Emma Community Ownership has been organizing mobile home residents in Asheville, NC to build community power and prevent displacement. When Helene hit, their existing networks allowed them to act quickly to assess needs and deliver critical supplies directly to the Latine communities they serve. Along with Colaborative La Milpa, they activated a bilingual phone bank to provide volunteer translation support for organizations and aid workers throughout the state. Their relief efforts, supported by a grant from Tides Foundation’s Crisis Response Fund, reach 3,000 families across Western North Carolina each day. 

As voting begins in the most critical election of our lifetimes, with climate and democracy facing a crossroads, the heroes leading community responses to climate disasters are in many cases the same leaders who have been driving civic engagement efforts. These leaders have the deep personal relationships and knowledge to act quickly, but they need resources and support to tackle the kinds of competing crises that many are now facing.  

Those resources exist. Donors already have the power to equip grassroots organizations with everything they need. All that’s needed is a willingness to take the final step and actually give that money away.  

Donors With DAFs at Tides Foundation Give Double the National Average

This commitment to truly shifting power is why donors come to Tides. Our community knows that if you believe in an inclusive, multiracial democracy, Tides will amplify your impact. Our partners with donor-advised funds (DAFs) give nearly twice as much as DAF donors at other institutions — a 54% annual payout rate compared to the 22.5% national average. That money goes to fund organizations led by historically marginalized communities advancing progress on the most urgent issues of our time, including over $200 million to voter engagement and mobilization in 2024. 

Still, we’re left asking ourselves the same question we asked when we first started our Get Off Your Assets campaign five years ago: Why are we saving for a rainy day when we’re in the middle of a deluge?  

Get Off Your Assets

Giving more than other DAF donors isn’t enough. There are $228.89 billion in charitable assets sitting in donor-advised funds in the United States, and while private foundations are required to give away 5 percent of their assets each year, donors who receive a tax deduction for contributing to donor-advised funds are under no such obligation. While the most vulnerable among us face crises on multiple fronts, too many people with the means to help let their money sit in DAFs indefinitely. Instead of giving their money away, they watch it grow.   

We first started our Get Off Your Assets campaign as a call to our community to move more money, more urgently to shift power to historically marginalized communities. As democracy hangs in the balance and the climate crisis intensifies, we’re extending that call to other donors, DAF providers, and philanthropy as a whole: this is not the time to hold back. Our Tides-led initiatives are actively working to strengthen grassroots nonprofits as they confront intersecting crises, and they need support right now.  

Moving Money Rapidly for Election-Related Emergencies

With dangerous lies about voter fraud already circulating, Tides’ Healthy Democracy Fund is creating a rapid response pool to provide immediate help to grantees with safety and security needs related to their work on the 2024 election. We’re preparing to support activities that could include emergency ballot curing (fixing technical errors on ballots, which are statistically more likely to occur on ballots cast by people of color, young people, and non-English speakers), litigation related to last-minute voter suppression, and digital and physical security for IT systems and offices. 

Supporting Community-Led Hurricane Relief

Meanwhile, Tides’ Crisis Response Fund has just made its first round of grants to 7 groups supporting grassroots hurricane relief efforts in Western North Carolina. For organizations like the Partnership for Appalachian Girls’ Education (PAGE) — a grantee with Tides’ Advancing Girls Fund whose offices were destroyed by flooding after Helene — these grants are urgently needed not only for their own recovery, but for the recovery of the communities they serve. Even as PAGE workers clean dead fish and debris out of their offices, they have been sending care packages to girls impacted by Helene and supporting connectivity for students whose communication access has been compromised. Much more help is needed, and the Crisis Response Fund hopes to make another round of grants in early 2025, but we will need more funding to make that possible. 

Together, We Can Meet This Moment

All of this work is made possible by the extraordinary activism of Tides’ donor partners. But there’s more to do, and there’s no time to waste. The entire philanthropic community must take action. We have the ability to confront crisis, support long-term resilience, and build a better world. It’s sitting there, in DAF accounts across the country. Get off your assets and join us.