Organizing for National Impact

Strengthening Democracy

Responding to an urgent and imperative need to renovate our democracy.

National Impact works to strengthen American democracy through three interconnected pillars: research and intelligence that grounds the movement in community needs and ecosystem realities, practitioner networks that center state-level leaders as primary decision-makers, and strategic coordination that ensures the democracy ecosystem works together rather than in silos. Each pillar reinforces the others, creating a comprehensive approach to democracy renovation that is grassroots-centered, strategically coordinated, and built for long-term impact.

// PILLAR ONE

Research & Intelligence

National Impact’s Research and Intelligence work is foundational to the democracy ecosystem. Our leading work of State Democracy Scorecards and Landscape Analysis Reports provide critical information not just to the three prongs of our work (Respect Voters Coalition, State Renovators Table, and Council on Common Purpose) but also to the larger democracy ecosystem.

The State Democracy Scorecard is a comprehensive diagnostic of the health of democracy in a given state, measured against PID’s 360° Democracy Standard. It integrates expert analysis of existing policy with community-based intelligence gathering to produce a multi-layered diagnosis of democracy deficits.

The State Democracy Landscape Analysis maps the democracy ecosystem of a given state: its actors, activities, and expertise. This shared intelligence allows a variety of organizations to identify complementary approaches, eliminate duplication, discover opportunities for collaboration, and make informed decisions about where to invest capacity and resources. Where the scorecard diagnoses what needs fixing, the landscape analysis identifies who can fix it and how.

// PILLAR TWO

State Networks

By linking them with the larger democracy ecosystem, we help our state partners coordinate their work and learn from renovation and reform efforts in other states. These connections also help grow durable networks and ongoing coalitions, rather than single-issue campaigns.

The Respect Voters Coalition (RVC) is a practitioner-led network dedicated to protecting, strengthening, renovating, and expanding the ballot initiative process across the United States. Since its formation, RVC has convened ballot initiative practitioners through five coalition meetings.

(November 2024 through April 2025), building a comprehensive understanding of what works and what fails in direct democracy campaigns. The coalition operates through a four-pillar strategic framework: Defend (protect existing processes from legislative attacks), strengthen (build grassroots organizing capacity), renovate (modernize processes for accessibility), and expand (bring meaningful ballot initiative processes to new states).

The State Renovators Table is a peer-led network of state-based democracy leaders committed to reorienting the pro-democracy ecosystem around grassroots needs rather than national, single-issue agendas. Rather than serving as extensions of siloed national campaigns focused on “silver bullet” solutions, these state renovators are building pluralistic, cross-ideological Democracy First coalitions that stitch together currently fragmented policy areas, including both renovation and protection efforts.

// PILLAR THREE

Council on Common Purpose

The Council on Common Purpose serves as the strategic coordination hub for democracy renovation work across the United States. By bringing together national renovators, protectors, and state practitioners, the Council catalyzes a healthy constitutional democracy through coordinated action at both federal and state levels, with particular focus on identifying and supporting high-impact opportunities in tipping point states.

The Council serves as the coordination mechanism for aligning priorities across the democracy ecosystem. Through regular convenings, Council members identify shared strategic opportunities at federal and state levels, coordinate response to emerging threats and opportunities through rapid response protocols, develop shared narrative frameworks that bridge protection and renovation messaging, and create visibility into organizational activities through shared calendars and dashboards.

The Council explicitly works to strengthen connections between federal and state-level democracy work. State democracies, through their election laws and civic culture, shape the incentives for federally elected representatives. Yet federal and state renovators often operate in isolation from each other. The Council bridges this gap by coordinating federal advocacy campaigns with state-level implementation support, ensuring federal policy proposals account for state implementation realities, creating pathways for state practitioners to inform federal strategy, and mobilizing national resources to support state-level opportunities.

The Council recognizes that election protection and democracy renovation must work in tandem rather than as separate tracks. While protection groups focus on immediate threats, renovation organizations work toward structural change. The Council creates space for these communities to identify how protection work can incorporate renovation elements, position renovation goals as necessary responses to system vulnerabilities that protection work exposes, coordinate messaging so protection narratives don’t inadvertently defend dysfunctional status quo, and ensure both communities understand threats and opportunities in real-time.

// LATEST NEWS

NEWSROOM

Voters Approve Open Records and Election Day Registration Reforms

Boston (November 4, 2026) – Declaring democracy in Massachusetts needs reform, voters overwhelmingly passed Question 1 (Public Records) with 86% approval, and Question 4 (Election Day Voter Registration) by a wide margin, while Question 3 (All Party Primaries) came up short of a majority. Local nonbinding questions calling for legislative stipend reform also appeared in…
MAPLE Launches Mass. Lobbying Explorer

MAPLE has launched Lobbying Explorer, a free database showing who has lobbied on Massachusetts bills, on whose behalf, and what positions were taken. Pulling in every lobbyist disclosure filed since 2010, it covers thousands of Massachusetts clients and lobbyists, their activity on tens of thousands of bills, and $1.2 billion in reported lobbying compensation. MAPLE…
BREAKING: Boston Globe endorses Question 3!

To our community members, We wanted to share today’s exciting news that the Boston Globe has endorsed Question 3 to bring All-Party Primaries to Massachusetts state elections! The Globe has now endorsed Partners In Democracy’s full slate of Democracy on the Ballot, having previously endorsed Question 1 (Public Records) and Question 4 (Election Day Registration).…
Question 3 Asks One Thing. Here’s How to See Through the Spin.

On November 3, Massachusetts voters will decide Question 3 to bring All-Party Primaries to state elections. In the final weeks before Election Day, political insiders and operatives are working hard to confuse voters about what it does. Let’s take a closer look at the one question Question 3 actually asks, and the three tactics being…
Partner Spotlight: Alnylam’s Care Navigators and Challengers Collective

GenUnity is proud to share the success of a recent collaboration with Alnylam Pharmaceuticals and Cause Consulting, in support of the Care Navigators in the Challengers Collective. This two-year cohort brings together representatives from Boston Medical Center, Boston Children’s Hospital, and Whittier Street Health Center alongside Alnylam stakeholders. This work marked a meaningful step forward…
Partners In Democracy Receives MassCollab Fund Grant

Fellow PID staff and executive leadership joined to celebrate the moment. From left to right: Sam Hickson, Development Manager, Partners In Democracy; Ilona Rabovsky, Executive Director of GenUnity, Partners In Democracy; Katie Giles, Executive Director of CHIP, Partners In Democracy
Democracy is on the Ballot: Vote Yes on Questions 1, 3, & 4!

Democracy is on the Ballot on November 3rd. Massachusetts has a chance to make our elections more representative and our government more accountable by voting Yes on Questions 1 (Public Records), 3 (All Party Primaries), and 4 (Election Day Registration). Partners In Democracy has led on building support for these ballot measures, elevating the voices…
Here’s What Drew Gasps at TedX Boston

Massachusetts has larger racial voter turnout gaps than Mississippi. We’re one of only two states where the legislature and the governor don’t have to publicly share how decisions are made. We have the least competitive elections in the entire country – over 60% of our elections are uncontested. No choice means no accountability. If you’re a…
CalMatters, MAPLE Launch Landmark Partnership

Two of America’s most innovative state-based civic technology organizations are launching a new coast-to-coast collaboration. CalMatters, which explains California policies and politics and is one of America’s largest nonprofit newsrooms, is partnering with MAPLE (the Massachusetts Platform for Legislative Engagement), a free public platform that helps users track legislation, submit and read legislative testimony, and…
Our Vision for the Next 250

It is fitting that Massachusetts leads the way in renovating our democracy – showing how we can solve our biggest problems.