How does MVP relate to other progressive organizations?

There are so many effective and strategic groups to support with your time, money, and energy — in fact, MVP coordinates closely with many of them.

That said, here is an overview of how MVP fits in the broader "political ecosystem":

  1. Role in the movement: Our role is as a funder, capacity builder, and collaborative catalyst. In this way, our job is not to lead the work but to resource and strengthen the work. As a funder, we operate like a “mutual fund” for political giving: We raise money from donors, then channel it toward the most impactful organizations and power-building work around the country. As a capacity builder, we help groups strengthen, scale, safeguard, and sustain their work. As a collaborative catalyst, we spur groups at every level to work together so that the movement is operating as more than the sum of its parts.
  2. Strategic approach: While many funders focus on electoral politics, community organizing, and building the progressive movement, we work at the intersection of all three. Our goal is to create conditions for governing power that lasts, by investing in three connected strategies: 1) Expanding local organizing; 2) Scaling up new media; and 3) Emboldening Democrats to fight for popular agendas that actually give voters a reason to turn out to vote.
  3. Scope of work: We not only 1) mobilize money, but we also 2) provide capacity-building support to help our partners strengthen, sustain, and scale their work; and 3) proactively work to maximize collaboration across the progressive movement and the Democratic big-tent coalition.
  4. Targeting: Rather than focusing on a narrow set of geographies, issues, or constituencies, we fund long-term, multi-issue organizing and civic engagement in all the top swing states and contests up and down the ballot — with a focus on working-class voters and communities across all races.
  5. Scale of operations: Since 2016, we have helped move over $160 million in partisan funding to more than 600 groups across 45 states. 
  6. Staffing: Our grantmaking is led by a team of in-house advisors and capacity builders with on-the-ground relationships and deep expertise in organizing, movements, and political strategy. Our advisors are not your traditional “program officers,” making grants from behind a computer screen: They carry deep knowledge of the organizations we support, as well as the state and national movement “ecosystems” in which they operate.
  7. Success metrics: Rather than focusing on narrow electoral metrics like “Cost Per Vote” (CPV), which incentivize short-term, transactional voter mobilization and disincentivize deep engagement with long-neglected voting constituencies, we take a “triple-bottom-line” approach to measuring success: 1) Winning elections, 2) Building civic power that lasts, and 3) Enacting bold policy progress at every level.
  8. Partisan affiliation: MVP is not affiliated with the Democratic Party or any party; instead, we fund the organizing and movement-building work needed to shift the center of political gravity toward bold, broadly popular policy agendas, and to expand what is politically possible in the short- and long-term.
  9. Grant cycle: MVP scans for funding needs year-round and distributes grants every month, or as frequently as multiple times per week during rapid-response periods and near Election Day.
  10. Donor community: Since 2016, we have partnered with over 34,000 donors and funders, large and small, from those who stretch to give $100 monthly to those who can move millions of dollars per year. Additionally, we are here not only to move money, but to transform the culture of political giving. Through our donor organizing, advising, and education programs, we are working to grow a movement of donors and funders supporting long-term infrastructure and power building.

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