Eight ways fundraising is defending democracy under pressure

Democracy and civic space are under pressure — so what can fundraising do about this? It can’t save democracy single-handedly, but at EFA’s 2026 European Fundraising4Democracy Tour eight European practitioners showed it can do a lot, from turning a news moment into 45,000 actions in days, to converting young people’s goodwill into lasting participation, and making crowdfunding a form of solidarity under repression.

A year on from the 2025 EFA European Fundraising4Democracy Tour, democracy and civic space remain under extreme pressure, with continuing attacks on organisations and individuals, and new legal and funding barriers. Platform reactions to EU regulation of political advertising, particularly Meta’s, have also made it harder for NGOs to communicate, build communities and raise funds online. In an EFA survey of 170 organisations across 21 EU countries, a majority said the regulation was harming their freedom of expression and ability to act.

“So what can fundraising do about this?” asked EFA executive director Eduard Marček as he opened this year’s European Fundraising4Democracy Tour — a dynamic online event showcasing the best of European fundraising for democracy and civic space. “It probably cannot save democracy as such, but it can help and support organisations which are defending rights and democratic values. It can build broad bases of supporters and it can give people a practical way to express their voice and to make themselves heard.”

Speakers shared practical examples of how fundraising, crowdfunding, and civic engagement can help defend democratic values with attendees from 15 countries.

Here are the eight examples presented, and their key lessons.

1. Be ready to capitalise on media attention

Ali Walker Davis of Forward Action in the UK explained how to turn media attention into action quickly. “The news economy is speeding up and attention has a rapidly decreasing half-life, so if it’s difficult to move quickly, you’re going to miss those opportunities to engage,” she said. 

After a far-right rally in the UK, Forward Action helped Hope Not Hate launch a simple handraiser within days. It asked people to add their name to the ‘biggest record of hope against hate’, then to leaflet their area with a message of unity, and later, to donate. 45,000 people took the first action, and the campaign gained 33,000 new email subscribers, 4,000 volunteers (who distributed 1m leaflets in one weekend) and £30,000 in donations.

The secret, Ali said, is readiness: knowing which moments you’ll respond to and what roles supporters can play; having templates for emails, action pages, sign-up forms, donation journeys and tracking; and being clear about who signs off. “Being ready with a simple action is better than something that’s very robust on the policy front, but takes too long to get out. Actions like sign, donate, share, or send a message of solidarity are really effective, particularly when there are people on the frontline coming under attack.”

2. Use Meta’s targeting limits as opportunities

Ján Plišnák of PS:Digital in Slovakia spoke about reaching new audiences despite Meta’s restrictions. Custom audiences can be especially useful: ask similar NGOs, or organisations whose followers share an affinity with your cause, to share their audience for your campaign, he said. “It’s GDPR-friendly because you don’t share any personal information – just an anonymised audience.”

Ján described a campaign for the Milan Simecka Foundation. Simecka’s grandson leads the country’s biggest (pro-democracy) opposition movement but has no connection with the foundation. Even so, the government exploited the shared name to paint the foundation as political, and grants and partnerships dried up.

“We turned the targeting limitation into an opportunity: if we couldn’t target civil society or democracy directly, we’d hack the algorithm indirectly. We teamed up with friendly, like-minded pages and invited them to share their audiences. We also used a wide mix of creative formats to give the algorithm as many chances as possible to learn, adapt, and deliver results.”

3. Turn young people’s willingness to engage into lasting participation

In France, 8 in 10 young people say they’re ready to get involved in a cause they care about: the challenge is turning that into lasting participation, said Oriane Penny-Lepastier, from France’s Institut de L’Engagement.

Since 2012 the Institut has supported more than 11,000 young people who have shown their potential through volunteering, civic service or community action, selecting them for what they’ve done rather than education or background. “We see young people that have organised projects, helped vulnerable people, protected the environment or supported children in community actions. Through this, they discover something very powerful: that they can be useful, that they can change something in the society they live in – a feeling that’s very important for democracy.”

The key, she said, is for universities, employers and institutions to recognise and value the skills that engagement creates: recognition builds confidence, and confidence makes further engagement possible. Democratic education must also keep pace with AI, so the Institut is building algorithmic literacy into its work. “We need to give them the knowledge to understand the world, and the power to believe that they can change it.”

4. Look beyond traditional funding models to build democracy from the ground up

Martina Turola from The Good Lobby in Italy shared a voting rights campaign that shows what funding democracy from the ground up takes: a mixed funding base, and campaigning and fundraising treated as one activity. The campaign addressed a gap that leaves around 5 million Italians away from home for study, work or healthcare unable to vote where they live. Beginning as a grassroots effort, The Good Lobby joined in 2018 to provide support.

Because Italian philanthropy tends not to engage with civil rights work, the team looked beyond traditional funders, starting with Guerilla Foundation which backs grassroots activists, then building on existing relationships, including with Open Society and Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo. Family office support and a base of individual donors followed, enabling a move from awareness-raising to more sophisticated advocacy: a petition, a report showing Italy was the only big European country without remote voting, and strategic litigation. A test of offsite voting was secured for the 2025 referendums, letting around 67,000 people apply to register.

To build a stable donor base, the team reached new audiences through university and city tours, sports champions as ambassadors, symbolic ballot boxes and crowdfunding. “If a campaign creates a strong sense of ownership among citizens, mobilisation can become a way of building a constituency of supporters,” Martina said. A popular initiative bill has since helped put offsite voting into the electoral law reform now under discussion, and she expects a route to securing it for the next general election even if that reform fails.

5. Think bigger with crowdfunding

Gvantsa Kakauridze of Georgia’s Orbeliani Foundation explained how crowdfunding has become a tool for solidarity and resistance as democracy backslides, where it was once mostly used for individual causes. The turning point came two years ago, when the governing party suspended the country’s EU integration until 2028: people took to the streets, and the government responded with violence and repressive laws.

Giving changed in response. People began raising money for the families of prisoners of conscience. Independent media outlets, cut off from foreign funding by new laws, ran campaigns to survive. Protesters, who have gathered every evening for almost 600 days and been fined for it, are also supported through crowdfunding. And because donations can be anonymous, it offers a safe way to participate for those who cannot protest openly, such as public-sector workers.

Monthly campaigns now support prisoners’ families, and donors see themselves as part of a collective effort. “It’s become the way to be an active citizen,” Gvantsa said. “Fundraising can build trust and civic networks, it can protect independent voices, support people facing repression, sustain civic participation, and turn individual donations into collective actions.”

6. Understand your audience to remove barriers and build support

Almost half of Ireland’s LGBTQ+ community are suffering economic hardship, and LGBTQ+ charities face a funding shortfall that threatens their services. National datasets often overlook sexuality, so TU Dublin and the Outhouse LGBTQ+ Centre surveyed LGBTQ+ and straight people to find out who supports LGBTQ+ charities, how the community’s giving differs from the general population’s, and what barriers prevent participation in the workforce and society.

Sharing early results, Antonio Vega, a PhD researcher in behavioural economics at TU Dublin, said LGBTQ+ respondents were more likely to be left-wing, younger, on lower household incomes and non-religious. They were less likely to give money but more likely to volunteer, fundraise and campaign. Donors to LGBTQ+ charities also differ from the traditional Irish donor, being younger, and driven by fairness and social justice rather than religious obligation or tax incentives. “We also discovered something really amazing, that 81% of financial donors to Irish LGBTQ+ causes identify as non-LGBTQ+,” he said. About 66% are also women, many of them young, and 100% felt motivated by altruism.

Antonio drew three lessons for LGBTQ+ causes. First, move away from tax-incentive appeals and frame campaigns around systemic change, justice and fairness. Second, “value your non-monetary assets and recognise volunteering, campaigning and advocacy as core pillars for donor retention, because these activists are your long-time organisational allies”. Third, keep pushing for sexual orientation and gender identity questions in the census.

7. Use cultural participation to launch and sustain a movement

Sara Tokina of the Belarus Outside Sound System charity music movement shared how a community in exile uses music to build solidarity and awareness, and to raise funds. The movement grew out of repression and exile: the violent suppression of the 2020 protests forced much of Belarus’s cultural community to flee. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, those in political exile needed to show that Belarusians who opposed dictatorship also opposed war and stood with Ukraine. “In March 2022, we brought Belarusian artists together and organised our first event – a rave with donation-based entry. We raised €4,000 for a Ukrainian foundation, which helped children affected by the war.”

That event established a two-level fundraising model: institutional donors and cultural partners, plus audience giving, music sales and visibility generated by events. The movement has since organised a four-city international tour, a digital compilation (plus vinyl edition) of 13 Belarusian producers, a charity festival, and four simultaneous events across Poland on the day of Belarus’s 2025 presidential election. Together, these have reached more than 80,000 streams and over 10,000 event visitors, raised more than €30,000, and brought international attention to the situation in Belarus.

Sara drew four lessons: participation can lead to giving; people need to understand where their money goes; partnerships connect cultural participation with direct support; and formats must stay flexible. “Our community is spread across different countries, and we can’t stay together in one physical space,” she said. “But we still can gather around music. From that shared experience, trust, visibility and support can grow.”

8. Fight disinformation by playing to your strengths

Larissa Probst of the German Fundraising Association (DFRV) described how civil society organisations in Germany responded within 48 hours when far-right party AfD launched an “exposé platform”. It aimed to expose alleged NGO mismanagement, mixing real information with misleading claims and AI-generated videos, and published personal data about volunteer leaders. Recognising that every click would feed the platform traffic and amplify it, the DFRV and an alliance of partners launched a coordinated response.

They emailed organisations advising them not to click on or share the AfD’s content, with recommendations for reframing the narrative, and ready-to-use materials, and ran an online exchange to align messaging and coordinate next steps. Each organisation contributed what it already did best: one offered legal templates for requesting removal of false information, another took a secure copy of the platform’s content so groups could check it for errors about themselves, and others offered communications mentoring for smaller groups. “None of us did anything we’d never done before, but instead really used our expertise,” said Larissa.

The platform quickly lost momentum as a result and was not used at the party’s national conference as planned. Larissa’s takeaway was that specialisation, shared tools and collective capacity matter more than size. “We don’t always need a lot of resources, but just to share what we already know and the strengths which are available.”

The EFA European Fundraising4Democracy Tour will return in September 2027. Catch up with the presentations from 2025 and 2026 here, read the 2025 summary, and for more useful support, check out our resources page here.