Fonds Demokratie verteidigen

The “Defending Democracy” donation fund run by Effektiv Spenden supports civil society organisations that protect democratic institutions, civil rights, and the rule of law. It launched in February 2024 as a beta limited to initiatives in Germany; since August 2025 it has been a regular offering funding organisations worldwide.¹

Three roles are kept separate. The research institute Power for Democracies (P4D) analyses where democracies are most at risk, which countermeasures work, and which organisations can put additional funding to effective use. Effektiv Spenden pools the donations. For donations from Germany, the Common Good Fund Germany (CGFG) is the recipient; it carries out the legal and tax review of international grants and decides independently how the money is passed on, guided by P4D's recommendations. Donations from Switzerland go directly to the recipient organisations.¹

Why “Defending Democracy” matters

For the statistically average person worldwide, the level of democracy in 2025 has fallen back to that of 1978.² The gains of the third wave of democratisation have largely been erased.

• Around 74% of the world's population, roughly 6 billion people, live in autocracies.
• Only 7%, around 600 million people, live in liberal democracies, the lowest share in over 50 years.
• Worldwide there are now 92 autocracies and 87 democracies.
• Freedom of expression is the worst-affected aspect: 44 countries have deteriorated on it over the past decade.²

The map below shows the global distribution of closed autocracies, electoral autocracies, electoral democracies, and liberal democracies:

Political regimes worldwide according to the Regimes of the World classification. Data from V-Dem, processed by Our World in Data.³

The long-term development of the share of the world's population living in democracies and autocracies shows the same trend:

Share of the world's population by political regime. Data from V-Dem, processed by Our World in Data.⁴

How the fund selects

Power for Democracies first identifies countries where democracy needs particular attention and where an active civil society has a realistic chance of making a difference. For those countries it analyses the most promising countermeasures, evaluates the organisations implementing them, and takes their funding gaps into account.⁵ For every recommendation P4D publishes three documents: the recommendation itself, a detailed evaluation of the organisation, and a country report.⁵

Since 31 July 2025, new donations to the fund have been allocated on the basis of these recommendations.⁶ The portfolio currently covers Turkey (Media and Law Studies Association, November 2025, and the Turkey Human Rights Litigation Support Project, June 2026), Argentina (Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales, November 2025), Italy (Associazione Antigone, March 2026), and Indonesia (Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, May 2026). For the USA, P4D has so far only mapped the threats to the 2026 elections and the tactics that might counter them, and reports that it is still looking for organisations to recommend.⁵

The focus is on approaches such as strategic litigation, protection of press freedom and freedom of expression, protection of people and organisations under threat, and advocacy. There is no fixed geographic allocation formula.

Who is supported

The second half of 2025 is the most recent round allocated, and it goes to three organisations from the Power for Democracies portfolio. Effektiv Spenden has not yet published a more recent allocation.⁷

Earlier rounds went to organisations in Germany and Europe. From the first half of 2025, HateAid (€100,000), Verfassungsblog (€100,000), Alliance4Europe (€105,000), and the Flow Fund für Ostdeutschland (€30,000) each received core funding for 2026.⁶ From the fourth quarter of 2024, €377,000 went to HateAid, €150,000 to Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte and €50,000 to RAA Sachsen, paid out in April 2025.¹ The rounds up to and including 2024 date from the fund's beta phase and were limited to Germany.

Impact and transparency

Effektiv Spenden reports publicly on every funding round, naming recipients, amounts, and reasoning; Power for Democracies publishes a recommendation, an evaluation, and a country report for each organisation it recommends.¹⁵ There is no independent cost-per-outcome estimate for democracy funding of the kind that exists in global health.

Three points belong to any assessment of the fund:

1. Up to 20% of the fund's resources may be used for the work of Power for Democracies itself, because the institute does not yet have a sustainable funding base.¹
2. The Common Good Fund Germany may retain at most 4% of the money for its own operations, such as legal costs; the currently agreed figure is 2.5%.¹
3. The fund is steered by Stephan Schwahlen, who is also a non-operating co-founder of Power for Democracies.¹⁸ Evaluation and fund management are therefore personally linked, which Effektiv Spenden discloses.

Why the Wealth for the World Fund funds “Defending Democracy”

Democracy funding cannot be assessed with the kind of robust cost-per-outcome estimates available in global health. That makes how a selection is arrived at all the more important. This fund is the only route in the German-speaking world that makes the recommendations of a research institute built for this purpose available to donors, and it discloses its selection process, recipients, and amounts round by round.

The separation of roles matters as well: research, pooling of donations, and legal review and payout sit with different organisations. For Wealth for the World that is the decisive difference from funds where recommendation and grantmaking rest in one hand.

Further information is available on the “Defending Democracy” fund website and from Power for Democracies.