Leadership Conference Education Fund

The organization has received large amounts of donations from left-of-center foundations, including the Gates Foundation, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. ^{2 3 4}

Background

The Leadership Conference Education Fund is the educational arm of the left-wing Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. The LCCHR is a network of more than 240 left-wing organizations that promotes left-wing views on issues such as voting access, civil rights, LGBT interests, education policy, and other issues. ⁵

The LCEF was founded in 1969 as the education arm for the LCCHR. The organization works with the LCCHR’s member organizations to promote its viewpoints to state, local, and federal governments. The LCEF serves as the focal point of a coalition to promote its views and expand civil rights. ⁶

Democracy

Under its democracy priority, the Leadership Conference Education Fund campaigned to get as many people counted as possible under the 2020 Census. It established the Census Counts Campaign to coordinate LCCHR member organizations to count as many people as possible. The LCEF has long been involved in campaigns to put left-of-center judges on the federal courts. The LCEF is also involved in so-called voting rights issues, such as its efforts to prevent adoption of voter identification. ⁷

Justice

Under its justice priority, the LCEF works on immigration-related issues. The organization is opposed to most enforcement of immigration laws. The organization is also working on criminal justice policies, championing putting fewer people in jail and prison. The LCEF is also working on police reform. It has created the “New Era of Public Safety” initiative which is an outline of reducing police presence. ⁸

Inclusion and Opportunity

Under its inclusion and opportunity priority, the organization fights for expanding the government’s role in the economy. It also works to change the education policy and to increase government spending on education. The LCEF is also increasing its initiative to combat hate crimes and encourage local law enforcement agencies to report hate crimes to the FBI. It created the Communities Against Hate initiative with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The LCEF works to create communications and internet policies that promote equity. It also works to expand demographic diversity in media and access to broadband internet. ⁹

Activities

All Voting Is Local

In March 2018, the Leadership Conference Education Fund launched All Voting Is Local as a campaign program in partnership with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the American Constitution Society, the Campaign Legal Center, and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The campaign focused on state and local election administration, opposing voter identification requirements, and advocating for expanded mail-in voting and ballot drop boxes across several contested states. In June 2022, All Voting Is Local became an independent 501(c)(3) organization, at which point the LCEF transferred approximately $4.1 million to the Amalgamated Charitable Foundation to support the spinoff. By the time of its independence, the program had grown to 33 dedicated staff operating across eight states. ^{10 11 12}

Data Equity and Census Programs

A primary focus of the LCEF has been advancing the “disaggregation” of federal and state race and ethnicity data, or the collection and reporting of information on racial and ethnic subgroups at a more granular level, which the LCEF argues is necessary to identify and address health and social disparities. In summer 2023, the LCEF launched the Data Disaggregation Action Network (D-DAN), a grantee network of state and national organizations working to expand disaggregated data collection in health and health care settings. In December 2023, the LCEF published “Disaggregation Nation: A Landscape Review of State Race & Ethnicity Data Collection,” a 50-state analysis of state-level standards for collecting race and ethnicity data, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The LCEF held annual “Disaggregation Nation” summits in 2023 and 2024, convening its D-DAN grantees and other advocates to coordinate state and national data equity campaigns. ^{13 14 15}

Higher Education Policy

Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which struck down race-conscious college admissions programs, the LCEF convened the Higher Education Civil Rights Coalition, a group of left-wing civil rights and education organizations, to develop a policy response agenda. The coalition published “We Shall Not Be Moved: A Policy Agenda to Achieve the National Imperative of Racial Equity and Diversity in Higher Education,” a report outlining recommended federal, state, and institutional policies to promote racial preferences in admissions and campus environments without relying on race as a direct admissions factor. ^{16 17 18}

Second Trump Administration

Beginning in January 2025, the LCEF intensified its opposition activities in response to the Trump administration’s early executive actions, which included the revocation of Biden administration executive orders on equity, voting access, and civil rights enforcement. The LCEF’s affiliated “Trump Administration Civil and Human Rights Rollbacks” tracker catalogued executive actions and agency decisions that the LCEF characterized as harmful to civil and human rights. Among the actions documented were the January 22, 2025 “litigation freeze” by the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, which halted new civil rights cases, as well as President Donald Trump‘s January 20, 2025 revocation of Biden administration executive orders related to census apportionment, voter registration, and artificial intelligence oversight. ¹⁹

The Trump administration’s January 2025 executive orders ending federal diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs presented a direct challenge to the LCEF’s data equity work. The administration revoked the Biden administration’s statistical policy directive that had updated federal standards for race and ethnicity data collection, a directive the LCEF’s Data Disaggregation Action Network had advocated for over several years. In August 2025, Meeta Anand, the LCEF’s senior director of census and data equity, told National Public Radio (NPR) that Trump’s proposal to conduct a new census using 2024 election data represented an attempt to “undermine and sow doubt on existing data” for political purposes. ²⁰

In April 2026, the LCEF and its affiliated LCCHR condemned a Trump administration executive order on federal elections that directed the Election Assistance Commission to require documentary proof of citizenship for the federal voter registration form and directed the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and other agencies to compile citizenship data for cross-referencing with state voter rolls. The LCEF called on state attorneys general and election officials to challenge the order, arguing it would restrict voter access and exceeded the president’s constitutional authority over election administration. ²¹

Leadership

In March 2022, Maya Wiley was named the president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, as well as the Leadership Conference Education Fund. She was previously involved with racial justice initiatives at the ACLU and at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. She was also an employee of the Civil Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and had previously served as counsel to former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D). She ran unsuccessfully in the 2021 New York City Democratic mayoral primary, placing third. Wiley remained the president and CEO of the LCCHR as of 2026. ^{22 23 5}

As of 2026, Dorian Warren was the chair of the LCEF board of directors. At that time, Warren was also the co-president of Community Change and its 501(c)(4) arm, Community Change Action, and was a board member of the Economic Security Project, a left-of-center organization that he co-founded that advocates for universal basic income programs. ^{24 25}

As of 2026, Susan K. Thomas, the president of the Melville Charitable Trust, was serving as the board treasurer, and Cathy Albisa, the vice president of institutional and sectoral change at Race Forward, was serving as the board secretary. ²⁵

Other members of the board of directors, as of 2026, included Michael D. Calhoun of the Center for Responsible Lending,  Color of Change founder James Rucker, and Judith L. Lichtman. ²⁵

Foundation Funders

In 2002, the Leadership Conference Education Fund received $100,000 from the Open Society Foundations (OSF) to support its “public education campaign to promote sensible policy responses to September 11 as they affect civil rights, civil liberties and immigration issues.” ²⁶

From 2016 to 2023, OSF gave the LCEF approximately $6.1 million. Its grants were earmarked for general operations support, support for its Americans for Financial Reform project, its role as a delegation to the Regional Meeting of the UN International Decade for People of African Descent in 2017, to support its efforts to influence the U.S. Census, and to support “anti-hate incident aggregation” initiatives. ²⁷

From 2015 to 2024, the LCEF received approximately $10.8 million from  the Gates Foundation. ²

From 2009 to 2025, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation gave the LCEF roughly $5.7 million in grants covering voting policy advocacy, criminal justice reform, and voter mobilization efforts for targeted minority groups. ⁴