National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a private nonprofit grantmaking organization that supports the development of democratic institutions around the world. Though formally private, the NED is almost entirely funded by the U.S. Congress. Annually, the NED distributes more than 2,000 grants with an average value of $50,000 in more than 100 countries. ^{1 2}

The NED does not fund programs active in the United States, though it does fund American organizations promoting democracy abroad. ³

Detractors have accused the NED of functioning as an extension of U.S. diplomacy and intelligence that undermines hostile foreign governments.

History

Though similar concepts had been considered in the past, the origin of the National Endowment for Democracy is credited to a speech given by then-President Ronald Reagan at the Palace of Westminster, in which he proposed a program “to foster the infrastructure of democracy–the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities–which allows a people to choose their own way, to develop their own culture, to reconcile their own differences through peaceful means.” ⁴

To this end, the American Political Foundation, a bipartisan think tank with a similar mission, was given a $300,000 grant by the U.S. Agency for International Development “to determine how the U.S. can best contribute–as a nation–to the global campaign for democracy now gathering force.” The grant transformed the Foundation into the Democracy Program which recommended the establishment of an independent nonprofit with federal funding that would become the NED. In 1983, the NED was given an initial budget of $31.3 million, though its funding soon fell to $18 million. Though the NED accepts private donations, nearly all its funding has come from annual appropriations from U.S. Congress. ⁵

Core Grantees

The National Endowment for Democracy maintains four “core grantees” who consistently receive a large share of funding. ⁶ The four organizations have been characterized as allegedly striking a balance between the political right and left, with the Solidarity Center and National Democratic Institute leaning left, and the Center for International Private Enterprise and International Republican Institute leaning right. ⁷

American Center for International Labor Solidarity

The American Center for International Labor Solidarity, also known as the Solidarity Center, supports the development of labor unions around the world. The organization has been accused of supporting coups against foreign governments, including a failed 2002 coup against Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez. ⁸

The Solidarity Center was founded in 1997 by the AFL-CIO, the largest labor union federation in the United States. ⁹

Center for International Private Enterprise

The Center for International Private Enterprise develops markets around the world in cooperation with private and public actors. ¹⁰

International Republican Institute

The International Republican Institute functions similarly to the NED on a smaller scale by making grants to democracy-promoting organizations around the world. ¹¹

National Democratic Institute for International Affairs

The National Democratic Institute for International Affairs supports election infrastructure in countries around the world. ^{12 13}

Proposed Trump Administration Cuts

In 2018, President Donald Trump made the first effort to significantly cut funding to the National Endowment for Democracy since 1993. President Trump’s proposal would have cut funding to the NED by two-thirds and eliminated funding for NED’s four “core grantees,” forcing these organizations to compete for grants from the U.S. Department of State. The proposal was ultimately not implemented. ^{14 15}

Leadership

Damon Wilson has been the president of the National Endowment for Democracy since July 2021. Prior, Wilson served as executive vice president of the Atlantic Council where he led its transition to the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. Prior, Wilson held a variety of roles in the White House National Security Council under Presidents Barack Obama (D) and George W. Bush (R). He served as executive secretary and chief of staff at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, deputy director in the Private Office of former NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson, in the U.S. Department of State’s Office of European Security and Political Affairs and “China desk,” and at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. ¹⁶

Controversy

Tool of American Diplomacy

Both domestic and foreign sources have claimed that the National Endowment for Democracy is a tool of the U.S. government used to undermine foreign governments considered hostile to American interests. According to the Chinese government, the NED “has subverted lawful governments and cultivated pro-U.S. puppet forces around the world under the pretext of promoting democracy,” and should be considered a “second CIA.” The NED was allegedly active in the fall of the Soviet Union, the Georgian “Rose Revolution,” the Ukrainian “Orange Revolution,” the Arab Spring, and Hong Kong’s pro-independence movement. ¹⁷

An op-ed in the Chinese state media Global Times claimed “the agency has been faithfully preaching hegemonic doctrines of the US government,” and pointed to numerous anti-government and separatist organizations in China it alleged were funded by the NED, including the World Uyghur Congress and the Tibetan Youth Congress. ¹⁸

In 2015, the NED became the first NGO to be banned from Russia after the government declared it an “undesirable organization.” ¹⁹

The left-wing Monthly Review Online has characterized the NED as “a CIA offshoot.” ²⁰

The left-wing Jacobin called the NED, “a vehicle for Putin-style foreign meddling,” and points out that one of the NED’s first grant recipients was a private funder of the pro-American Contras during the Nicaraguan Civil War. ²¹

Global Disinformation Index

According to a report by Gabe Kaminsky at the Washington Examiner, the NED has funded a group of British and American anti-“disinformation” organizations that have created a blacklist of conservative media and opinion outlets, costing them millions of dollars in advertising revenue. ^{22 23}

The U.S. Department of State has given $330,000 to the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a British nonprofit with two American affiliates. Of that funding, $230,000 came through the NED. ²⁴

The GDI combats alleged disinformation by compiling a “dynamic exclusion list” which rates 2,000 websites for their risk of “disinformation.” Major advertising companies, like Microsoft-owned Xandr, paid GDI for access to the list and reportedly used it to blacklist sites it deemed high-risk. ^{25 26}

High-risk entries on the GDI list include numerous right-of-center and libertarian outlets erroneously associated with misinformation, including Reason, the Washington Examiner, and the Daily Wire. The top-ten high-risk entries on a list Kaminsky viewed were all right-leaning outlets, while all of the outlets ranked as low-risk were left-leaning (with the exception of the Wall Street Journal), including the New York Times, National Public Radio, and the Huffington Post. ^{27 28}

Democratic Voice of Burma

Since 1993, the NED has supported the Democratic Voices of Burma (DVB), a Norway-based group of Burmese exiles opposed to the military regime in Myanmar, also known as Burma. In 2009, the NED made a $400,000 grant to the DVB. In 2010, the DVB presented a defector who claimed that the Burmese government had started a nuclear weapons development program. At the behest and expense of the NED, the defector was vetted by former U.S. weapons scientist Robert Kelley, who concluded that the defector’s claims were accurate. ²⁹

However, upon presentation of the intelligence to the U.S. government, the claims were cast into doubt or dismissed by numerous experts. Both the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. Department of Energy, which maintains U.S. nuclear-weapons laboratories, rejected the defector’s claims. ³⁰

Deleting Ukrainian Grants

In March 2022, the left-wing Monthly Review Online reported that the NED deleted all public records of grants given to Ukrainian programs between 2014 and 2022. An archived webpage showed 334 grants worth $22,394,281 that are now absent from the site. MR Online claimed that the results were removed at the behest of the U.S. government to conceal the NED’s involvement in Ukrainian nationalist groups. ³¹

As of February 2023, the NED’s Ukrainian grants still do not show up in search results. ³²

Rep. Elise Stefanik

In 2021, left-wing advocacy group Accountable.US demanded the resignation of U.S. Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY) from the board of the NED. According to Accountable.US, Rep. Stefanik “actively worked to destroy” democracy in the United States by engaging in conspiracy theories that the 2020 election had been stolen from President Donald Trump (R), including voting to reject President Joe Biden’s (D) electoral votes and endorsing numerous pro-Trump lawsuits. ³³

1. “About The National Endowment For Democracy.” National Endowment for Democracy. Accessed February 17, 2023. https://www.ned.org/about/.
2. “Frequently Asked Questions.” National Endowment for Democracy. Accessed February 17, 2023. https://www.ned.org/about/faqs/.
3. “Frequently Asked Questions.” National Endowment for Democracy. Accessed February 17, 2023. https://www.ned.org/about/faqs/.
4. “History.” National Endowment for Democracy. Accessed February 17, 2023. https://www.ned.org/about/.
5. “History.” National Endowment for Democracy. Accessed February 17, 2023. https://www.ned.org/about/.
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7. Marcetic, Branko. “Don’t Mourn “Democracy Promotion”.” Jacobin. Accessed February 18, 2023. https://jacobin.com/2018/03/trump-national-endowment-democracy-foreign-policy.
8. Scipes, Kim. “The 2002 Coup in Venezuela: Was the AFL-CIO Involved?” Industrial Workers of the World. September 26, 2006. Accessed February 18, 2023. https://archive.iww.org/node/2891/.
9. “Who We Are.” Solidarity Center. Accessed February 18, 2023. https://www.solidaritycenter.org/who-we-are/.
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11. “What We Do.” International Republican Institute. Accessed February 18, 2023. https://www.iri.org/.
12. “Frequently Asked Questions.” National Endowment for Democracy. Accessed February 17, 2023. https://www.ned.org/about/faqs/.
13. “What We Do.” National Democratic Institute. Accessed February 18, 2023. https://www.ndi.org/what-we-do.
14. Christman, Kristin. “The National Endowment for “Democracy”: A Second CIA.” Countercurrents. May 30, 2022. Accessed February 18, 2023. https://countercurrents.org/2022/05/the-national-endowment-for-democracy-a-second-cia/.
15. Rogin, Josh. “The Trump administration wants to dismantle Ronald Reagan’s ‘infrastructure of democracy’.” The Washington Post. March 4, 2018. Accessed February 18, 2023. https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:851mnFXqBkEJ:https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/the-trump-administration-wants-to-dismantle-ronald-reagans-infrastructure-of-democracy/2018/03/04/8b94d7f6-1e54-11e8-ae5a-16e60e4605f3_story.html&cd=25&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us.
16. “Damon Wilson.” National Endowment for Democracy. Accessed February 18, 2023. https://www.ned.org/experts/damon-wilson/.
17. “Face Sheet on the National Endowment for Democracy.” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China. May 7, 2022. Accessed February 18, 2023. https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/zxxx_662805/202205/t20220507_10683090.html#:~:text=In%20July%202015%2C%20NED%20was,to%20discredit%20Russian%20army%20service.%E2%80%9D.
18. Ping, Xin. “National Endowment for Disgrace trashes good name of democracy.” Global Times. November 18, 2021. Accessed February 18, 2023. https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202111/1239281.shtml
19. Luhn, Alec. “National Endowment for Democracy is first ‘undesirable’ NGO banned in Russia.” The Guardian. July 28, 2015. Accessed February 18, 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/28/national-endowment-for-democracy-banned-russia.
20. Kuzmarov, Jeremy. “National Endowment for Democracy deletes records of funding projects in Ukraine.” MR Online. March 8, 2022. Accessed February 18, 2023. https://mronline.org/2022/03/08/national-endowment-for-democracy-deletes-records-of-funding-projects-in-ukraine/.
21. Marcetic, Branko. “Don’t Mourn “Democracy Promotion”.” Jacobin. Accessed February 18, 2023. https://jacobin.com/2018/03/trump-national-endowment-democracy-foreign-policy.
22. Kaminsky, Gabe. “Disinformation Inc: Meet the Groups hauling in cash to secretly blacklist conservative news.” Washington Examiner. February 9, 2023. Accessed February 17, 2023. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/equality-not-elitism/disinformation-conservative-media-censored-blacklists.
23. Kaminsky, Gabe. “Disinformation Inc: Meet the Groups hauling in cash to secretly blacklist conservative news.” Washington Examiner. February 9, 2023. Accessed February 17, 2023. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/equality-not-elitism/disinformation-group-secretly-blacklisting-right-wing-outlets-bankrolled-state-department.
24. ^[1] “Gabe Kaminsky.” Twitter. February 9, 2023. Accessed February 17, 2023. https://twitter.com/gekaminsky/status/1623838059543363587.
25. Kaminsky, Gabe. “Disinformation Inc: Meet the Groups hauling in cash to secretly blacklist conservative news.” Washington Examiner. February 9, 2023. Accessed February 17, 2023. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/equality-not-elitism/disinformation-conservative-media-censored-blacklists.
26. Kaminsky, Gabe. “Disinformation Inc: Meet the Groups hauling in cash to secretly blacklist conservative news.” Washington Examiner. February 9, 2023. Accessed February 17, 2023. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/equality-not-elitism/disinformation-group-secretly-blacklisting-right-wing-outlets-bankrolled-state-department.
27. Kaminsky, Gabe. “Disinformation Inc: Meet the Groups hauling in cash to secretly blacklist conservative news.” Washington Examiner. February 9, 2023. Accessed February 17, 2023. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/equality-not-elitism/disinformation-conservative-media-censored-blacklists.
28. Kaminsky, Gabe. “Disinformation Inc: Meet the Groups hauling in cash to secretly blacklist conservative news.” Washington Examiner. February 9, 2023. Accessed February 17, 2023. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/equality-not-elitism/disinformation-group-secretly-blacklisting-right-wing-outlets-bankrolled-state-department.
29. Engelberg, Stephen. Experts, Intelligence Agencies Question a Defector’s Claims About Burma’s Nuclear Ambitions.” ProPublica. November 12, 2010. Accessed February 18, 2023. https://www.propublica.org/article/experts-intel-agencies-question-a-defectors-claims-about-burmas-nuclear.
30. Engelberg, Stephen. Experts, Intelligence Agencies Question a Defector’s Claims About Burma’s Nuclear Ambitions.” ProPublica. November 12, 2010. Accessed February 18, 2023. https://www.propublica.org/article/experts-intel-agencies-question-a-defectors-claims-about-burmas-nuclear.
31. Kuzmarov, Jeremy. “National Endowment for Democracy deletes records of funding projects in Ukraine.” MR Online. March 8, 2022. Accessed February 18, 2023. https://mronline.org/2022/03/08/national-endowment-for-democracy-deletes-records-of-funding-projects-in-ukraine/.
32. “Awarded Search Grants.” National Endowment for Democracy. Accessed February 18, 2023. https://www.ned.org/wp-content/themes/ned/search/grant-search.php?organizationName=&region=EUROPE&projectCountry=ukraine&amount=&fromDate=&toDate=&projectFocus%5B%5D=&search=&maxCount=25&orderBy=Year&start=1&sbmt=1.
33. “Watchdog to National Endowment for Democracy: Drop Stefanik or Risk Guilt by Association.” Accountable.US. June 18, 2021. Accessed February 18, 2023. https://accountable.us/watchdog-to-national-endowment-for-democracy-drop-stefanik-or-risk-guilt-by-association/.