Pew’s Long Commitment to Strengthening Democracy
The United States was about half as old as it is today when the entrepreneurial Joseph Newton Pew Sr., seeking a waterfront refinery for his business, Sun Oil, found a location along the Delaware River and opened an office in Philadelphia.
The move would connect the Pew family with the inspiring city that is the birthplace of the nation—and launch an enduring mission to extol, expand, and strengthen the ideals of democracy.
The effort took on new urgency a decade into the company’s existence in Philadelphia when the first world war broke out in Europe. The senior Pew had died in 1912 and two of his sons, J. Howard Pew and J.N. Pew Jr., had assumed control of Sun Oil. Like many Americans, they were also casting a wary eye at the U-boats Germany had unleashed on shipping in the Atlantic Ocean.
They responded to the threat by creating a shipyard that would come to be known as Sun Ship, which built tankers and minesweepers throughout the war. That work continued in World War II when Sun Ship produced 40% of all the wartime tankers built, becoming an instrumental part of the “arsenal of democracy” that sustained Europe during the conflict.
But the Pew interest in democracy was far greater than ship building, because J. Howard and J.N. believed that an informed citizenry was essential for a nation to thrive. In between the wars, in 1932, Sun Oil first produced a “Citizen’s Handbook” for that year’s election that was distributed to the company’s employees and the public. The handbook contained basic information on the Republican and Democratic party platforms, biographies of Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt, lists of cabinet officers, and other information—in short, as the cover line said, “What Every Voter Should Know.”
As Republicans, the Pew brothers were likely unhappy with the outcome of the election that saw Roosevelt elected to the first of four terms. But the family maintained a deep faith in the wisdom of the American public. In 1946, Look magazine invited an array of accomplished business leaders and others to say what first two things they would do if they were president. J.N. Pew’s succinct response: “Tell the truth and trust the people.”
The belief in the power of the full light of day on subjects of import and the faith in an informed citizenry would soon take root as foundational principles in the organization that the Pew brothers and their two sisters, Mary Ethel Pew and Mabel Pew Myrin, formed in 1948 and that evolved into what is now known as The Pew Charitable Trusts. Informed by their diverse interests, the seven family trusts made substantial gifts in their hometown, ranging from education to health care to the arts.
Today, as the nation prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary, the founders’ commitment to the public good animates Pew’s nonpartisan approach to research and to following where the data leads when seeking to improve public policy. The faith in an informed citizenry is particularly evident in the mission of Pew’s subsidiary, Pew Research Center, which has become a respected source of survey data and analysis on a range of subjects from religion to social attitudes to politics and international affairs.
“The country and the world have changed dramatically since 1948,” notes Susan K. Urahn, Pew’s president and CEO. “But the organizations that the Pew family brought to life remain dedicated to practical knowledge that inspires action and progress.”
Philadelphia is home to Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, icons of the nation’s founding that can make democracy seem eternal. But in modern times, like those years following World War II, Pew’s founders only had to look to a scarred and rebuilding Europe to see how fragile democracy can be.
In the context of world history, the American experiment was still relatively new in those postwar years, and the nation was rapidly changing: The federalist system divides power between a central government and the states, where government is closest to the people. In that era, the federal government was expanding, and the states were beginning to modernize their own approaches to policymaking and becoming the laboratories of democracy, a moniker that Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis had added to the American lexicon in 1932.
In the early years of its existence, Pew was primarily a grantmaking organization focused on the Philadelphia region. But as the founders, and then their children, nephews, nieces, and grandchildren, watched the country evolve, researching and informing state policy gradually became a focus.
By the 1990s, Pew’s leaders realized that there was no shortage of research on the effectiveness of federal programs, yet few were looking at the state and local level, where some of the most innovative thinking about how to improve government services was being implemented—within the context of balanced budgets.
In 1998, Pew created the Pew Center on the States to focus on innovative state programs. It was an era when the federal government was increasingly shifting responsibility to governors and state legislators. The center provided a platform for research examining state policy and for providing technical assistance to policymakers who were developing, implementing, and evaluating their programs.
One example was an effort to expand prekindergarten education. Pew and its partners worked in nearly 40 states and the District of Columbia to extend these vital educational programs, which are shown to increase high school graduation rates and college attendance. Over the decade of work, enrollment in pre-K increased from 700,000 students to 1.3 million.
As Pew evolved into a public charity that employs staff experts and works directly on projects, it began to have impact in other areas where states sought to develop new programs to help people: a home-visiting campaign to assist new mothers, expanded dental care, and a “results first” partnership with the MacArthur Foundation that helped states evaluate their programs based on cost and benefits when making policy decisions.
A 15-year public safety effort by Pew and its partners looked at recidivism rates and corrections policies that led to 36 states reforming their adult sentencing and corrections systems, saving more than $2 billion collectively.
Work like this allowed states to learn from each other’s experiences—and showed the individualism of states and how no one solution fixed all concerns. It also showed the power of data and evidence in policymaking, a hallmark of how Pew conducts all its work.
While each of these projects made significant policy improvements, they collectively played an even more essential role in enhancing public trust in their democratic form of government.
“When the public can see government be more responsive to their needs and provide results that improves their lives and helps their communities thrive, democracy is strengthened,” says Kil Huh, Pew’s senior vice president overseeing government performance work.
A representative democracy is of course built on fair, free, and secure elections. As part of its state-level focus, Pew has worked to ensure that administrators of election systems throughout the nation have the help and resources they need—and that voters have the information they need to participate and vote.
As digital tools such as smartphones became part of everyday life, Pew teamed up with Google and other companies with strong online presences—including Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn—to provide voters with official information about where to vote and what’s on the ballot.
Launched in 2008, the Voting Information Project has become an essential part of the Election Day experience for voters. By 2016, the project’s online tools were used more than 123 million times during that year’s election cycle. In 2018, Pew turned the project over to the nonpartisan organization Democracy Works, which continues to manage it.
Other Pew efforts promoted passage of national legislation that ensured that Americans living overseas—especially members of the military and their families—could have their voices heard. Their ballots had often been delayed and were left uncounted in elections at home—the Congressional Research Service found that, on average, 28% of military and overseas ballots were rejected or returned in seven states that it surveyed after the 2008 election.
Pew’s research recommendations deeply informed the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act passed in 2009 with requirements to mail ballots to voters at least 45 days before federal elections.
Still other Pew election work helped states to improve the accuracy of their voter rolls by sharing information about people who move and change addresses or die or otherwise become ineligible to vote. The bipartisan system known as the Electronic Registration Information Center has helped to reduce election costs and increase efficiencies.
Experts on the administration of elections in the U.S. note that the system is sound—more than 10,000 jurisdictions accommodate over 160 million voters at polling places throughout the nation. There is no single access point or election office that can be hacked, and 95% of voters cast a ballot on a system with a verifiable paper trail.
Yet episodes such as the COVID-19 pandemic can create challenges. The pandemic brought last-minute changes to election policies and practices without time to educate the public. At a time of political divisiveness in the nation that helped stoke mistrust among many people in the 2020 election.
In 2022, Pew with philanthropic partners created the Election Trust Initiative. The grantmaking effort develops and supports America’s election administration systems and helps local and state officials operate secure, transparent, accurate, and convenient elections.
“Restoring the trust that has been lost by a large number of Americans is essential for all of us,” says Michael Caudell-Feagan, Pew’s executive vice president and chief program officer who oversees the initiative. “Our democracy rests on trust that our votes count.”
Pew continues to take on challenges that can prevent communities from thriving by focusing on government efficiency and responsiveness to citizens’ evolving concerns. For example, the organization’s current research, analysis, and technical assistance encourage policies that allow more people to save for retirement and increase the supply of affordable homes. Other projects have helped to change policies to allow more people to receive care for substance use disorders and have opened court systems to ensure that those being sued for debt collection have an equal playing field.
And as states’ roles in land and water conservation have expanded, Pew has worked to see that watersheds that supply drinking water are protected and that specialized bridges and culverts are constructed to guide migratory wildlife away from traffic, reducing collisions that kill millions of animals and hundreds of drivers each year.
Many of these concerns have emerged as the nation has grown, and as they are addressed, new challenges inevitably will arise. At first, they may seem intractable—but they’re not. Experience shows how to meet them. Pew’s nonpartisan approach supplies the data and facts to provide a language that disparate voices can use to talk to each other and focus on a problem and its solutions. For no problem is solved unless the people make their will known and their representatives respond in kind.
Inherent in this is the country’s built-in optimism even in divided times such as these. We need only to look to our less than perfect history as well as our astonishing national successes to know that Americans can come together and find common cause. This is the essence of democracy, a process as much as a goal, and central to the pursuit of happiness—and the seeking of a more perfect union.
Daniel LeDuc is the former editor of Trust.
