Open-Government Nonprofits Are Dying Off Just When They’re Needed Most

Why it’s happening and what can be done about it.

(Composite / Shutterstock)

OPENSECRETS, THE NONPROFIT RESEARCH ORGANIZATION dedicated to disclosing the role of money in politics, laid off one-third of its staff last month due to financial difficulties. This sparked understandable concern in newsrooms, think tanks, and research institutions that rely on OpenSecrets to transform government information into usable data.

But OpenSecrets is just the latest in a series of open-government groups to decline or die off over the last decade—a trend that bodes ill for the health of our politics.

Let’s count the bodies.

The Sunlight Foundation, launched in 2006 with the mission of increasing government transparency, peaked in 2013 with $9 million in donations and 40+ staff, was pronounced dead in 2020 although the body had been cold for some time. Sunlight combined technologists, policy advocates, journalists, and organizers all under one roof.

OMBWatch, founded in 1983 in part to increase government transparency and accountability, with a focus on the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, died in 2016. In 2010 the organization’s funding peaked at $3 million, with 28 staff, including two people at OpenTheGovernment.org (OTG). The remains of OMBWatch are interred at the Project on Government Oversight, an accountability organization.

Another group almost as old, the Center for Public Integrity, founded in 1989, is apparently on its last legs as well: It’s down to just a handful of staffers, and, after mass layoffs this past May, laid-off employees launched a GoFundMe hoping for some help to tide themselves over.

OpenTheGovernment.org, established in 2003 by a coalition of organizations to push back against the increase in secrecy following the 9/11 attacks, died in 2022 and was laid to rest alongside OMBWatch. The organization seems never to have had more than a half-dozen staff nor a budget of more than a few million dollars. It had been obviously ailing for some time. But, for two decades, it had been the central organizing force for civil society organizations doing open government work.

The ultimate cause of their demise is simple: reprioritization by foundations and high-net-worth individuals away from financially supporting this overarching, public-informing, community-building work. In their place we have seen a boom in partisan-aligned nonprofit organizations that use similar tools and techniques, but as auxiliaries for the parties in their trench warfare over political power.

The result is a tragedy of the public commons. Open government is essential to a flourishing democracy. It helps the public identify waste, fraud, abuse, and malfeasance. But even more importantly, it provides insight into whether policies are working as intended—and allows for course corrections. If you think transparency is a bad idea, try driving a car with the windows painted black.

The partisan-aligned organizations are only interested in policy positions so long as they benefit their political allies. When their interests change, the position of the organizations change. (We have always been at war with Eastasia.)

There’s also an atomization of organizations traditionally allied with open government. Journalistic enterprises, which used to put advocacy muscle and editorial focus on open-government issues, have largely stepped away from doing so. Professional library associations, big believers in access to knowledge, are overwhelmed, focused instead on pushing against those who would ban books. Professional associations, such as in the legal sphere, are too busy fighting the growing cancer in their ranks.

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TRANSPARENT GOVERNMENT POLICIES are built through political advocacy, which is arduous work and takes expertise. My personal experience, as executive director of the American Governance Institute, chronicler of open government efforts, and policy lead at several open government organizations, is that advocacy works. I have been involved in legislative efforts that have transformed the public’s right to know—from seeing how the government spends taxpayer dollars to knowing what congressional hearings are scheduled to disclosing when federal judges have financial conflicts of interest to publishing mountains of congressional reports that used to be kept secret.

Policymaking success is predicated upon policy expertise, political expertise, a strong network of allies, and a good reputation among the political players. You must be perceived as someone whose views do not change with the moment—you take the long view—while also having a good relationship with organizations allied with those in power. Oh yes, you should have a viewpoint! This is not mindless nonpartisanship. You must believe that open government can strengthen our democracy and be willing to fight for it.

This fight must include committed funders who are in the fight for the long haul.

What we have instead is malign neglect. For the last eight years, I have coordinated the last standing multipartisan meeting of civil society organizations who share a common interest in U.S.-focused federal open government. It is increasingly difficult for our members to prioritize this effort—and the crucial (but tedious) work needed to encourage existing members to participate or to recruit new ones is not supported. This is the work that OpenTheGovernment used to do. Our collaboration is particularly tricky, because some of it touches upon advocacy to Congress and the executive branch, which requires a high degree of trust—and scares away most funders.

Organizations that eschew advocacy, like OpenSecrets, are somewhat more insulated. They take information published by the government and make it usable for analysis and reporting. This places them closer to the camp of nonprofit journalistic organizations like ProPublica. Funders are more comfortable with this kind of work—but as the layoffs at OpenSecrets demonstrate, they are not safe.

I have always thought the purpose of my work is to make my job unnecessary. Government should be responsible for disclosing information and data about its operations. There is no way civil society can sustain that effort indefinitely. Our focus should be building systems inside the government to ensure that transparency systems have the right incentives and operate properly. But even the best-designed system requires those outside to monitor its behavior—and be able to intervene.

According to OpenSecrets, outside spending on federal elections hit $4.5 billion for the 2024 federal elections, with $1 billion from dark money groups like nonprofits that do not disclose their donors. At the peak fifteen years ago, open government nonprofits were collectively funded at $10–30 million. I suspect current funding of this work combined is at a tenth that level, and falling.

As this trend continues, in short order there will no longer be a network of organizations doing open government work and few organizations with the ability to do any serious work. The collective knowledge and expertise painstakingly built up since the passage of the Freedom of Information Act in the 1960s will evaporate, and what remains will be partisan-aligned organizations that use arguments around transparency as a political cudgel instead of as a vital tool for democracy building.

We are at twilight, and the light is failing rapidly. It’s time to pay the electric bill or get used to the darkness.