Dear John,
I remember sitting in a community meeting in Washington, DC and watching my neighbors — parents, seniors, young people — tell elected officials what they needed. The requests were simple: safer streets, reliable transit, better access to services. Too often, those voices met polite promises and little follow-through. At Lupine Trust, our work has always been about reducing poverty in the DC Metro region, but we realized a hard truth: Funding immediate relief without fixing the systems that shape policy is like bailing water from a sinking ship without repairing the hull.
That’s why, three years ago, we began supporting FairVote. We continue to support local non-profits that help those in need, but we also invest in stronger democratic systems. Elections that use ranked choice voting yield better leaders, and better leaders make decisions that change budgets, priorities, and lives. This year, we contributed to FairVote’s new Impact Fund to help scale reforms that make local government more responsive.
