Centers for Tech and Civic Life is a non-profit founded in 2015 by Tiana Epps-Johnson, Whitney May, and Donny Bridges. According to the website, their goal is to help Americans stay civically engaged and keep elections secure.
Before the 2020 election, the organization only had around $700,000 in annual donations to spend on their efforts. But this year, Mark Zuckerburg and his wife donated at least $350 million to the non-profit. The money was then granted to local elections offices.
According to Ballotpedia, the most money was given to key swing areas: $3.5 million to Wayne County in Michigan, $6 million to Fulton County in Georgia, and $10 million to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania—and that’s just a fraction of it.
Tim Griffin, special counsel to the Thomas More Society—a nonprofit civil liberty watchdog group that has now filed lawsuits in multiple states to challenge the legality of these private grants—explains that in addition to the grants being selectively distributed to the key swing areas, there were strings attached to how the elections offices could spend the money.
