GW Research Explorer

Small Donor Public Financing

An interactive view of 67 coded reports on small donor public financing programs across seven jurisdictions: Connecticut; Maine; Montgomery and Howard Counties, MD; New York City; New York State; Seattle, WA; and Washington, DC. Filter by jurisdiction or program type, explore what the research finds outcome by outcome, and browse the underlying studies.

Data updated 8/31/26.

About This Project

This tool grew out of a collaborative effort to review the research on small donor public financing, with the goal of cataloguing and comparing findings across outcomes, jurisdictions, and program models (voucher, grant, and matching). It draws on the work of Elizabeth Rigby (George Washington University), Ahn-Lihn Kearney (Democracy Rising), Nick Nyhart (Small Donor Research Collaborative), Keshia Morris Desir (Dēmos), Patrick Llewellyn (Campaign Legal Center), Aaron McKean (Campaign Legal Center), and Ian Vandewalker (Brennan Center).

This is an ongoing project, and we plan to add more jurisdictions in the next round. We welcome feedback: thoughts on how to make this data more accessible, critiques of our interpretation of the underlying reports, corrections, or studies we've missed. Reach out to Elizabeth Rigby at erigby@gwu.edu.

Coded Reports

from 63 source documents

Jurisdictions

voucher, grant & matching programs

Outcome Codings

across 12 tracked outcomes

Positive Findings

vs. mixed, negative, or null (excl. descriptive & unclear)

Evidence Strength by Outcome

Bubble size = number of studies coding that outcome at that evidence tier. Strongest designs at top.

Donor outcomes Candidate outcomes System outcomes

Direction of Findings by Outcome

% positive vs. negative or mixed/null. Descriptive-only and unclear findings are excluded from this calculation.

Positive Negative Mixed/Null

Descriptive-only and unclear findings are excluded from this chart and its underlying counts.

Outcome Explorer

Pick an outcome to read its definition and browse what individual studies actually found, with report codes and links to the source.

Study Table

All coded reports. Click a row to see its full outcome-by-outcome record.

Code	Jurisdiction	Program	Year	Type	Outcomes Coded