Media kit
Logos, editable graphics, sample posts, and the words we use ourselves, for Democracy Week and for the October 8 Forum in San Francisco. Take any of it, change it, make it sound like you. No approval process, no permission needed.
Our headline event this year is the SF Innovators & Investors for Democracy Forum, Thursday, October 8 at UC Law SF. The best thing you can do for it is send it to the funders, founders, and civic leaders you know who should be in the room. Everything you need for that is below.
We run alongside Tech Week in both cities on purpose. The technology and culture coming out of San Francisco and Los Angeles already shapes how people find information, who they trust, and what feels possible. It can strengthen and revitalize our democratic republic, or it can keep weakening it until it collapses. Right now some of that is being decided by defaults, and some by a small group of people who are vocally against democracy.
We need more people in the room, and more people building things that strengthen our democracy. Not every Democracy Week event has to be about tech. The ones that are, we encourage to cross-post on the Tech Week calendar.
On this page
- The October 8 Forum
- Follow, tag, and reshare us, on LinkedIn and Instagram
- Template files, logos, templates, printable graphics
- Sample text for Democracy Week
- How to describe Democracy Week, one line, short, and long
- Dates to put in a calendar
- Things that help, ten minutes, an afternoon, or more
- When to post
- Using the logo
The October 8 Forum
SF Innovators & Investors for Democracy Forum
A one-day convening for funders, family offices, foundations, philanthropic advisors, corporate leaders, civic and civictech entrepreneurs, and civic leaders, on how capital and innovation can help revitalize our democracy. Cross-partisan by belief and design. Co-hosted with the Center for Constitutional Democracy at UC Law SF, as part of SF Democracy Week.
- When: Thursday, October 8, 10am to 4pm
- Where: UC Law SF in the Civic Center, a few minutes from City Hall and BART. The room is sent with registration confirmations.
- Tickets: tax deductible, processed through our fiscal sponsor, the California Doughnut Economics Coalition. Space is limited and we are balancing the room across the spectrum and across roles.
- Link to share: democracyweek.net/sf-forum
Key messages
Use these in your own words. Pick the one or two that fit your audience.
- Democracy is economic infrastructure. Every term sheet signed in the Bay Area depends on functioning courts, fair competition, rule of law, and public investment in research and education. It is much harder to build great companies inside a failing country.
- AI raises the stakes. On its current path it could hollow out our democracy. Used well, it could help build one that works better than anything we have had. The people funding and building it have more say in which way it goes than most.
- Civic work needs startup energy and better capital. Grant cycles are slow, venture returns are hard, and a lot of good work dies in the gap. The Forum looks at recoverable grants, evergreen vehicles, program-related investments, blended structures, and a democracy fund thesis.
- Fewer panels, more work. Small groups take on the five pillars of the First Principles and leave with draft action plans. Lightning talks and showcase tables put civic projects in front of the people who can back them.
- Cross-partisan by design. Right, left, center, and none of the above. Off-stage conversations run under the Chatham House Rule, with a non-solicitation rule, so people can talk openly.
- Speakers and conveners include Chris Yeh (Blitzscaling Ventures), Nicole Ozer (Electronic Frontier Foundation), Melissa Hooper (Center for Constitutional Democracy at UC Law SF), Peter Lupoff (Beatrice Advisors), Micah Weinberg (Carnegie California), Sarah Bonk (Business for America), Dusie Cassata (Solution Citizen), John Gable (AllSides), and Nicole Garzino (Braver Angels), and more, with more being confirmed.
Ways to help the Forum
Send it to one person
A funder, founder, family office, or civic leader who should be there. A personal note does more than any post. The email sample below is written for this.
Propose a talk or table
Building a tool, running a cross-partisan campaign, or testing an approach worth copying? Put it in front of this room.
Volunteer on the day
Check-in, setup, notetaking, photos, and keeping the working groups on time.
Sponsor seats
Sponsorships cover seats for civic organizers and founders who couldn’t otherwise attend. Tax deductible.
Sample text for the Forum
Swap the bracketed parts and cut what doesn’t fit. On LinkedIn, type @Democracy Week yourself and pick the page from the list, since a pasted tag won’t link.
Follow, tag, and reshare us
Our LinkedIn and Instagram accounts are new, so every follow and reshare counts for more right now. Tag Democracy Week when you post and we will reshare you. We need these conversations to be more visible, from more voices, so more people see the momentum and show up.
Follow the page, then repost our latest with a line of your own. A repost with your own comment reaches more people than a like. Tag @Democracy Week in your own posts.
Follow the account, share our recent posts to your story, and tag @democracyweek in your own posts and stories so we can reshare them.
Recent posts to reshare
Our latest on LinkedIn
Repost the Forum announcement, or whichever one fits your network best.
Our latest on Instagram
Tap the paper plane under any post to add it to your story, and tag @democracyweek in those and other posts.
- Hashtags: #DemocracyWeek, plus #DemocracyWeekSF or #DemocracyWeekLA, and any others you’re inspired to use.
- Links to share: democracyweek.net for the week, democracyweek.net/sf-forum for the Forum, and lu.ma/democracy for the calendar.
- Hosting something? Add it to the shared Luma calendar and email partner@democracyweek.net with the link, and we will help push it out.
Template files
Ready to use on your event page, slides, flyers, posts, or coverage. If something you need is missing, ask and we will make it.
Posters, flyers, and social graphics
Editable templates for social posts, printable flyers, and signage. Duplicate one, drop in your event name, date, and venue, export, and go. Works on the free Canva plan.
Logo on Canva
The logo on its own, ready to pull into your event graphics, decks, and social posts.
Logo files
On Google Drive in several formats, including transparent versions for dark backgrounds and high resolution files for print.
Sample text for Democracy Week
Starting points, not scripts. Swap the bracketed parts for your own event, date, and link, cut whatever doesn’t fit, and adjust for your voice and your community. Each one has a button to copy the text.
How to describe Democracy Week
For newsletters, event pages, press releases, and the bottom of a program. Copy whichever length fits the space.
Dates worth putting in a calendar
- Oct 5 to 11: San Francisco Democracy Week
- Oct 8, 10am to 4pm: SF Innovators & Investors for Democracy Forum, UC Law SF
- Oct 12 to 18: Los Angeles Democracy Week
- Oct 16: Los Angeles CivicTech Day
- Nov 3: Election Day
Things that help
If your organization wants to do more than post once, here is what makes a difference, roughly in order of effort. Pick one from any column and you have already helped.
Ten minutes
- Follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram, and ask a few colleagues to do the same.
- Repost one of our recent posts with a line of your own.
- Send the Forum email to one funder or founder who should be in the room.
- Put a line and a link in your next newsletter.
- Add “Part of Democracy Week, Oct 5 to 18” (or adapted for SF or LA) to your email signature for the month.
An afternoon
- Add an event, including one you were already planning. Existing events count.
- Volunteer at the Forum on October 8, or at other events during the week.
- Put the Democracy Week logo and a link on your event page.
- Cross-post tech-related civic and democracy events to the Tech Week calendar. That is where the audience we most want to reach already is.
- Offer a venue, a bar tab, a projector, or photography and video support.
- Send us photos and a couple of lines afterward so we can share what happened.
A modest commitment
- Come on as a partner and bring your community in.
- Sponsor seats at the Forum for civic organizers and founders who couldn’t otherwise attend.
- Co-host with an organization that sits somewhere else on the political spectrum. These are the events people remember.
- Bring your builders. A hackathon, a demo night, or a working session on a real democracy problem beats another panel about the problem.
- Mentor a team in the Democracy Accelerator.
- Read and push back on the First Principles draft. Disagreement is more useful than agreement here.
- Start a Democracy Week in your own city.
When to post
- Now: announce that you are taking part, before you have every detail nailed down. For the Forum, send personal notes this week to the people you most want there.
- A week out: post your event with the registration link.
- Two days out: a short reminder, and a direct message to the ten people you most want in the room. For the Forum, that is October 6.
- Day of: a photo and a line about what is happening, tagged @Democracy Week.
- After: what came out of it, and what you are doing next. This is the post most people skip, and it does the most work.
Using the logo
- Use it on anything connected to the week: event pages, slides, flyers, signage, social posts, press coverage.
- Keep the colors and proportions as they are, and give it some breathing room. The two circles are the blue and the red of America and of our two main political parties. The purple is the overlap, which is bigger than it looks and is where most Americans actually live, whichever party they end up voting for.
- Hosting an event does not make you a partner organization, and listing your event does not mean we endorse your positions. “Part of Democracy Week” is the right phrasing either way.
- If you want something that is not on this page or in the folder above, ask us and we will do our best.
Questions, or want to talk it through with someone on the team? Email partner@democracyweek.net, join a planning call for SF or LA, or grab a time for a short call.