LUCY BURNS INSTITUTE INC
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Ballotpedia
Ballotpedia is a nonprofit and nonpartisan collaborative encyclopedia designed to connect people to politics. Featured information includes elections, politicians and candidates at all levels of government: elections, congress, state executive officials, state legislatures, recall elections, ballot measures and school boards.
Where we work
External reviews

Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Number of website pageviews
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Related Program
Ballotpedia
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
Ballotpedia's traffic increases significantly during major election years. However, you can see the traffic almost doubled from 2016 to 2018.
Total number of articles on the website
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Related Program
Ballotpedia
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
Ballotpedia features 299,000+ encyclopedic articles written and curated by our professional staff of editors, writers, and researchers.
Number of mentions of the organization by the media
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Related Program
Ballotpedia
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
Even in an off election year, we still got almost 9,500 mentions by media.
Number of return website visitors
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Related Program
Ballotpedia
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
New articles created
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Related Program
Ballotpedia
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
This metric tracks the number of new articles added to Ballotpedia. Articles may range from a few sentences about a person or topic to in-depth encyclopedic resources.
Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
The overarching goal of the Lucy Burns Institute is to connect people to politics. It works toward accomplishing this goal through its two informational outlets, Ballotpedia and Judgepedia.
The specific goal of Ballotpedia is to cultivate a strong democracy and thriving citizenship by building up and providing information about elections, politicians and candidates at all levels of government. Judgepedia's goal is to help readers discover and learn useful information about the court systems and judiciary in the United States.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
The Lucy Burns Institute exists to empower our audience to engage in the experience of our democracy through delivery of the highest quality information. We do this by creating credible, accessible, high-quality, and fully-contextualized information about every aspect of U.S. politics. We combat misinformation by cutting through the clutter to creatively engage voters and make the political process easy to understand.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
We use cutting edge technology to provide our readers with the facts about U.S. politics. Our fully-contextualized articles equip readers with the latest news, as well as the context surrounding a politician or policy. Our coverage is vast, which enables us to produce original research in a thorough and cost effective manner.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
Since our inception in 2006, we've increased our coverage from state and local ballot measures to include school board elections, recall elections, redistricting, state legislators, state executive officials, and U.S. Congress. Eventually, we will cover each of the over 507,000 elected officials in the U.S.
How we listen
Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.
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How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?
To identify and remedy poor client service experiences, To identify bright spots and enhance positive service experiences, To make fundamental changes to our programs and/or operations, To inform the development of new programs/projects, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve
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Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?
We collect feedback from the people we serve at least annually, We take steps to get feedback from marginalized or under-represented people, We aim to collect feedback from as many people we serve as possible, We take steps to ensure people feel comfortable being honest with us, We look for patterns in feedback based on demographics (e.g., race, age, gender, etc.), We look for patterns in feedback based on people’s interactions with us (e.g., site, frequency of service, etc.), We engage the people who provide feedback in looking for ways we can improve in response, We act on the feedback we receive, We tell the people who gave us feedback how we acted on their feedback, We ask the people who gave us feedback how well they think we responded
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What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?
It is difficult to get the people we serve to respond to requests for feedback, It is difficult to identify actionable feedback
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
LUCY BURNS INSTITUTE INC
Board of directorsas of 03/08/2023
Mike Barnhart
Tim Dunn
Dan Liljenquist
Steve Nemerovski
Todd Graves
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Yes -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
No data
Gender identity
No data
No data
Sexual orientation
No data
Disability
No data