“Not only are people going out and marching and signing petitions … they’re also starting new projects and building companies,” said Shannon Baker, the director of partnerships at NMV. “[They’re] quitting their day jobs and putting themselves on the line.”

The investments come at a critical time for pro-Democratic groups. Facing the task of chipping away at GOP domination of government at the federal and state levels, Democrats have seen their traditional advantage in campaign tech eroded over the past few years.

NMV’s previous investment classes include a flight of top-tier organizations on the left, including ActBlue Civics, Daily Kos, Vote.org and Pantsuit Nation.

The funding is split into two groups — grants to nonprofits and investments in for-profit companies. The firm said that any profit that is eventually realized from for-profit companies is reinvested in the fund.

MobilizeAmerica, one of the group’s investments in this class, recently signed on the Democratic National Committee to its platform. It aims to create one centralized “marketplace” for Democratic volunteers, allowing various liberal groups and campaigns to tap into one network of foot soldiers. It counts heavy-hitters like MoveOn and Organizing for Action as among its clients.

“New Media Ventures is coming in with critical capital at a critical moment in 2018,” Alfred Johnson, the co-founder and CEO of MobilizeAmerica, said.

Johnson said that thanks in part to funding that it’s received from NMV, MobilizeAmerica can further scale its operations, noting that they’re on track for 1 million volunteer shifts through their platform in the run-up to the midterm elections.

The new class also includes advocacy startups like Weird Enough Productions — a “media company that uses superheroes and comic books to teach middle and high school students how to combat fake news” — and Jolt, which seeks to mobilize the Latino community in Texas.

The firm also emphasizes that its grant and investments send a larger signal to like-minded donors and would-be investors that the organizations it is backing are legitimate. Julie Menter, NMV’s managing director, said that the fund’s network of investors and donors gave $3 million to last year’s class of progressive organizations after NMV’s initial $1 million round. Founders say that donors take them more seriously once NMV backed them.

“After I told [a previous donor] about NMV, he immediately introduced me to another potential funder,” Kat Calvin, the founder of Spread the Vote, said. “He hadn’t done that in a year. Literally this was a validation of some kind. It’s already really shown itself to matter.”

Calvin said that Spread the Vote, one of this year’s grant recipients that helps voters get photo IDs in states that require them to vote, will be able to hire its first director of research and data and building out a data team, thanks to NMV’s funding.

“I am fulfilling a lifelong dream,” she said. “What we’re going to be able to do with this funding is build out a whole data operation. It’s going to make us more efficient, make us more impactful.”