The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a quasi-autonomous non-governmental organization or according to others a government-organized non-governmental organization (GONGO) in the United States founded in 1983 with the stated aim of advancing democracy worldwide and countering communist influence abroad by promoting political and economic institutions, such as political groups, business groups, trade unions, and free markets.

The NED was created as a bipartisan, private, non-profit corporation, but acts as a grant-making foundation. It is funded primarily by an annual allocation from the U.S. Congress. In addition to its grants program, the NED also supports and houses the Journal of Democracy, the World Movement for Democracy, the Reagan–Fascell Fellowship Program, the Network of Democracy Research Institutes, and the Center for International Media Assistance.

Upon its founding, the NED assumed several former activities of the Central Intelligence Agency. Political groups, activists, academics, and some governments have accused the NED of being an instrument of U.S. foreign policy helping to foster regime change. In February 2025, the Department of Government Efficiency under Elon Musk blocked disbursement from the Treasury of the NED's congressionally-mandated funding; in August, the NED was granted an injunction to allow access to its funds.

The National Security Decision Directive 77 was instrumental for the creation of Project Democracy and its offspring NED.

In a 1982 speech at the Palace of Westminster, President Ronald Reagan proposed an initiative, before the British Parliament, "to foster the infrastructure of democracy – the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities." This intersected with previously formulated plans by the American Political Foundation, an NGO supported by some members of the Republican and Democratic parties, together with scholars based at CSIS, to create a government-funded but privately run democracy promotion foundation to support democratic civil society groups and parties. The idea was strongly championed by the State Department, which argued that a non-governmental foundation would be able to support dissident groups and organizations in the Soviet Bloc, and also foster the emergence of democratic movements in US-allied dictatorships that were becoming unstable and in danger of experiencing leftist or radical revolutions, without provoking a diplomatic backlash against the US government. After some initial uncertainty over the idea from Reagan Administration hard-liners, the U.S. government, through USAID, contracted The American Political Foundation to study democracy promotion, which became known as "The Democracy Program".

In 1983, the House Foreign Affairs Committee proposed legislation to provide initial funding of $31.3 million for NED as part of the State Department Authorization Act (H.R. 2915), because NED was in its beginning stages of development the appropriation was set at $18 million. Included in the legislation was $13.8 million for the Free Trade Union Institute, an affiliate of the AFL–CIO, $2.5 million for an affiliate of the National Chamber Foundation, and $5 million each for two party institutes, which was later eliminated by a vote of 267–136. The conference report on H.R. 2915 was adopted by the House on November 17, 1983, and the Senate the following day. On November 18, 1983, articles of incorporation were filed in the District of Columbia to establish the National Endowment for Democracy as a nonprofit organization.

An analysis by political scientist Sarah Bush found that while NED activity in the 1980s focused on direct challenges to autocrats by funding dissidents, opposition parties, and unions, the majority of 21st-century NED funding goes to technical programs that are less likely to challenge the status quo, with the proportion of NED funding for "relatively tame programs" increasing from roughly 20% of NED grants in 1986 to roughly 60% in 2009. Political scientist Lindsey A. O'Rourke writes that, "Today, NED programs run in more than ninety countries. Although the number of US-backed democracy promotion programs have grown, most of today's programs pursue less aggressive objectives than their Cold War counterparts." In a 1991 interview with the Washington Post, NED founder Allen Weinstein said: "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."

During the 1984 Panamanian general election the American Institute for Free Labor Development and the NED provided around $20,000 in support of activists involved with Ardito Barletta's campaign.