[11] As of December 2023, NDI's board of directors includes: Thomas A. Daschle (chair), Harriet C. Babbitt (vice chair), Robert G. Liberatore (treasurer), Frank M. "Rusty" Conner (secretary), Stacey Abrams, Bernard W. Aronson, J. Brian Atwood, Donald A. Baer, Rye Barcott, Donna Brazile, Johnnie Carson, Dean Falk, Sam Gejdenson, Bonnie S. Glaser, Caryn Halifax, Kathryn Hall, Karl F. Inderfurth, Shanthi Kalathil, Eric Kessler, Peter Kohler, David C. Leavy, Michael McFaul, Nancy H. Rubin, Dana Shell Smith, Michael R. Steed, Maurice Templesman, Clyde C. Tuggle, Toni G. Verstandig, and Maureen White.

[20] In April 2020, NDI released the documentary “Canary in the Digital Coalmine” exploring Taiwan's civil society response to counter disinformation and misinformation amid national elections.

[29] NDI began collaborating with South Korean civil society organizations in 2011 to advance democratic governance in North Korea.

[34] According to an article in Jacobin, after the death of Hugo Chávez, the NDI provided funding and training to the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) coalition of opposition parties in Venezuela.

In 2015, the opposition won a majority in the Venezuelan National Assembly for the first time since 1999 and the magazine states that the NDI said a "determining factor in the success of the coalition in the parliamentary elections of 2015 was a two-year effort prior to the elections to raise awareness, train and align national and regional structures of communication of all the parties that conform the MUD".

[35] NDI receives financial support from the National Endowment for Democracy,[36] the US Agency for International Development,[37] the US Department of State,[38] and the Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening.

[43] The foreign editor of The Washington Post described the NDI's parent organization the National Endowment of Democracy as "the sugar daddy of overt operations".

NED cofounder Allen Weinstein told The Washington Post that "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.

[58] In December 2020 the Chinese government announced additional sanctions over three members of the institute, including Asia-Pacific regional director Manpreet Singh Anand.