The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) receives funding from both the US Congress and the State Department.  Its role appears to be to provide funding for foreign entities which act in US interests, under the guise of expanding "democracy".  As such, it has legitimized part of the role that the CIA used to play. 
At present, the NED offering small grants to a myriad of Venezuelan organizations.  One only needs to read a few of them in order to see that the real aim is to remove Venezuela's democratically-elected government.
From 2002 to the present, NED has either funded or is funding the following entities working in Venezuela:

-ACAC
- ACAdE
- ACCV
- ACCJ
- ACCEDES
- ACILS-CTV
- ACJA
- ACLV
- ApD
- CIPE - CEDICE
- CEJIL
- CESAP
- FJP
- FMG
- IPYS
- IRI
- NDI
- PRODEL
- SÚMATE
- e-MAILS
- MEMORANDA

A brief description of NED by William Robinson:

"Despite its officially overt character, the NED also engages in extensive covert operations. In fact, overtness appears to be more an aspect of the "democracy" rhetoric than of actual NED policy. NED activities are often shrouded in secrecy, and NED officials operate more often in the shadows than in the open. Although this situation appears contradictory, the NED*s secret activities have their exact counterparts in the clandestine, under-the-table dealings that are a traditional part of the U.S. political system and that are far from alien to U.S. political professionals who carry out NED operations.The NED functions through a complex system of intermediaries in which operative aspects, control relationships, and funding trails are nearly impossible to follow and final recipients are difficult to identify. Most moneys originating from the NED are first channeled through U.S. organizations, which in turn pass them on to foreign counterparts that are themselves often pass-throughs for final recipients. Dozens of U.S. organizations have acted as conduits for NED funds. As a result, financial accounting becomes nearly impossible, thereby facilitating all sorts of secret funding, laundering operations, and bookkeeping cover-ups that allow for unscrutinized transactions. Because of the multitiered structure of go-betweens, it is difficult to establish the links between U.S. government operations, on the one hand, and seemingly independent political activities in other countries, on the other hand. In this Alice*s Wonderland of political intervention, things are not what they seem, at first blush, to be.The NED, as a congressionally chartered organization, is made up of "core groups." These groups, which handle the appropriated NED funds and programs, are the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) and its counterpart, the National Republican Institute for International Affairs (NRI)*, which are the "international wings" of the Democratic and Republican parties; the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), a branch of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; and the Free Trade Union Institute (FTUI), an international branch of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). These core groups carry out programs in target countries with those sectors considered strategic pillars of society: labor (FTUI), business (CIPE), and political parties and organizations (NDI and NRI). A host of other U.S. "private" organizations enmeshed with foreign policy, such as the right-wing Freedom House and the Council on the Americas, handle programs for "civic" sectors. The concept behind this sectorial specialization in political intervention is the creation of a societywide network of political, social, cultural, business, and civic organizations in the target country that are dependent on and responsive to U.S. direction or at least sympathetic to U.S. concerns."

William Robinson writing from the first chapter of his book "A Faustian Bargain" Westview Press, USA, 1992

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