CEO Update: 9 tools. 50 states. Free.
I want to tell you about a part of VoteAmerica that doesn’t get enough attention: our software.
We build voter engagement tools. Register to vote, request an absentee ballot, find your polling place, pre-register before you turn 18, sign up for permanent absentee voting, track your ballot, add every upcoming election to your calendar. Nine tools. All 50 states and DC. SOC 2 and HIPAA compliant. Penetration tested annually.
We give them away for free. Any organization can embed them on their website with a single line of code. When a voter uses one of our tools, they’re automatically opted into nonpartisan election reminders by text and email for every future election. One interaction becomes a long-term relationship.
Here’s why this matters.
Over the past decade, a parade of startups have tried to build voter engagement platforms and sell them. Most are gone. The ones that survived got acquired, pivoted, or locked their tools behind paywalls that small organizations can’t afford.
The problem was never the technology. It’s the business model. Civic tech doesn’t generate venture-capital returns. The users are nonprofits with small budgets. The customers don’t renew in off-years. And the data maintenance is relentless: 50 states, 50 sets of rules, forms that change every cycle, APIs that break.
For-profit companies either cut corners on data quality or charge so much that only the biggest organizations can afford them. We do neither. We maintain 100+ data points per state. We update them constantly. And we make everything available to any mission-aligned organization at no cost.
We can do this because we’re a nonprofit. Our software company, VoteAmerica LLC, is fully owned by the 501(c)(3). All profits go back to the mission. There is zero chance we will be acquired by a private equity firm and sold off for scraps. That sentence is on our website because I mean it.
But keeping 50-state voter data accurate, the servers running, and the tools free for hundreds of organizations costs real money. That money comes from donors.
I started VoteAmerica because I got tired of watching civic tech fail for predictable reasons. We solved the business model problem by not having one. The tools are free, the research is public, and the whole thing is owned by a nonprofit. I think that’s worth protecting.
