CEO Update: It shouldn’t take $100,000,000 to register voters

I’m back with another kind of long, but very important VoteAmerica update for you. I swear I don’t get paid by the word, I just really love talking about the smart things we do.

I take a lot of pride in building a team that works smarter than everyone else in this business, so let me tell you about how smart our Strategic Partnerships Program was in 2020.

I’ll start by highlighting that voter turnout nonprofits spend well over $100,000,000 every election trying to register voters. Partisan groups and campaigns spend exponentially more. Let me be very clear here: this is not an efficient use of time or money. Currently, the voter registration and turnout space is full of organizations doing relational work at the individual level (VoteAmerica included). Every election, political campaigns and voter registration organizations spend tens of millions of dollars attempting to register people by appealing to voters on an individual basis. Whether it’s by knocking doors, clipboarding at events, or sending peer-to-peer text messages, so much of this work is done one voter at a time.

This is where our smart thinking comes in. In 2020, we knew there must be a better way to scale our outreach beyond the individual level. So we did what we do best, we ran a test and VoteAmerica piloted a partnership program with Credit Karma. They integrated our tools into their already established workflow and in less than three months this single partnership drove nearly 600,000 Americans through our tools where they were able to register to vote, check their registration status, request a vote-by-mail ballot, find their polling location, and more. By capitalizing on our partner’s existing network of users, we were able to reach those nearly 600,000 voters in an incredibly cost-effective way. 

It shouldn’t take groups like ours spending millions and millions of dollars for voters to get registered. It just shouldn’t. Thankfully, our partnership programs give us the opportunity to grow our reach exponentially while also cutting costs significantly. I call that a win, win.

This is the future of large-scale voter registration and mobilization programs and we’re excited to lead the way. As we plan for the midterm elections (which are only 18 months away), we’re going to continue to grow our strategic partnerships. Organizations already have consumers and online platforms, and it only requires a small amount of time and effort to build out company-specific integrations with these organizations. We can integrate civic engagement into millions of people’s day-to-day lives with our tools integrated after someone checks their credit score, bank account, or rewards program. Once someone uses our tools to register to vote, they’ll be entered into our Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV) programs and year after year we’ll be able to help them request a vote-by-mail ballot, remind them to return their ballot, or find their early vote or election day polling location. This is important because GOTV is how we increase voter turnout, and the more voters we register, the more voters we’re able to turn out to vote.

This new model is truly meeting voters where they are, at scale (and reduced cost!). These partnerships will enable us to do exactly what we do best, register and mobilize voters, without having to spend millions of dollars just to get voters in the door.

Now that I’ve told you about the challenge and how VoteAmerica solves for that challenge, it’s time for me to ask you for your help. If you want to see millions of more voters registered ahead of the midterm elections (elections that are already expected to have low voter turnout), now is the time to make a donation. VoteAmerica is the most cost-effective investment you can make. We’ll use every dollar we receive to expand our already smart team and run the programs (like these partnerships) that will yield the highest impact.

Thank you, 

Debra