Earlier this month, the Plural team attended the America Votes State Summit, a mainstay event in organizing that brings hundreds of state and national experts to Washington, D.C. for two days of strategizing, networking and energizing for the road ahead. Check out Plural team member Sophia Anwar’s recap of the event and hear her takeaways on strategies to supercharge community-led solutions and empower voter engagement.
Across the country, we’re witnessing a trend that state field organizers have long seen coming: real political fights are happening and being won, or lost, at the state and local level. Attacks on civil rights and liberties, gerrymandering, and other misuses of power are occurring in local elections, including those for secretary of state seats, school boards, and state judge seats. These actions have devastating long-term implications.
While most advocacy organizations have spent the better half of the last 20 years investing in their DC and federal offices and platforms, they have largely left their states to fend for themselves. Agile and long-term focused organizations have had their eye on the states and acknowledge that the only way to counter this attack is to provide states with resources and long term infrastructural investments.
Empowering Community-Led Organizations
Like clockwork, state and community-led organizations are on their own for the majority of the year. They make the best with the limited resources and volunteer base that’s available to them, requiring them to get creative and pivot to the best practices they live and breathe within their community. Two weeks before the presidential elections, they see an onslaught of funding and support— but are overwhelmed with how and when to deploy those funds effectively. As the votes are counted and the winner is announced, these same hard working organizers find themselves alone yet again.
How can we break this cycle?
This answer was posed and discussed throughout the America Votes Summit panels and in conversations across organizations.
The answer is two-fold:
- We need to provide state organizations or state chapters with the capacity building resources they need to be able to succeed and work smarter, to mobilize and share information daily.
- Funders of these pro democratic organizations and issues must understand that their money is an investment, just like any other investment. The only way to see success at the ballot box is through long-term investments, not Election Day-specific short term investments.
Authentic Voter Engagement Strategies
There is a real debate on how to engage voters. Specifically, how to engage voters holistically throughout the year, and in their local and state elections. Authentic engagement, while the ideal, is easier said than done. Creating and fostering a space for authentic holistic engagement is a full-time job, one that state organizations and chapters are aware of and would love to be able to do, but lack the appropriate tools and resources. Sharing community insights and building genuine stakeholder relationships that can make impactful change calls for a long-term relationship.
As a platform of community organizers and advocates, Plural understands this call to action and delivers on it, with the ability for community partners to work together, share information and resources. They alone can not be tasked with shouldering this burden everyday — they need resources.
Investing in Grassroots Capacity Building and Infrastructure
Investing in long term infrastructure is an extension of capacity building. Long term infrastructure allows state organizations to have the mechanisms in place to be able to execute on effective state strategic plans. The ability to build out a 2, 5 or 10-year plan allows teams to be in a position to accept and absorb the resources that come their way, and to be thoughtful regarding their deployment and returns. The successes we are seeing in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Georgia are the result of years of resource and infrastructural investment.
Infrastructural and data advantages cannot be built in the few weeks leading up to elections, and cannot be successful with aimless short-term or one-time funds, regardless of how large the investment. Through thoughtful, focused, and continual investments, donors and funders have the power to give organizations the infrastructural and data advantages necessary to be able to create a vibrant ecosystem of voter and civic engagement.
Paths Forward: Empowering Grassroots Organizations
We need to ask ourselves if we are ready to invest our time and resources in a long term relationship with community building. And if we are, the fastest way to do it is through the vehicle of technological tools.
Community building can not be subject to a specific number of stakeholders or licensing seats. Plural lends itself to a collaborative approach by allowing for an unlimited number of users to share their personal stories and to provide community insights that national organizations do not have access to.
