When We All Vote’s 2022: Organizing is our Superpower

When We All Vote is one of the few national organizations that offers a nonpartisan approach to volunteer engagement.

By Amanda Hollowell, Senior Director of National Organizing

When We All Vote is one of the few national organizations that offers a nonpartisan approach to volunteer engagement. We intentionally create space to meet people where they are with our varying opportunities and levels for volunteering.

In 2020, we were able to harness the energy of an important presidential election and mobilize more than 25,000 people across the country. In 2022, we began to deepen our work in communities in an effort to build long term organizing power and again were able to engage more than ten thousand people to take action with us via advocacy or voter registration activities.

We are building an army of people of goodwill who are passionate about expanding and protecting our democracy. We equip them with the tools and opportunities to take action and have fun while doing it!

In 2022, When We All Vote piloted a new high level volunteer program through our Chapter Leaders who step up in their communities to register voters, fight for voting rights, and create a culture of civic engagement and participation. We trained 366 Chapter Leaders, including a critical mass in focus states like Georgia, Texas, and Pennsylvania. Throughout the year, our Chapter Leaders and volunteers hosted more than 350 volunteer-led voter registration events in their communities. Their work helped us ensure nearly 90,000 people were registered and ready to vote.

Volunteering with When We All Vote offers everyone a chance to be a leader in their community. Our volunteers can choose to be Voting Squad Captains, Chapter Leaders, or high school students who start their own My School Votes club. Our organizing program is not prescriptive but rather a place where people can learn to be leaders in civic engagement and education.

We focus on building these programs in our focus states: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

How do we engage our volunteers?

We offer a suite of volunteer engagement options, both virtually and on the ground in communities. We understand that the ways we connect with each other are ever-changing and in order to organize and make sure that everyone has the opportunity to make their voices heard at the ballot box, we must offer a multifaceted approach to engagement opportunities. We engage our community through:

• Weeks & Days of Action like National Voter Registration Week of Action, the MLK Weekend of Action, and more.
• National Rallies like our Ramp Up the Vote Rally featuring our Executive Director Stephanie Young, co-chair Megan Rapinoe, Jay Ellis, Maya Wiley and more.

• Celebrating national moments like Juneteenth by encouraging people to host voter registration drives in their communities.

National Voter Registration Week of Action

National Voter Registration Week of Action is one of the biggest moments of the year for When We All Vote to engage our volunteers to register voters in their communities.

• The 2022 National Voter Registration Week of Action was one of our most successful programs for the 2022 midterms. 22,000 people checked or registered to vote during the Week of Action.
• Overall reach for Week of Action was over 7 million through various forms of engagement.
• When We All Vote volunteers and our My School Votes hosted 108 volunteer-led events in 29 states, including events in 14 of our 15 focus states.
• Overall, When We All Vote hosted 160 volunteer-led events in the month of September in 29 states, including 56 My School Votes-led events.
• Additionally, our virtual trainings and rallies during the Week of Action engaged more than 5,000 volunteers.

My School Votes

In 2022, My School Votes (MSV), When We All Vote’s program for high school students, engaged 266 schools in 26 states, and helped nearly 7,000 people newly register or verify their voter registration status.

In the summer of 2022, My School Votes launched its first-ever Student Ambassador Program, a six-week paid leadership opportunity for high school students and graduates from across the country. The program’s goal was to develop and train student leaders for long-term engagement with MSV.

31 students joined MSV for the Ambassador Program, which included a robust curriculum on the fundamentals of organizing and advocacy, including remote and relational organizing, training, and canvassing, and building effective organizations. Students also had a chance to hear from When We All Vote and Civic Nation staff each week who were actively practicing that week’s topic. Students then put what they were learning into practice by conducting outreach to over 1,450 schools in 15 focus states to bring more students and teachers into the My School Votes network.

In 2022, MSV also launched our inaugural Educator Advisory Council (EAC). The EAC is composed of 6 educators and administrators that play various roles within their schools and systems who will play a critical role in the development and management of My School Votes. The EAC provides guidance and direction to the MSV team, serves as peer reviewers on MSV content, and supports the recruitment and public messaging in support of When We All Vote’s mission.

Party at the Polls

In 2022, When We All Vote built on our long track record of success in hosting early voting celebrations that have been proven to increase voter turnout. The Party at the Polls program encouraged and celebrated early voting across the country, with an emphasis on communities in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. These free events brought communities together to make their voices heard at the ballot box and celebrate with food, music, art, and activism.

Our partners on the ground in Philadelphia brought together hundreds of high school students and first-time voters for a voting circus with aerial performances, food, and music as they made their voices heard at the polls for the first time. In Kayenta, Arizona, Native leaders hosted a 20-mile trail ride to the polls to mobilize young Navajo voters. And in Atlanta, at the Votelanta Music Festival, young voters from local HBCU campuses showed off their ‘I Voted’ stickers at a concert headlined by Gucci Mane.

We set a robust goal of hosting 200 Party at the Polls events, engaging with at least 20 on-the-ground grassroots organizations, reaching more than 1 million voters through direct voter contact, and providing hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants to grassroots organizations on the ground. Key partnerships that made Parties at the Polls possible included the AME Faith community and the Divine 9, with Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Incorporated and Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated leading the way with the most events held across the country.

By Election Day, we surpassed our original goal, ultimately hosting a total of 219 events and providing funding to 20 individual volunteers, 14 Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and 55 community-based organizations.

In order to drive people to attend Parties at the Polls, volunteers contacted more than 1.5 million voters. Our team hosted 32 Text Bank shifts, trained 458 volunteers, and facilitated 1.1 million texts sent by 138 volunteers.

Georgia Senate Runoff

In collaboration with several Georgia-based groups on the ground, When We All Vote launched the “On The Run-Off Tour,” a five-city motorcycle tour with Black Bikers Vote across the state featuring free food, music, entertainment, and voter education to encourage Georgia residents to vote in the December 6th runoff election.

Partners included the ACLU of Georgia, When We All Vote, Georgia Working Families Power, Black Voters Matter Fund, and more announced nonpartisan GOTV efforts across Georgia to increase voter participation in the U.S. Senate runoff election. More than 100 motorcyclists with Black Bikers Vote rode to each location to drive awareness and excitement around the events. The tour stopped in Columbus, Albany, Savannah, Augusta, and Atlanta.

Through the tour we reached more than 500 eligible voters and our events generated multiple local press mentions. We contacted 515,000 voters via text and 200,000 voters via robo-calls in Georgia to encourage turnout in the runoff election.

What Comes Next

The future is bright for the engagement of our volunteers in 2023 and beyond. These programming efforts contributed to almost a third of our total voter registration and verifications in 2022. As we look to make cultural changes around the belief that voting is important it is necessary to center the people in their communities who are trusted voices. These volunteers have the power to influence the change we need to get all people registered and ready to vote.