A New Chapter: Announcing GenVote Action
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When we started Generation Vote (“GenVote”), we were just college students in upstate New York who wanted to spread the word about a new way of organizing young people in the political process. We built our first GenVote “proto-type teams,” worked our way through Binghamton’s business accelerator program, and won the Social Entrepreneurship category in the Southern Tier Regional Business Plan Competition. We believed in slow, strategic growth to make sure that our model for engaging young people worked. And these past two years proved that it does.
To support the work of our students, we first filed as a 527 so our students could have the most flexibility when partnering with candidates who support local Youth Platforms and the GenVote Model of Engagement. Since we founded GenVote, we have furiously fought for expanding access to our democracy for young people in New York, which had some of the worst voter laws in the country. At our first GenVote Summit, GenVoters unanimously voted for a new youth voting rights campaign and we heard you. In the past two years, we’ve had amazing success as the leading youth organizers of the Let NY Vote coalition and helped push forward the first voter reform efforts in one hundred years in New York.
The next phase for Generation Vote: Fighting for the future of our democracy
After the historic youth turnout of the 2018 midterms, local governments across the country have moved to restrict youth voting rights and suppress the voices of the next generation of voters. To rise to the challenge of fighting voter suppression of young people and build a movement that exposes the urgency of this crisis, we need to create the organizational infrastructure that gives us the most flexibility to accept a variety of funding streams and deploy our resources in a variety of ways. That is why we are creating Generation Vote Action, a new 501 c(4) organization and the Generation Vote Network, a new 501 c(3) organization:
What we want to do: Generation Vote is building a movement of young people to stop the youth voter suppression crisis, advance youth-friendly democracy reforms that empower all voters, and transform the way young people engage in local politics.
How we will do it: We do this by exposing the urgency of this crisis, electing pro-youth voting rights champions, and using the GenVote Model of Engagement to empower the next generation of political leaders.
Generation Vote Action (501 c4): Generation Vote Action will apply the GenVote Model of Engagement to our advocacy and electoral work around pro-youth voter reforms and increasing participation of young people in the democratic process. We will work with GenVoters and allies in critical states where the youth vote is under attack and promote youth-friendly democracy reforms on the local, state and federal level that empower young voters in the political process.
Generation Vote (527): Generation Vote will continue to provide support and resources for GenVote teams that endorse local candidates running for office who support local Youth Platforms. Generation Vote will also endorse and partner with pro-democracy candidates on the federal, state and local level. We will be the first youth-driven organization to explicitly endorse candidates that will pledge to fight for youth voting rights and promote authentic civic engagement. This can look like:
● Electing a candidate running for county board who will support the implementation of a polling place on a local college campus
● Supporting a candidate who will introduce lower the voting age legislation in the state legislature
● Working with a County Executive candidate who commits to creating the first county-wide youth advisory council
● Supporting a candidate running for Congress who supports H.R 1 and the Help Students Vote Act
By applying the GenVote Model of Engagement to campaigns that will fight for youth voting rights and identify champions for local civic engagement, we can build a movement that unharnesses a new way of organizing young people around democracy reform, while gaining the necessary popular and political support around youth voting rights.
Generation Vote Network (501 c3): The Generation Vote Network will be the main home for our capacity-building and educational work, where we will train organizers with the GenVote Model of Engagement and foster civic engagement on college campuses across the country.
Why do we need all of these entities?
Because of the GenVote Model! The GenVote Model of Engagement is a comprehensive strategy for organizing young people and expands the scope of political engagement in our local communities. Even more, some of the most successful movements of today are supported by multiple legal entities (see Indivisible or the Sunrise Movement, for example). Progressive organizing is evolving and if we want systematic change, we need a multifaceted movement-building approach.
In tandem with our existing 527, the new 501 c(3) and 501 c(4) initiatives will raise our work to a whole new level by providing additional opportunities for fundraising, and will fill a crucial gap in the democracy space. With a new legal framework, GenVoters can fully engage with the GenVote Model through electoral politics, advocacy, and strengthening their teams through GenVote’s unique training modules.
What does this mean for Generation Vote now?
This will not have a major impact on how GenVoters currently interact with our National Staff. We are still committed to providing personal mentorship, exclusive trainings and other programs that create the special GenVote experience for our students. We hope that by being more explicit in our support of pro-youth voting rights and standardizing a candidate endorsement process, it will provide more opportunities for meaningful coalition and campaign work.
What’s next?
Stay tuned for more information about our campaigns and resources about youth voting rights! In the coming weeks, we will announce calls for action and rollout the DNA for a new youth voting rights movement. We believe our generation is unstoppable, and we will fight for a democracy that we all deserve.
