The Road to Change

On June 2, 2020 we sent an email to all members of the Tech for Campaigns community expressing our support for the black community and our plans for action. Given the continued need for change, we’re sharing an updated version here with a wider audience, on the encouragement of key advisors.

I want to address a topic that’s been weighing heavy on our hearts and minds: the racial inequities that are always present and felt acutely this week with the senseless shooting of Jacob Blake on Sunday in Wisconsin, and killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and many more.

As an organization, we stand with the black community. We are in awe of the reverberating voices of everyone protesting.

But that is, quite simply, not enough.

We are working 24/7 to elect officials who are more fair, just and representative of the people. ​The majority of candidates we help are women and minorities. They are often running in down-ballot races and would typically not otherwise get access to this type of help. And yet, they are the people who will decide how we react to the next pandemic, if access to healthcare is expanded, whether gun safety laws will be enacted and whether fairer voting rights laws will be passed. The winners will also decide how the federal congressional lines are drawn — impacting the outcome of elections for the next decade or more.

But that is, quite simply, not enough.

It was during another extraordinary moment in 2017 that I found posting on social media was simply not enough, that Tech for Campaigns (TFC) was born. We started TFC to bring world class tech and talent to campaigns and to give people an outlet to channel their frustration into meaningful action. Bias towards action is endemic in our values.

So in this moment we asked ourselves as an organization, “what can we do?” Not just this month or just this year, but rather what can we do to change things long-term, with intention?

We devised a plan along four segments:

1. TFC Team — we looked around and agreed that while we have gender diversity, we don’t have a healthy representation of black or Latinx team members. To fix this we’re focused on changing our recruiting outreach process, from relying on inbound and internal networks, to forging relationships with key people and organizations that help recruit, train and promote minorities in tech. We’d be crazy not to understand that most jobs are filled through networks, so we’re also working on expanding our networks not just for our job openings today, but for the long-term.
2. Boards- Our Board of Directors and Leadership Board are both strategic and fundraising-based boards. Both suffer from terrible diversity metrics. We’ve committed to filling 20% of our positions on both boards with people of color by the end of 2021, and will remain mindful of the acute need for black and Latinx representation as we work to fill those positions. If you or someone you know is interested in learning more about service on either board, we’d love to talk. TFC also has a newly-formed Political Advisory Board comprised of current and former elected officials and public servants. I’m proud to say that this board is 37% minority. But, let’s be clear about why — we were intentional about prioritizing diversity from the beginning. It didn’t just happen that way. And this is why we will approach filling available positions on our Board of Directors and Leadership Board with the same intensity and intentionality moving forward.
3. Volunteer Community — we have 13,500 skilled volunteers in our community and it’s growing daily. We don’t ask for any sort of information that would help measure diversity other than geographic location. That said, our hunch is that there is room to improve the diversity of this group, as well. We’ve begun reaching out to groups and organizations to help promote the opportunity to get involved politically using digital and tech skills, including virtual events. And we welcome feedback from our volunteers on what they would like to see TFC doing on this front.
4. Candidates — in 2018, TFC-supported candidates were 63.2% women and/or minorities. We are still adding campaigns to our slate of 2020 candidates, but we’re committed to ensuring these numbers stay strong. In the same way, we are being intentional about creating more opportunities to showcase our candidates during our events — from community All-Hands to Virtual Fundraisers. We’re committed to lifting up our amazing candidates in every way available to us.

Quite frankly, this too is probably not enough, but it’s a start. We invite you to share constructive ideas on what else we can do to be part of the long-term solution. And we encourage you to get involved. If you have not yet volunteered with TFC, you can sign up here. If you want to encourage others to channel their anger into action, you can share this page. The important thing is that we take meaningful actions, now, to create lasting change. It will be the combined impact of many small actions that makes a sweeping impact.

Special thanks to Representative JA Moore, Representative Fentrice Driskell, Carla Hayes and Stephanie Mactas for their counsel.