Silicon Valley for Democracy

There are 38 days until the US presidential election and the race remains extremely tight.

I know I'm sick of the text messages and emails already (I literally ran out of space in my gmail/drive recently -- what?!) but the consequences for families, our autonomy, immigrants, schools, the economy and the environment couldn't be higher so I'm looking for ways to stay tuned in, clear headed, and action-oriented. You might be, too.

To help us with that, last night Russell Glass, Reid Hoffman, Allen Blue, and Sarah Mrabet Gormsen hosted Silicon Valley for Democracy, a demo day (4 min pitches!) that introduced the audience to a few incredible organizations doing the work in battle ground states. If you have been wishing you could more this election or do something with actual ROI, let me tell you about a few unique non-profits that could use our help...

1. mente, whose research says depressed people = depressed civic engagement. Their community based intervention is supporting a target audience of 35,300 hard-to-reach, young, diverse, eligible voters in AZ - especially in Maricopa county, with their mental health and wellbeing. Mente is serving their needs, fighting isolation, and helping them achieve an increased sense of belonging through cultural, local events.
2. Shawn Sebastian is working on a project with https://ruralorganizing.org/ to simply place yard signs! It works. Rural people are 20% of the population, but only 7% of funds from the top 1,200 major philanthropies goes to rural areas and the use of fear tactics in these areas is abundant. Signs say “We Support Freedom, Choice, Democracy" and invite effective relational conversations with neighbors about shared values. They've already place 28,000 signs in 750 small towns in battle ground states.
3. Jess O'Connell shared the Democracy Security Project, which is providing rapid-response and educational resources for making sure voters, poll workers, and elected officials are safe on November 5th and every day. They're delivering trainings on physical, cyber, event, communications, and legal safety and security across the US in a culturally competent way.
4. Voto Latino / is activating the ESSENTIAL Latinx vote and has the receipts. In 2020, they were the largest voter registration organization focused solely on communities of color and successfully registered 650,455 voters, 82% of which ended up casting a ballot that election cycle. In Arizona, Voto Latino registered 42,260 voters. Of that, 34,266 ended up voting and 19,263 of them were first- time voters. ?Increíble!
5. Debra Cleaver impressed us all (again) with VoteAmerica 's work on college campuses. A veteran in the voter activation space, she self-describes as tactic-agnostic and is simply interested in what is working. It's college campuses. She shared some crazy statistics like this one:

Partisan groups are on track to spend over $5 billion on broadcast TV this year, targeting an audience with a median age of 65. Meanwhile, 41 million Gen-Z voters will be eligible in 2024, and they are not tuning in to traditional TV. 60% of people under 35 consume no broadcast TV whatsoever, and even when they are online, 63% of adults under 35 use ad-blocking software and 99% of Gen Z skip ads when given the option.

On college campuses, many young are people are voting for the first time and need help doing so. Through college-owned media channels, Vote America is helping students know when to vote, where to go, what to bring, and who to contact if they need help.

National Basketball Association (NBA) Vote City, The Voter Project Fund, NextGen Education Fund and VoteRiders are also doing amazing work (with two explicitly focused on Philly voters!).

To wrap it up, I encourage you to stay engaged and do what you can to make sure your family, friends and community has their voice heard. Chicago has already started early voting so the time is now.

If you want more information about any of these organizations or want to join me in contributing to them, I'd love to share more.

A huge thank you to Russell Glass / Robin Cherry Glass and Reid Hoffman for matching up to $40,000 of donations to the 501c3s who presented last night. As my former boss/CEO of Headspace , Russ also made sure that our employees had the time off from work to cast their ballot each November and ensured we were not creating additional barriers, when so many already exist. For People Leaders in my network, let's do the same within our organizations.