WE PROVIDE EVERY PARTNER ORGANIZATION WITH:

• Training on the best tactics and facilitate regular calls with partners across the state to stimulate competition and shared learning.

• A web page of their own, to collect voter registrations and commits to vote of their constituency and track progress to goals.

• a portal that automatically captures data into a system that allows us to match it with the Secretary of State's voter file, providing a level of voter protection checks and balances, ensuring the voter registration forms sent to the Secretary of State are in fact converting into new registrants.

• text messaging notification to their voters on when and where to vote - from their organization, so that the organization that registers the voter is also sending election turnout reminders with a way to reply and quickly lookup the voter’s polling location. (this has been tested and proven to increase turnout)

• peer-to-peer text message software and phone/canvass lists of the people registered by the partner organization so that partners can be empowered to follow up and engage their newly registered voters with turnout messages - and strengthen their own lists and organizations in the process.
• The database matches up with the voter file so that we can identify lower propensity voters and provide partner organizations with lists of specific current and new voters, associated with their organization, and who would benefit from additional engagement from their organization to increase civic participation through a variety of tactics (phone calls, canvassing, mail, etc).
• Reporting and analysis to partners and investors on the actual impact of these investments at increasing registration, and civic participation.

Increasing people of color, single women and under 30yr old participation in elections can only reach significant scale by building the power of organizations that already have trust and relationships with those constituencies to better integrate registration and turnout into their everyday work.

We know how to contact ~300,000 of the nearly 750,000 unregistered minorities, single women and young people, and how to contact ~300,000 of those that ARE registered, but don't typically vote in midterm elections.

We can provide partners with: lists to contact, tools to reach them, and with the behavioral-science tested messages proven to increase participation. Why this matters:

• Not everyone will be reached through mail.
• making sure that those who receive mail, also get a text, phone call or visit from a local organization increases the effectiveness of mail
• Building a coalition that incorporates registration and turnout into their work creates sustainability that impacts the state beyond one election cycle because the work will need to continue after 2018 to grow in effectiveness over time.

Your investment in this project lives on beyond the 2018 election cycle because the organizations that integrate registration and turnout into their work, and use the tools to support building their own lists, build power for future engagement - and that doesn't evaporate after 2018, but only grows stronger.

$299,641 (core budget)

• It will increase the effectiveness of the Voter Registration by Mail program, and provide local partners with the lists and resources to reach people we're unable to reach through mail:
  • 286,000 unregistered people of color, single women and under 30 year olds with cell phone numbers will get contacted by partners in the challenge. (While research is still pending on the actual percentage that will register, we know that this will be the first time in Tennessee's history running a campaign to reach every under-represented, unregistered citizen through a coalition committed to collective impact. This is based on successful voter registration by text efforts conducted in Virginia and Alabama). We also know that ~50% of those who register will vote.

  • 300,000+ receiving voter registration by mail will also receive contact through local partners doing follow up via phone calling, canvassing, local outreach. We can increase the effectiveness of the mail program by providing local partner organizations with phone lists and maps of where the highest concentrations are of our unregistered constituency in the mail program.
• Every partner will receive lists of minorities, single women and young people who are newly registered & existing voters who typically vote in Presidential elections but not midterms - and with the tools and training to reach them with messages that increase participation.
  • ~400,000+ newly registered and low propensity voters (people who vote only in Presidential elections but not midterms)

• Layering this with other tactics this will help increase the quality and effect of them as it adds newly registered voters into the turnout mail program we wouldn't otherwise reach and increases the quality of data (email, cell) to support broader text/outreach campaign.

• Texting minimum effect:  + .2 increase in turnout for text reminders to mid-range vote propensity. (source)
• Calculating the actual measurable impact here will evolve as partners are recruited into the challenge and evaluate plans but this basic investment provides most importantly the capacity to build long term infrastructure in Tennessee focused on routinely integrating voter registration and mobilization into organizations across the state (and giving them the resources to do it).

• Research Summary on Texting
  https://blog.hustle.com/can-text-messages-save-democracy-952f35eaf216

• Alabama Senate Race and Peer to Peer Texting
  https://blog.hustle.com/you-texted-over-20-of-alabama-voters-59c6777b4931

Excerpts from the papers above:

"We had two questions we wanted to answer. First, would this work? Second, would it be cost-effective? The answer to both was a resounding YES. Not only were we able to register 26,000 hard-to-reach-voters, but we were able to do so at a cost of $10 per registration form, which is cheaper than site-based registration. What’s more, our newly registered voters actually turned out to vote. The cost per net-new-vote was $77, which means for every $1,000 we spent, 13 people voted who would have otherwise stayed home."

and

“For GOTV, results vary between audiences and the volume of the outreach. For the Presidential, turnout attributable to Hustle was smaller w/ increases <1% than for the 2016 primary in NYC where 50% increases were observed from unions texting their members.

“In the Alabama Senate race, Hustle was used to send over 2.5 Million texts to ~ 700K Alabamians. Many of whom were from underrepresented populations that came out on election day. Here is another article on our work in AL. https://blog.hustle.com/you-texted-over-20-of-alabama-voters-59c6777b4931”