Political donors who want to target their gifts for maximum impact have a lot of decisions to sort through. They don’t just have to identify which states, races and candidates they should pay attention to; they need to find groups that are underfunded and thus require help more urgently. If a donor is concerned about some of the debates going on in the campaign world, like the argument over whether too much is spent on TV advertising, they may want to find groups that focus on relationship organizing and the building of the sort of long-term infrastructure that is widely credited with turning Georgia blue in the 2020 cycle.
But finding the right destination for donations takes research, and that takes time, which is where Movement Voter Project comes in. MVP is one of several organizations that have sprouted up in recent years hoping to advise donors on one hand, and build the capacity of on-the-ground progressive nonprofits on the other. The goal is to create a pipeline of resources from donors to the places and organizations that most badly need it.
“The value proposition of Movement Voter Project is helping connect individual donors who want to support frontline organizing groups to do electoral work with the hundreds of groups that they might want to support,“ Jason Franklin, a senior advisor at MVP, told Blue Tent. “Some donors come to us and say, I really care about supporting Native organizing, or supporting BIPOC power-building, or my family’s from Pennsylvania and I want to fund there.” Especially in cases where a donor wants to give large quantities, the MVP team can put together a strategy for them; most donors, however, are happy to contribute to a pool of funds that MVP distributes.
Last year, MVP routed more than $100 million from 41,000 donors to 636 groups in 42 states. The average donation, Franklin said, was around $100, but there were “a couple of hundred donors who are giving in the six-figure and seven-figure range.”
Rapid growth
The organization that became MVP was founded in 2016 by the longtime journalist and activist Billy Wimsatt. It was called Movement 2016, then changed its name to Movement 2017 the following year, then adopted its current name when its leaders decided it needed a permanent moniker. Wimsatt is notable not just for his knowledge of the progressive nonprofit landscape, but his enthusiasm. “You’ll be on a call with him and 100 other people, and he starts talking about a group and he will stand up and he will say, ‘OK, let’s lead a cheer,’” said Kathleen Berry, an MVP donor. “His state advisors really walk the walk, and they are reflective of the constituencies that we need to motivate and to get to the polls and to vote, and whose issues and concerns we need to address.”
The groundwork Wimsatt and his team do is extensive. They first identify which states, districts and races are most important in a given cycle, then work with state advisors who know the local political landscapes to identify groups that are either already well-established or that need support, paying particular attention to those doing year-round organizing. One of these groups is the New Georgia Project, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit focused on registering people of color to vote in the state. “This year, we have a plan of registering an additional 50,000 young people and people of color,” said Nsé Ufot, the group’s CEO. As the state’s Republican lawmakers contemplate a bill that would make it more difficult to vote, NGP is also gearing up to launch a public education campaign to help people navigate any new obstacles between them and the ballot box.
Those efforts require funding, and that’s where MVP comes in. “The fact that we have highly skilled professionals who come from the communities that we organize in, who know what our community’s priorities are and are working with us to build power—that would not have happened without investments of the Movement Voter Project,” Ufot said. She added that though progressive Georgian leaders like Stacey Abrams and Lauren Groh-Wargo have been identifying the state as a potential Democratic target for years, “those early conversations often fell on deaf ears.” MVP and Wimsatt were among the “amplifiers” who were “really, really helpful in growing our base of donors and our base of support, and to highlight the opportunity in Georgia, long before we became the focus of national attention.”
Not just money
Some organizations’ main need is access to money; being connected to MVP means being connected to a universe of donors. MVP also provides training to movement leaders who may need to acquire new skills as their organizations grow and prosper.
“Some groups, especially those that have been scaling up, the people who are leading them, they know how to lead a group with 10 members, but then they get 100, or they know how to lead a group of 100, but now they have 1,000,” Franklin said. That knowledge can be transmitted through trainings set up by MVP or through connections that the group offers. “If you are a new organizer focused on youth organizing, can you talk to other people who’ve done youth organizing for a few years, or for 10 years? If you’re getting started on doing rural organizing, who can you look to who’s done rural organizing, who can say, ‘Oh, you’re in a different state, the situation is different, but here’s things I’ve learned,’” Franklin said.
MVP helps both 501(c)(3)s and 501(c)(4)s, and the two types of nonprofits have different rules about what they can do in electoral contexts. But essentially, what MVP is doing is building the capacity of the Democratic Party by boosting groups that register voters, connect with people, and ultimately help win elections. And it’s building this capacity in places like Georgia, where the actual Democratic Party has not always prioritized its investments. (The recent announcement that DNC Chair Jamie Harrison is reviving the “50-state strategy” indicates that Democrats may try to spread their resources around in previously ignored regions.)
The question hanging over both MVP and the groups it supports is whether the donors that fund the work will stay engaged now that the obvious threat of Donald Trump has passed and Democrats have successfully taken the White House and Congress. Franklin is “cautiously optimistic,” and notes that donors he’s in touch with seem to want to remain involved; they know that battles for racial equity and the related battles for political power in statehouses and D.C. will likely never be over.
“My hope is that we actually see people stay. They stay as donors, they stay as activists, and they stay as volunteers,” Franklin said. “We’ll see a drop-off, no question. The smaller the drop-off, the stronger our movements are long-term.”
