This category showcases the way Leagues have had to innovate their work over the past biennium. The catalyst for innovation could be anything from the pandemic to severe voter disenfranchisement to natural disaster or something else that required your League to come up with a new way of performing parts or all of your work. 

LWV of North Dakota

Without any staff, the League of Women Voters of North Dakota knew it needed to build capacity to have a reach across the state. The Board of Directors decided to hire a contract worker this year to work on its programming and outreach.

No organization has ever attempted a state-wide voter guide for the North Dakota primary election, and LWVND is taking it on through VOTE411. With over 2,000 candidates to manage, we are hard at work contacting candidates to fill out their candidate questionnaires. We are dedicated to getting posters up in all towns with 5,000 people or more and targeting our follow-up outreach toward candidates in local races who are running opposed. We'll try to reach every one of them by phone or email to remind them to fill it out. 

We are getting creative with our marketing and voter outreach by posting on Facebook groups throughout the state, posting on Reddit and city sub-Reddit accounts, and creating fun Google ads. We are taking any media interviews that come our way, and we are reaching out to rural voters by placing online ads in their small local newspapers.

Beyond VOTE411, we have created cute, relatable shirts for people to purchase and brought together state Leagues in our region in what we are calling the "Midwest Meetup." Most of these states do not have any staff or have only part-time contractors like us so we have started a shared Google Drive folder to help share work to strengthen all our state Leagues. 

We have also started fundraising for our League through VOTE411 sponsorships and will soon have a donation program in place. But we are not only growing our capacity through donations but also through membership dues. Since the start of 2022, the Red River Valley chapter has grown from 53 to 73 members and the Bis-Man chapter has grown from 20 to 36 members. Our events are more well attended and we have engaged more volunteers than ever this year.

We are growing our Facebook page that we started in April 2021. From January to February this year, we reached 1,221 people with posts (up 6,683%) and had 167 post engagements (up 5,467%). Since that leap, we continue to use our page to fill the gap of voter education as we approach our June primary election. We regularly remind our members and supporters to follow our page and share our posts.

We are using all these sub-programs to grow our League, but we know VOTE411 will be the biggest game-changer in increasing our visibility and engagement as well as building rapport with candidates across our state. We can see our League becoming a powerhouse for voter education and empowerment in years to come.

LWV of Pennsylvania

The past 5 years have seen significant changes for LWVPA’s institutional capacity. Organizational changes like frequent board and staff turnover and major world events like the Covid-19 pandemic have changed the way the state League works and operates. In the past 2 years, LWVPA adapted to these obstacles by implementing system changes which allow better communication, collaboration, and advocacy for PA citizens. The state League changed its board composition to include statewide, virtually run committees made up of members and supporters. Four of these committees, voter services, social policy, environmental policy, and government policy, have made major strides in statewide advocacy, civic education, and voter outreach." LWVPA’s organizational ability to quickly adapt to the changes of the past five years has overall provided a better service for Pennsylvania voters and furthered the League’s historic mission to empower voters and defend democracy.

LWV of Texas

In 2021, LWVTX harnessed technology in two ways to super-charge voting rights and election law legislative advocacy. We paid for a service to create Action Alerts that empowered time-sensitive member engagement with their own State Senators and Representatives on voting rights and election legislation.  It also allowed Letters to the Editor to their own local media. We also used technology to improve our statewide and national network of organizations seeking to achieve common legislative results. Our efforts contributed to delaying passage of the omnibus anti-voter election law SB 1 until the second called special session after the regular legislative session ended May 31.