A great summary of ways to help now….
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From: Ian David Moss <iandavidmoss@gmail.com mailto:iandavidmoss@gmail.com> Subject: Donation/volunteering recs for the Georgia Senate runoffs Date: November 15, 2020 at 9:46:39 AM PST To: landslidecoalition@gmail.com mailto:landslidecoalition@gmail.com
Hello all, The political giving circle I started this summer has the name "Landslide Coalition" thanks to our founding premise that only a landslide -- a massive outpouring of political and cultural support for Democrats -- would cure the United States of its decline into Trumpism these past four years. That massive outpouring did indeed materialize: Joe Biden has won the most votes by far of any presidential candidate in history, and turnout in this election was the highest since 1900. It was enough to accomplish the first two objectives we laid out: the margin of victory was too high and wide for Trump to realistically overturn by dispute, and it was sufficient to overcome the triple threat to election security posed by Republican voter suppression, foreign actors, and the COVID-19 pandemic this year.
Unfortunately, the Republican side nearly had a landslide of its own. Joe Biden may have won the most votes of any presidential candidate and history, but Donald Trump won the second-most. Bizarre as it may seem, there are well over a million people in this country who chose not to vote in 2016, but saw the last four years and decided to go out of their way to ensure we had more of that. And they were more than happy to vote for Republican candidates downballot as well.
The combination of these factors has led to a precarious, inconclusive outcome. We may have headed off the worst-case scenarios, but there remains important work to do to set our country up for greater success over the next four years. At Landslide Coalition, we've decided to focus our attention during this transition period on the following two critical priorities: Winning the Senate. You all know what I'm talking about here: the Georgia runoffs. We've already seen an incredible amount of interest in these races on both sides, and I expect that will only increase over the next two months. We have some great donation recommendations lined up that we're excited to tell you more about below, and our friends at Focus 2020 are gearing up for a substantial effort there as well. Rebuilding Trust. Goaded by Trump, a huge proportion of rank-and-file Republican voters and elected officials alike are refusing to accept the results of the election as legitimate. While I do not expect that this effort will succeed in keeping Trump in office, it nevertheless has enormous potential to accelerate the radicalization of the American right, poisoning the well for Biden's ability to govern from day one and damaging our ability to conduct future elections with integrity. Today, I'm sharing our donation and volunteer recommendations for the first of these priorities, the Georgia runoffs. In the context of donations, an important thing to understand when reading the below is that this race is attracting an enormous amount of money and attention from both sides of the aisle. You've probably seen friends donating to or fundraising for well-known entities such as the Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff campaigns, the Democratic Party of Georgia, and the Stacey Abrams-founded organizations Fair Fight and New Georgia Project. These organizations and campaigns do great work, but if they don't achieve their goals on January 5, it's unlikely to be because they didn't raise enough money this fall. By contrast, our recommendations try to hone in on lower-profile efforts that cover an important niche in the overall landscape, yet have a real chance of not meeting their fundraising goals or potential.
Here are those recommendations:
BlockPower If you attended our volunteer briefing in October, you heard about the power of vote tripling -- i.e., getting potential or recent voters to remind three friends to vote. Well, BlockPower https://blockpower.us/ takes that idea several steps further by combining vote tripling with relational organizing -- or getting your friends to be vote triplers -- in a paid organizing model with a special focus on Georgia's Black communities. Put simply, BlockPower pays regular people up to $500 each to recruit vote triplers from among a list of low-propensity voters in their networks, who can then in turn earn money by becoming organizers themselves. Developed by a professor at Howard University, this approach is like a greatest-hits album of evidence-based GOTV techniques, has significant potential to scale productively, and is currently flying well under the radar of fundraisers for the Georgia runoffs. Instructions for donating to BlockPower https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KtmCxxa_CxRM2O3rh6zwwauQIkPNFTF7mSQdEws7BGw/edit
Vote.org http://vote.org/ radio Mind the Gap and Vote.org http://vote.org/ are accepting donations for a radio advertising buy that will stress the importance of voting in the runoffs on Georgia-based stations with majority youth and/or POC listenership. Radio is a relatively underappreciated tool for getting out the vote, and evidence from past elections suggests the cost-effectiveness of such programs is extremely competitive. And since the outcome in the runoffs is far more likely to be determined by turnout than persuasion (runoffs are typically low-turnout affairs), we think this is a great bet for your money. Please note the funding deadline for this opportunity is Friday, November 20. Full instructions for donating to Vote.org http://vote.org/ radio attached; link https://secure.actblue.com/donate/gavotemtg to donate online
For volunteering: Focus 2020 In the final week leading up to the November 3 election, we had the privilege of working closely with our friends at Focus 2020 to direct volunteer efforts focused on Pennsylvania and the Upper Midwest. Focus 2020 operates as a clearinghouse and coordinating body https://deepelectionvolunteering.wordpress.com/ for high-impact volunteering efforts, working in close partnership with local and state-based organizations. The group has now pivoted to the Georgia runoffs and we are pleased to recommend them as our primary partners for Georgia volunteering. In addition to maintaining a curated list https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xNHy8BH2DEyElC7uN75jlCaotO8hGkroxKMuKzBRKKo/edit of third-party Georgia volunteering opportunities (which Landslide Coalition will be helping to coordinate), Focus 2020 accepts direct volunteers https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdbqaNdPW0bcugOqJP7EbnW9mT77y9UBvz6rWYK0Dlfx0bRxA/viewform with no minimum time commitment, which is the best way to stay in the loop on an ongoing basis. One of the most critical lessons we learned over the past month is that the landscape of political volunteering needs is constantly shifting, and your efforts are only as impactful as the importance of the gap you're filling. We're recommending Focus 2020 because you're going to get much better information on that front from partnering with them than by working with a single organization or running down a list of random events on Mobilize.
Thank you as always for your partnership, and as always I'm happy to answer any questions. All the best, Ian
PS: since I know that most of you didn't sign up to get constant emails from me, please note that this is the second-to-last email I plan to send to this larger group. (The final one will be when we have our "rebuilding trust" recommendations finalized.) To make sure you receive further updates going forward, please join Landslide Coalition https://www.landslidecoalition.org/join (for donation recommendations and non-Georgia volunteering) and/or Focus 2020 https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdbqaNdPW0bcugOqJP7EbnW9mT77y9UBvz6rWYK0Dlfx0bRxA/viewform (for Georgia volunteering).
Ian David Moss CEO, Knowledge Empower L3C https://iandavidmoss.com/ https://iandavidmoss.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/iandavidmoss/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/iandavidmoss/ To Be Decided newsletter: http://eepurl.com/gjYBlD https://t.co/1UifZ2yxHm?amp=1