Mitchell Kapor Foundation

Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund
Washington, DC
$20,000
Through the Asian American Democracy Project, AALDEF provides Election Day monitoring and election protection activities in targeted communities in twelve states, generally locations with large concentrations of Asian Americans and/or poll sites where past voting problems have been observed. Some of their services include a multilingual telephone hotline to answer voter questions and record incidences of voter problems and legal advocacy to improve poll worker training, language assistance programs, proper procedures, and compliance with elections law.

Asian Pacific Islander American Vote
Washington, DC
$15,000
With its mission to increase Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) engagement in the electoral process, APIAVote has a 2008 national grassroots campaign to strategically increase voter turn out amongst AAPI populations through a multilayered, strategic targeting of counties that meet community, organization, and academic criteria.

Center for Community Change
Washington, DC
$30,000
Through its nonpartisan Community Voting Project (CVP), Center for Community Change incorporates voter education, registration, mobilization, and integration efforts through an array of capacity building services to partner organizations. CVP also works with more than 50 organizations throughout the country to provide hands-on help with strategic planning, media outreach, and community organizing.

Center for Public Interest Research
Los Angeles, CA
$40,000
The Community Voters Project (CVP) is a large-scale, non-partisan voter registration project that will register 500,000 African American and Latino voters in Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin for the 2008 election.

Citizen Engagement Laboratory
Fiscal Sponsor: League of Young Voters Education Fund
$60,000
The CEL is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that uses technology and digital media to inform citizens, encourage activism, and create leaders of future social change efforts. They leverage the work of three existing internal projects—ColorOfChange.org, VideoTheVote.org, and GNN.tv—to support other established organizations and new initiatives looking to maximize the impact of digital citizen engagement.

Community Leadership: Organizing and Uniting Together
Fiscal Sponsor: Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center
$30,000
Community Leadership Organizing and Uniting Together (CLOUT) is a two year old collaboration between three San Francisco affordable housing and support services community development organizations: Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center, Chinatown Community Development Center, and Community Housing Partnership. As part of its efforts to bring San Franciscans with low incomes together, CLOUT will be conducting a joint "Get Out the Vote" effort in the fall of 2008, offering support and training to a group of constituent leaders who will lead GOTV efforts that cross ethnic and neighborhood lines in San Francisco.

Generational Alliance
Oakland, CA
$20,000
In Generational Alliance’s primary 2008 initiative, Generation Vote (GenVote) will work to encourage historically disenfranchised youth to participate in the political process by 1) providing financial and technical support to at least 15 local voter engagement projects, 2) reaching at least 500,000 youth through the national Trick or Vote campaign, the GenVote Youth Agenda, Vote Hip-Hop Contest, and other voter mobilization efforts, and 3) deepening the collaborative relationship of its member organizations.

Hip Hop Caucus Institute
Fiscal sponsor: Institute for Policy Studies
Washington, DC
$30,000
Through Hip Hop Vote 2008, HHCI will register 160,000 young new voters from communities of color in eight targeted states (Georgia, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and District of Colombia), particularly reaching out to non-student populations, which are often overlooked.

League of Young Voters Education Fund
Brooklyn, NY
$30,000
LYVEF aims to register 13,000 young voters in eight states with a primary goal of building the capacity of young citizens to address civic leadership issues in their respective communities. LYVEF runs voter registration, voter education, GOTV, and election protection programs in core states and also organizes state and local issue campaigns.

Mobilize the Immigrant Vote
Fiscal Sponsor: Partnership for Immigration Leadership and Action
San Francisco and Los Angeles, CA
$30,000
Mobilize the Immigrant Vote is a statewide campaign to stimulate voter registration and participation in immigrant communities. Over 150 community groups are organized into six regional coalitions convened by six groups; MIV provides capacity-building support and resources to expand voter engagement activities conducted by their partner organizations.

National Coalition on Black Civic Participation
Washington, DC
$30,000
NCBCP uses its 80+ member organizations and media partners to disseminate information and implement engagement strategies with their respective constituencies and communities. They aim to register 250,000 new voters in 18 states and provide one million voters with education and assistance.

Nine to Five
Milwaukee, WI
$25,000
Through their Election Connection work, 9 to 5 expects to reach 50,000 women nationwide through voter education activities. They aim to further engage 4,000 low-income women in voting, campaigning on issues of relevance, and learning organizing principles to hold public officials accountable responsible for issues.

People for the American Way Foundation
Washington, DC
$25,000
People for the American way Foundation has produced and will make available online a comprehensive survey to local election officials identifying potential problem areas, and will work with local activists to ensure proper functioning of elections and access to polls.

Proteus Fund
Amherst, MA
$30,000
Proteus Fund is a public supported foundation, which conducts programs intending to promote social justice, civil, and human rights nationally. The Piper Fund is a project of the Proteus fund which “is a collaborative grantmaking program and donor learning table designed to support comprehensive public financing of elections at the state level.” Specifically, the Piper Fund will support communities of color to participate in public education campaigns promoting public financing and leveraging existing public financing laws to increase civic participation among communities of color.

Project Vote
St. Paul, MN
$30,000
Project Vote will work with community-based field partners around the country to help register and engage at least 1.2 million new voters in five overlapping communities: low-income populations, African Americans, Latinos, immigrant citizens, and youth. They will encourage the ongoing participation of these communities in their local civic organizations by focusing on the issues that affect residents directly (wage increases, immigration reform, education, crime, and affordable housing).

Public Campaign
Washington, DC
$30,000
Public Campaign will support and work on efforts in over 30 states to win, secure, and protect public financing for elections by employing three approaches: 1) support state and local campaigns to win reform through legislation or ballot initiative, 2) broaden the table of supporters of reform to include issue and constituent advocates not originally focused on clean elections, and 3) create the public environment for change by holding lawmakers accountable for accepting private contributions and over representing the interests of those contributions.

The Bus Project Foundation
$25,000 for general support of Bus Federation work
Portland, OR
Through the Go West, Young Voter! Initiative, the Federation aims to register 40,000 voters and increase youth civic engagement in disenfranchised communities across the western U.S.

US Student Association Foundation
Washington, DC
$30,000
The mission of USSAF is “to empower, train, and provide an organizing support network to students committed to: increasing access to higher education, especially for historically underrepresented communities; working against racism, sexism, classism, ableism, and homophobia; and increasing student civic participation, including voting.” This election year, USSAF seeks to register 100,000 students and to gain a 60% to 65% turnout of registered student voters on campaigns on 40 campuses in 10 selected states, including historically Black institutions and campuses with at least one-third student-of-color populations.

Voter Action
Seattle, WA
$40,000
Voter Action’s Legal Advocacy project will conduct legal strategies to challenge the overall privatization of the election process. The Campaign to Reclaim will push for a full congressional investigation into US voting system corporations. The Watch the Vote 2008 Project will work with the NAACP National Voter Fund, VoterStory.org, and other national and local partners to monitor election protection efforts during the November 2008 election in seven states (OH, PA, NM, GA, MD, CO, FL) through citizen poll monitors. This project will also provide for a nationwide free hotline (866-MyVote1) and website that records complaints, provides information, and connects voters with their local election board help line.

Women of Color United
Fiscal Sponsor: Women of Color Resource Center
$15,000 for documentary campaign and tour
Silver Spring, MD
Led by longtime activist Jacqui Patterson, Women of Color United (WOCU) will embark on a 35-day media tour during which they will document and record the voices and issues of women of color in key swing states. Simultaneously, they are lining up a number of radio appearances in the locales they will visit in order to talk about the relevance of issues that they hear (education, health care, job training, child care, etc.) in the upcoming election. Their hope is to prompt greater election participation by women of color (notably black women) in the areas through which they travel.

ACLU Foundation of Northern California
San Francisco, CA
$30,000
Among other efforts, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California (ACLU-NC) is conducting a statewide Every Vote Counts campaign in California focusing on the voting rights and participation of formerly incarcerated individuals.

Advancement Project
Washington DC and Los Angeles, CA
$40,000
The Advancement Project will concentrate their elections-related investigation, monitoring, advocacy and litigation work in 15 states, covering up to 40 counties.

Brennan Center for Justice
New York, NY
$40,000
The Brennan Center conducts research, public education campaigns, and advocacy (including litigation) in over 20 states and will continue to target crucial issues and opportunities (such as the Indiana voter ID law).

California Alliance
Fiscal sponsor:  Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE)
Los Angeles, CA
$40,000
California Alliance seeks to register and mobilize 100,000 new voters this year, through a coalition-based strategy linking 15 social justice organizations.

Dēmos: A Network for Ideas and Action
New York, NY
$40,000
Dēmos' Democracy Project will focus on generating greater enforcement of the National Voting Rights Act, and promoting the establishment of Election Day voter registration in selected states which are currently considering this possibility.

National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO) Education Foundation
Los Angeles, CA
$40,000
NALEO’s Ya Es Hora! Ve Y Vota works to ensure there is up-to-date and accessible voter information in ten potential high yield states.

Nonprofit Voter Engagement Network
Fiscal sponsor: Minnesota Council on Nonprofits
Minneapolis, MN
$25,000
NVEN trains locally-based direct service agencies to integrate year-round voter engagement efforts into their work with constituents. NVEN has projects in four states and looks to expand to two more in 2008.

Oakland Rising
Fiscal Sponsor: Just Cause Oakland
Oakland, CA
$40,000
Oakland Rising is an electoral empowerment collaboration between six Oakland-based community organizing agencies: Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), Oakland ACORN, East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE), Ella Baker Center, Just Cause Oakland, and Urban Habitat. The premise of the collaboration is to leverage the strengths of each of these well-established organizers in order to build a larger and more unified constituency of Oakland voters and activists.

Progressive Technology Project
Minneapolis, MN
$40,000
Progressive Technology Project provides training to nonprofits that seek to maximize their incorporation and use of tech-based tools - most notably the online Voter Tech Kit - into organizing work.

Radio Bilingüe
Fresno, CA
$30,000
Through their Promover el Voto campaign, Radio Bilingüe will provide non-partisan information via radio and web on why and how Latinos should participate in the electoral process through the coming year.

Self Reliance Foundation
Washington, DC
$25,000
The Self Reliance Foundation has a partnership with the Hispanic Communications Network and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to produce Epicentro Political, a weekly one-hour news forum and political discussion radio show targeting Latino voters and addresses national issues.