Voto Latino Co-founders, Maria Teresa Kumar & Rosario Dawson,
and staff with Mario Lugay and Cristobal Alex
The 2000 Presidential Election strongly underscored both the importance of voting and the need to protect the integrity of the electoral process. And while the 2008 elections demonstrated the vibrancy of an engaged electorate, misinformation and special interest money still play an undue role in our democracy. We created the Voting Integrity & Civic Engagement (VoICE) program area to contribute to larger movements to strengthen US. elections and democracy.
In the past, the Mitchell Kapor Foundation’s VoICE work has focused on voter engagement and elections protection. During those initial years of grantmaking, we learned much about the nuanced issues and challenges in this broad field of civic engagement and have been able to more specifically define our interests and potential contributions to the field.
In 2012 , we will limit VoICE grants mostly to renewals for key partner organizations working in community organizing and elections protection. We will consider new requests for Info Tech for Social Impact grants (see below) in VoICE and make the application process and criteria available in March.
CIVIC ENGAGEMENT THROUGH COMMUNITY ORGANIZING
Goal: To increase the number of traditionally marginalized communities in the Bay Area who have an impact on public policymaking through organizing and voting.
Action: We support San Francisco Bay Area collaborations of organizers in communities of color who foster greater civic participation of their individual and collective members.
Elections Protection
Goal: To ensure that historically disenfranchised communities and the expanding electorate have fair access to the polls and that their votes count as equal among others.
Action: We support nonpartisan efforts that resist attempts to restrict fair access to elections. Within this context, we work with organizations that have an explicit focus on racial justice.
INFO TECH FOR SOCIAL IMPACT (ITSI)
Goal: To support the development and use of tech-based tools or approaches that will have an accelerative (or positively disruptive) impact on mission-driven social change work.
Action: We will support nonprofit efforts (even in collaboration with for-profit entities or programmers) within our current areas of work – civic engagement through community organizing, elections protection, or college access - to create tools or processes that will advance such efforts in significant ways. Generally, we think that such efforts would push beyond the integration of a social media strategy or upgrading internal hardware and tech capacity. We will consider requests for Info Tech for Social Impact grants in VoICE and make the application process and criteria available in March.
We will consider ITSI requests on an ongoing basis throughout the year. Efforts based in the San Francisco Bay Area take top priority.
