Why I Launched Friends Vote Together
Earlier this year, I made the decision to leave my job. I had booked a long-awaited and much-dreamed-about trip to travel to South Africa for a few weeks. After that, I was confident I’d be coming back to start a job search in the political campaign world.
Instead, a pandemic, an economic crisis and so much uncertainty followed. I was unemployed and had no trip to take, so I started job hunting in quarantine and consulting for former clients while trying to figure out how this was all going to play out.
I was also diving deep into my volunteer work with local campaigns and voter outreach organizations. I was time-blocking parts of each day to call voters to help them register to vote. I found the work unbelievably fulfilling, but had no idea where that could possibly lead to.
That’s how I wound up talking to Beth in North Carolina.
Beth told me she was sitting this election out. That she and her friends do not vote and don’t talk about voting or elections. We started talking, and by the end of the call, Beth was registering to vote online and committed to voting this year.
Before we hung up, she said, “If I’d had a friend like you years ago, I probably would’ve voted a lot sooner.”
I remember hanging up from that call and bursting into tears, wanting to go jump in my car and find all the Beths who needed help. Who didn’t know how to register. Who didn’t think this election was important. Who hadn’t been exposed to the power of voting.
I knew then what I wanted to do: I wanted to create a community and a resource for people like Beth and her friends, because friends who vote together become friends who volunteer together, who march together, who advocate together and who ultimately change the world together. The Friends Vote Together movement was born out of that call.
Friends Vote Together is a grassroots movement focused not just on getting more people to vote, but on changing the way people think about being a voter and being civically active and engaged. It’s about so much more than just showing up every two or four years to cast a ballot for a President and maybe a Senator. Voting means holding your local, state and national leaders to account year-round. It means being involved in organizations working to end voter suppression and engaging in your community. Voting means doing the work beyond the ballot box.
I also think there’s a disconnect between creating that narrative and helping people truly understand what civic involvement entails. (Putting my business/operations hat back on, I would said I’ve “identified an operational gap in the market.”) Everyone hears phrases like “holding leaders to account” and “engaging in your community,” but how do you actually do those things? What do those actions look like? We are told to make calls, donate money, “Flip the Senate,” “Keep the House” — that is a lot being thrown at you! Even for people who want to get more involved, it can seem overwhelming, especially if you aren’t sure why these things are important. I know we can do a much better job helping people feel included by helping them understand. By treating them, in other words, like friends.
That’s why I created Friends Vote Together. It’s a seamless platform that not only informs and educates, but also explains precisely how you can take action — and why you can be assured the actions we’re talking about will maximize every minute and dollar you give. It’s a one-stop shop that is built around digestible strategy, information and ease. We tell you, “This is the strategy for this week. These are the priority races and these are the actions that need to be taken now — and here is why.”
Built as a social media and technology platform, Friends Vote Together walks you and your friends through all the steps you need to know in order to start making change and taking action with easy-to-follow initiatives like:
Let’s Get Loud: Let’s Get Loud is a plan that will successfully help you talk to friends and family about voting while maximizing the time you spend doing so and the impact you have. It makes use of your most powerful tool — your voice and your words.
When We Call, We Win: With less than 30 days until the election, the most important action to take right now is to ensure people have the information and resources they need to vote. Phone-banking is the sharpest tool in our tool belt to do that. When We Call, We Win is a plan that allows you to maximize your hours with the most impactful phone-banking opportunities.
The 10–20–30–40 Plan: Can’t figure out where or who to donate to as Election Day approaches? We’ll point you toward the campaigns and causes where you dollars will stretch the farthest.
These are just a few strategies for how to get involved and take action that we have rolled out to our community.
We can all come together — as a group of friends from all over — to learn from each other, teach each other and hold each other accountable, because that’s when big change happens.
Join our community and join us on Instagram as we count down the last few weeks of this election cycle and collectively commit to taking action together.
Stay tuned for more here on Medium with stories from our friends who have become passionate in participating in our democracy like I have.
One of the most frequent questions I hear from people who are anxious about getting involved in things like phone-banking is, Well, what if I say the wrong thing? The only “wrong thing” to say is nothing at all. Sometimes you just have to take that leap. And, it helps when there’s a friend by your side.
Your friend,
Cate
Founder and CEO
Friends Vote Together
We want to hear from you! To get in touch or find out more, visit FriendsVoteTogether.org or check us out on Instagram and Facebook.
