Twenty percent of nonprofits pursue get-out-the-vote activities such as helping people register, conducting voter education, and helping people get to the polls, according to a new study.
Brian Miller, executive director of Nonprofit Vote, which compiled the report, said he hoped the findings would lead more nonprofits to get involved in voter efforts. Nonprofits that focus on meeting basic needs such as food, housing, and child care are often in the best position to boost voter turnout.
“They already have trust, they already have cultural competence to work with those communities,” Miller said.
For example, the waiting room of a nonprofit health clinic can be a great place for a quick conversation about voting, and perhaps to get someone registered, he said.
Nonprofit Vote provides information and other resources to help groups interested in boosting voter turnout. The study uses data drawn from an Urban Institute survey of 2,306 nonprofits conducted in the spring of 2021. Nonprofits were asked how often in the previous two years they had conducted get-out-the-vote activities.
Under federal tax law, charities are permitted to help people register and engage in other activities that support voting as long as the nonprofits don’t endorse candidates or engage in other partisan activities.
Other findings:
- 29 percent of nonprofits primarily serving low-income people conducted voter outreach or offered support occasionally or all the time, compared with 12 percent of other nonprofits.
- 35 percent of nonprofits primarily serving Black people conducted voter outreach and offered support occasionally or all the time, as did 34 percent of nonprofits primarily serving Hispanic people.
- 15 percent of nonprofits led by white people did the same, compared with 38 percent of nonprofits with a person of color as CEO. More specifically, the rates were highest among nonprofits led by Black people, at 50 percent, and Hispanic people, at 48 percent.
- 39 percent of nonprofits whose boards were more than half people of color reported conducting voter outreach or providing support activities occasionally or all the time. For nonprofits with boards of less than 20 percent people of color, the rate was 15 percent.
- 31 percent of nonprofits located in urban areas reported doing voter activities occasionally or all the time, compared with 14 percent in the suburbs and 10 percent in rural areas.
- 15 percent of nonprofits with annual budgets of less than $500,000 reported doing get-out-the vote activities occasionally or all the time; larger nonprofits were nearly twice as likely to do so.
Miller said the results show that many nonprofits see a strong link between the push for equity and higher voter turnout. Greater voter turnout, says Miller, will help solve many of the problems besetting low-income and marginalized people.
Alan Abramson, of George Mason University, said nonprofits “have great potential to get people engaged who previously haven’t been engaged.”
Abramson, a professor of government and politics who also writes about philanthropy, cited research by Kelly LeRoux at the University of Illinois at Chicago, that found that nonprofits can be highly effective at increasing voter turnout.
Rima Meroueh, advocacy and community engagement manager at the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services in Dearborn, Mich., agrees that nonprofits are often in a great position to help with voter outreach because they’ve established trust with the people they serve. “I do wish more nonprofits were doing this sort of work,” she said.
Merough, who is also a director of the National Network for Arab American Communities, a membership group of 29 organizations in 12 states, cautions that voter outreach can be a “delicate balance,” and nonprofits must be cautious to avoid implying that people must vote to continue getting services, which can scare them away from the help they need.
