Turmoil at Vote.org

Vote.org, a prominent voter-registration group, is in turmoil six months before a high-stakes presidential election. At a time when these organizations are typically gearing up for crucial voter-registration drives, it has lost a significant share of its staff since February because of resignations, layoffs, and firings.

Former employees claim that the nonprofit’s problems have been years in the making, the result of lax board oversight and poor management by a CEO they say is unqualified for the role. The result has been million-dollar deficits, a lawsuit, high turnover, lapsed fundraising registrations in states across the country, and a complaint that was filed with the Internal Revenue Service in January.

Vote.org, which was founded in 2008, is a pioneer in online voter registration and has worked with celebrities, including Taylor Swift, to encourage people to register to vote. In 2022, the group brought in big-dollar donations from some well-known foundations, including $2 million from the Schmidt Family Foundation, $1 million from the Hopewell Fund, and $200,000 from the McKnight Foundation. The Schmidt foundation would only confirm its 2022 grants. The others did not respond to requests for comment.

While many similar organizations have sprung up, the group remains an important part of online voter-registration efforts. Its online tools are used by hundreds of partners, including the YMCA, the NAACP, and Nextdoor.

Vote.org’s name recognition and powerful social-media campaigns make it one of the most influential voter-registration groups in the country, says Lisa Bryant, chair of the political science department at California State University, Fresno, who also served as a paid expert for Vote.org in a Texas lawsuit the group filed over voter-registration rules. She says the organization has been particularly adept at helping voters under age 30 register because they are so wedded to doing things online.

With a repeat contest between Donald Trump and Joe Biden in the fall, voter-registration and get-out-the-vote efforts are vital to Vote.org and its peer organizations, says Adam Ambrogi, chief of external affairs at the League of Women Voters, which has its own online voter-registration campaign. “It is more critical than ever this year, given the threats to democracy that we’ve seen.”

The Chronicle has reviewed tax filings, lawsuits, an IRS complaint, and internal documents and has spoken to nine employees who worked at Vote.org at various times since 2018. Many spoke to the Chronicle on the condition that they not be identified for fear of blowback from the current CEO, Andrea Hailey. They described a rudderless organization run by a CEO who was an impediment to fundraising and inattentive to important regulatory matters and who created a chaotic work environment that led to high turnover and ultimately hampered the group’s ability to meet its mission.

Lauren Brown, Vote.org’s communications manager from July 2021 to April 2022, says that Hailey was propped up by a team of smart, dedicated staff. “I’ve had a lot of CEOs in the nonprofit space, and she’s not a grunt-work-in-the-trenches CEO,” Brown says.

An outside spokeswoman for Vote.org disputed that characterization and sent statements from some of the organization’s board members expressing support for Hailey, who identifies as Black and biracial. The spokeswoman suggested that questioning Hailey’s credentials fits into a pattern of unfair criticism faced by Black women leaders of nonprofits.

In a statement to the Chronicle, Hailey wrote that she has increased contributions to the organization by more than 250 percent since she became the group’s interim CEO in 2019. She also said that Vote.org has increased the number of new voters it has registered and the number of people it has contacted. What’s more, she says, the organization has registered more 18-year-olds than it had by this point in any previous election.

“With our democracy itself at stake, Vote.org’s mission comes before everything else, and I and the whole Vote.org team have made a lot of sacrifices to make this organization as successful as it is,” Hailey wrote in a statement in response to the Chronicle’s questions. “Like any organization, we’ve had some really stellar staff over the years and some staff that unfortunately didn’t measure up or didn’t understand the work we have to do.”

Craig Barritt/Getty Images

Hailey joined the board of Vote.org in 2017. Two years later, the board voted to remove the group’s founder and CEO, Debra Cleaver. She sued the organization over her dismissal, and it fought back with a cross complaint in a case that is ongoing. The board told donors that it would conduct a broad search for a new CEO, but instead installed Hailey as the interim CEO in the fall of 2019 and later made her the permanent CEO, according to the complaint against the organization filed with the Internal Revenue Service by the ousted CEO Cleaver.

Vote.org’s spokeswoman said in a written statement that the board gave careful consideration to who would serve as CEO, but she did not say whether the board considered anyone other than Hailey. The spokeswoman said Hailey was qualified for the job because of her experience in political campaigns and had spent two years on the group’s board.

Hailey’s political work included employment at two political consulting firms where she provided strategic advice, purchased airtime for political ads, and wrote direct mail, scripts for television ads, and other campaign literature during three campaign cycles, according to the companies for which she worked. She also worked directly for some candidates’ campaigns.

Given Hailey’s apparent lack of leadership experience, a former associate of Hailey’s couldn’t believe that she was appointed to run Vote.org. “It was shocking,” the person says. “The reality is that if you looked at her résumé, she never would have gotten an interview.”

‘Never a Rainmaker’

In 2020, Vote.org raised more money that it ever had before — $18 million. But the group didn’t spend everything it raised in that high-stakes election year. Instead, it banked nearly $4.5 million, giving it a reserve of more than $7 million, according to the group’s informational tax filings.

The organization soon found itself dipping into those reserves. In the next six months, it ran a deficit of nearly $1 million, and from July 2021 to June 2022, it ran a deficit of more than $1 million, according to the most recent tax filings available. In 11 years under Cleaver, the group ran a deficit only once; it was less than $250, according to available tax fillings.

It’s hard to evaluate Vote.org’s deficit spending, says Lara Jakubowski, a managing partner at La Piana Consulting, a company that works with nonprofits. Since 2020, many groups’ finances have been uneven. Strategically, there may be good reasons for deficit spending, particularly for a group whose fundraising is tied to federal election cycles, Jakubowski says. Vote.org did not respond to questions about whether the board was concerned about the deficits.

At the end of March, the group abruptly let five of its roughly 17 staff members go without notice that layoffs were under consideration, according to several former staff members. Vote.org said through an outside spokesman that it had fired two people and “reorganized” to eliminate three jobs. The organization’s chief operating officer resigned in March, just before the layoffs and firings, and its communications director resigned in February.

Vote.org’s spokeswoman said the organization is planning ambitious work for the fall, including its largest voter-registration effort yet. She said that despite losing seven employees, the organization would have staffing levels similar to what it had for the 2020 election. The spokeswoman would not, however, confirm the organization’s current number of employees. The group had 17 staff members in 2020, according to its informational tax returns — about the same number it had in January before the resignations, layoffs, and firings, according to former staff.

Some former staff members blame Hailey for the group’s problems. Adrienne Shaw, a veteran fundraiser with her own consultancy, says Hailey was a poor fundraiser and often disengaged from the organization’s development work. Shaw was Vote.org’s development director under Cleaver, the nonprofit’s founder, and resigned before Cleaver’s dismissal in 2019. When Hailey took over, she brought Shaw back as a consultant, and in time, the organization hired Shaw again as its vice president of investments leading fundraising efforts through February 2022. Shaw set up regular calls for Hailey with donors, but she says Hailey performed poorly. “I would describe her as a petulant teenager,” Shaw says. “She just was trying to dodge actually talking to folks.”

One example: Shaw says Hailey showed up late for a Zoom meeting with a grant maker and behaved erratically. “She was not fully engaged, did not answer questions. She was acting flippant,” Shaw says. “It was clear that Andrea had thought that this foundation was not going to give, and so she wasn’t paying attention, she wasn’t listening. She was typing messages.” Shaw says the president of the foundation called her and told her she only wanted to deal with Shaw. Shaw says she told the board about the incident.

Hailey’s written statement to the Chronicle did not answer questions about this incident. Vote.org’s spokeswoman wrote that the characterization of Hailey during the fundraising call was a mean-spirited personal attack with no merit.

Under Hailey, the organization raised what for it was a record in 2020 — $18 million. But Vote.org failed to capitalize on the fundraising momentum it had from 2020, Shaw says. In the first six months of 2021, after the highly contentious presidential election was over, the organization raised only $960,000, according to informational tax filings.

“Andrea became an impediment,” Shaw says. “She was never a rainmaker or a change agent in my experience at work at any point.”

Compliance Issues

Across the country, 38 jurisdictions require most types of charitable organizations to register to raise money in their state or district. Vote.org has been plagued by lapsed registrations in many of these states.

In September 2021, Shaw discovered that Vote.org was not registered in the state of New York. The group had begun fundraising in New York in 2019, according to Shaw, but did not file an application to raise money there until the end of November 2021. It also received about a dozen grants from foundations located in the state during that time and needed to be registered to solicit from foundations. That application, available on the state’s website, leaves blank the question of when it began to raise money there. The person who signed the form is listed as the organization’s chief financial officer although she was never the group’s CFO and was a contractor at the time she signed the application.

A Vote.org spokeswoman wrote that the group, like many others, may not have fully understood registration requirements in states outside of its own before it began raising money there. She wrote that Vote.org has since worked to achieve compliance where it is required. She did not address questions about the incomplete form and said that the person who signed the form was employed as the chief operating officer and was performing the job of a chief financial officer.

Shaw says that back in 2021 she researched the organization’s other registrations: It turned out the group was out of compliance in 17 states. She told Hailey and several other executives at the group and identified what she thought would be a better firm to handle the registrations. She also told several board members. Shaw says no one did anything. At that point, she says, Hailey “iced her out.”

Current and former Vote.org board members did not respond to questions about the organization’s lapsed fundraising registrations and whether they had been informed of the problem.

Rachel Leingang, The Republic, Imagn

A disability-discrimination lawsuit filed against the organization also discussed the issue. It alleged that Hailey did not respond to important emails that resulted in noncompliance issues in several states.

Even today the problem continues. Vote.org’s registration is lapsed, revoked, or otherwise no longer active in 11 states, including large ones like Colorado, Illinois, New Jersey, Virginia, and Wisconsin. In March, North Carolina revoked the group’s license to raise money there.

Each state handles nonprofit registration differently, says Maia Lee, president of Affinity Fundraising Registration, a company that handles nonprofits’ registrations. Some states don’t require registration at all, she says, while others take the issue seriously and fine or pursue legal action against nonprofits that raise money without registering or that fail to maintain their registration. Still others allow organizations to renew lapsed registrations without penalty even if the group is still raising money in the state. After nonprofits register in a state, it is important to keep their status up-to-date, she says.

Many of the problems with the organization’s state registrations in 2021 were because of Covid-related processing backlogs in the states, according to Vote.org’s spokesman. The organization’s spokeswoman said that Hailey took the lapses seriously. She said that Hailey hired the firm that Shaw says failed to keep the group’s registrations current immediately upon joining Vote.org and built an internal compliance team for state registrations. Shaw strongly disputes that Hailey put together an internal compliance team.

Vote.org still uses the same company it did in 2021, despite the large number of lapsed registrations and Shaw’s efforts to persuade the organization to switch firms. It is in the process of moving to another firm, according to the spokeswoman.

Support for Hailey

Vote.org’s board continues to support Hailey, despite the allegations against her. The Chronicle contacted several current and former Vote.org board members who either declined to comment or didn’t respond to phone calls and texts. A spokesman provided the Chronicle with written statements from several of them. In their statements, the board members didn’t answer specific questions, including ones about Hailey’s selection as CEO, her job performance, or the group’s financial position.

Kimberly Myers Hewlett, chair of Vote.org’s board, praised Hailey’s leadership in her statement, saying she is “directly responsible for unprecedented fundraising, programmatic growth, and partnerships that are uplifting underrepresented voters across the country.” Hewlett is president of the Myers Family Foundation, which gave out $8,000 in 2022, according to its latest informational tax filing, and was previously a senior vice president for donor engagement at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Hailey worked on Hewlett’s father’s congressional campaign in 2008.

In her statement, Maisha Leek, vice chair of Vote.org and chief operating officer of iMentor, a nonprofit that provides mentoring services, wrote that the complaints against Hailey are racially motivated.

“She built us into the largest and most impactful voter registration and turnout platform in America today, yet people are somehow suggesting she is unqualified for her job?” Leek wrote. “I am sick and tired of the dog-whistle smears and attempts to erase the extraordinary achievements of Vote.org’s leadership and our Black woman CEO.”

When asked to clarify Leek’s statement and to provide examples of racially biased behavior by anyone in the workplace, Vote.org’s spokeswoman wrote that questioning Hailey’s credentials and criticizing her leadership are part of a broader pattern of questioning Black women’s qualifications to lead nonprofits.

Some former staff members are supportive of Hailey as well. One former employee says that when Hailey took over Vote.org in late 2019 and early 2020, there was a lot to contend with. Many staff members left after Cleaver’s removal by the board. Meanwhile, the nonprofit was going into a presidential election year, and the pandemic started in March. Because Cleaver was dismissed by the board with no plan for a transition, it was hard to get access to many of the organization’s systems.

“Andrea was so overwhelmed, I struggled to be of best service that I could,” this person says. “We had to right the ship. There were real issues.”

The former employee says Hailey faced angry donors who were loyal to Cleaver, many of whom were upset about the way Cleaver was treated. “She did the best she could in a hostile camp,” the source says of Hailey. “There were a lot of egos she was trying to navigate to find new donors.”

Problems in the 990s

Despite becoming CEO in 2019, Hailey has yet to sign any of the group’s available tax filings. That’s unusual — tax forms must be signed by an officer of the organization, most often the CEO, board chair, or treasurer. Instead, Elizabeth Daigneau, the group’s chief operating officer from January 2020 through August 2021, signed two of the group’s 990 informational tax forms in November 2021 when she was no longer COO and was instead working as a contractor. Daigneau declined to comment.

A contractor should not sign the 990 tax filing, says Phil Hackney, a professor who studies nonprofit tax law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and previously worked in the chief counsel’s office of the Internal Revenue Service.

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It is also unusual for a COO to sign these forms because an organization’s finances are not typically part of the COO’s job, says Brian Mittendorf, a professor who specializes in nonprofit accounting at Ohio State University.

Vote.org’s spokeswoman wrote that Daigneau was still an employee of the organization when she signed the forms and that it is acceptable for the COO to sign these forms.

According to Shaw, another former employee, and the IRS complaint filed by Cleaver, Daigneau was a contractor in November 2021 when she signed the forms. (Cleaver’s IRS complaint alleges misuse of funds and poor governance at Vote.org and questions the organization’s fundraising practices.) Vote.org’s 2021 tax return also lists Daigneau as “COO through August.” The organization’s spokeswoman did not respond to the question of why Hailey or a board member didn’t sign the forms.

The organization also underreported Cleaver’s salary by more than $30,000 on its 2019 tax filing, according to Cleaver’s IRS complaint and based on Cleaver’s 2018 salary as reported in the group’s tax filing.

Hackney says that error “rises to a material level depending on the nature of the mistake,” he says. “That’s a concerning error.”

The spokeswoman wrote that the group has no reason to believe that the salary figure is inaccurate. She also added that the IRS has not given the group any indication that Vote.org has violated the law, in response to Cleaver’s complaint. When contacted by the Chronicle, the IRS said that it does not comment on or confirm the existence of complaints or investigations.

In multiple places on the organization’s returns, there are large expenses for contractors that are not explained as nonprofits generally do on their tax forms. In one instance, the group listed $698,000 in “other” expenses with little explanation. In another, it had $576,000 in public-relations expenses with no explanation. One purpose of the 990 is public disclosure, and the lack of clarity about such expenses is concerning, Hackney said.

Vote.org’s spokeswoman wrote that the group is not under any obligation to spell out expenses in greater detail.

In July 2021, the organization’s auditors sent two letters to the Board of Directors, which the Chronicle has obtained, that outline concerns about mistakes in the group’s financial statements — including donations that were not recorded. The auditors wrote in the letter that these errors represented “material weaknesses” in the group’s internal controls.

The Vote.org spokeswoman wrote that Hailey inherited a group in “significant disarray” and has worked to improve internal controls. The group hired an external advisory firm to help with its filings. The organization shared a June 2023 letter from the auditors that found a lower level of mistake called a “significant deficiency” but not the more serious material weakness.

Ohio State’s Mittendorf expressed concern about financial controls at the group, based on the 2021 auditor’s letters. “There are patterns of sloppy record keeping and inconsistencies with accounting treatment that one may expect at a much smaller organization,” he says. “But for an organization this size, you would expect a more careful and intentional approach to the accounting function.”

Parental Leave

In October, Meighan Stone, Vote.org’s senior adviser and chief of staff from August 2021 to December 2022, sued Vote.org and the organization’s outside human-resources firm for failure to accommodate a disability, retaliation, and disability discrimination. According to the suit, Stone, an experienced nonprofit executive who was previously the president and interim CEO of the Malala Fund, had Covid while working at Vote.org and was diagnosed with long Covid that has become so debilitating that she now uses a wheelchair. She said in the suit that Vote.org approved a change in her role to accommodate her disability and then withdrew it and fired her for raising concerns over her disability, legal non-compliance, and other issues with Hailey.

Stone and her attorney declined to speak with the Chronicle. In a statement, her attorney wrote that Vote.org notified Stone that it intended to enforce an arbitration agreement Stone signed with the organization, so Stone dismissed her suit in November and is pursuing the case in arbitration. Stone’s lawsuit painted a picture of a deeply dysfunctional organization.

According to the suit, the organization had no parental leave policy and Hailey was hostile toward a staff member who asked about creating a policy. That person eventually left the organization, but Hailey still would not put a policy in place, according to the suit. It alleged that Hailey also complained 20 times that a former communications manager did not disclose her pregnancy during her job interview — something that prospective employers are discouraged from asking job candidates about because they cannot let a pregnancy sway hiring decisions.

Vote.org’s spokesman wrote that the organization strongly denies Stone’s allegations or that it treated Stone unlawfully. He wrote that Hailey created the group’s first parental leave policy giving new parents three months off and the ability to use another month from personal time off. The organization’s spokeswoman said that the policy was implemented for a pregnant employee in 2021.

A former staff member disputes that this was the group’s first leave policy and provided documentation to the Chronicle showing a loose parental leave policy that was in place in 2018 and email correspondence with Hailey in 2021 showing her the policy. That person also said that Hailey terminated the existing parental leave policy. The source remembers staff complaining that there was no policy. The organization’s spokesman wrote that Hailey never terminated the group’s parental leave policy.

Employee Churn

Former employees say high turnover resulting from Hailey’s leadership affected employees’ ability to do their jobs, including negatively affecting fundraising. Departures were often sudden, with little explanation, which made everyone nervous about job security, according to more than one former employee.

In at least one instance, when a staff member gave notice to allow for an orderly transition, Hailey told that person to leave immediately, according to more than one former employee. Sometimes staff were left without guidance, and the remaining employees had to scramble to pick up the person’s work. “It put everyone at a disadvantage. It did not help the organization,” a former employee said. “It was very petty.”

Vote.org’s spokeswoman said one employee was asked to leave right after giving notice because of a pending voter-participation lawsuit and was paid two weeks’ salary.

Because of high employee turnover and Hailey’s unresponsiveness to important fundraising matters, the group was missing fundraising goals, Stone alleged in her lawsuit. Despite this, the board authorized a $30,000 bonus for Hailey in October 2022, the suit said. Hailey was already earning nearly $250,000 a year — $100,000 a year more than the group’s founder had earned in the same role, according to informational tax returns.

Several former employees say that Hailey was hard to get in touch with, key decisions were not getting made, and the group’s work suffered because of her inability to manage the organization. Half a dozen employees reached out to managers to complain about Hailey’s “mistreatment, chronic disengagement, and unresponsiveness,” according to Stone’s suit.

“It was becoming abundantly clear to me that Andrea’s erratic behavior and general lack of any sort of management skills, be they time management, people management, money management — all of the above — were setting all of us up for failure,” one former employee says.

The spokeswoman disputed claims of mismanagement and blamed Cleaver, the previous CEO.

In a statement, Cleaver wrote that nothing would make her happier than to see Vote.org succeed under a qualified CEO. “However, I have serious concerns about the ethical, governance, and financial decisions Vote.org’s leadership has made over the past four years,” she wrote.

Stone’s lawsuit alleged that Hailey was also interested in perks that she thought should come with her position as CEO. According to the suit, “Hailey messaged staff in the middle of the night upset that she hadn’t received free clothing from high-fashion designer Argent or been personally featured in their advertising.”

Hailey wanted to be seen as a social-justice advocate like Stacey Abrams, and she used the group to promote her image, says Brown, the former communications manager who resigned from the organization in the spring of 2022. “If it wasn’t going to be centered on her, she wasn’t interested in doing it,” Brown says of Hailey’s attitude toward media appearances. “I just don’t think she was interested in doing anything that wasn’t high profile, celebrity-facing.”

A bigger problem than Hailey’s pursuit of the limelight was her lack of interest in, and hands-on experience with, the organization’s mission to register voters, said another former employee. “Because so much attention was paid to media and celebrities, there was not time to do the core functions of building an organization,” the former employee said.

Vote.org’s spokeswoman disputed many of these allegations, including that Hailey was only interested in media appearances that boosted her own image. Regarding the free designer clothing, the spokeswoman wrote that Hailey “disputes this characterization.”

On the question of Hailey’s $30,000 bonus months after tax filings show it was running a $1 million deficit, the organization’s spokeswoman wrote that Hailey had demonstrated she was an effective leader and that her compensation was commensurate with her experience. She wrote that Hailey was liked by staff and is still friends with some former employees and her “top priority is ensuring the success of Vote.org.”

Fallout for Employees

The turmoil at Vote.org has implications outside of national politics and the direction of the 2024 election; for people who have worked at the organization, the price has been personal.

Several former employees who have worked at the organization are fearful of Hailey. They say she can be petty and vindictive; some have retained lawyers. Others wanted to put the experience behind them and did not want to talk at all.

It’s not much better for those who have positive things to say about their time at the organization. One former staff member let go in March enjoyed working at Vote.org and got along well with Hailey. But receiving a termination email with no notice will always rankle. “I would not have done it the way they did,” the former employee said. “I’m never going to forget what it felt like to be laid off suddenly.”