Programs
Civic Engagement
Minnesota Voices Civic Engagement Program focuses on engaging community participation in democracy at every level of public life. A primary goal of the program is to build opportunities for traditionally disenfranchised individuals and groups to participate and effect change, and demonstrate that they can make a difference. Civic engagement is more than getting people engaged and active in their community, it is also about institutional and organizational change. Through voter education initiatives, candidate forums and organizational training opportunities we are building a foundation for lasting change.
GOTV/VR
Our largest year-to-year program is nonpartisan voter registration. In 2020, Minneota Voice was the Minnesota-lead organization for the Everybody Votes Campaign - a national voter registration effort - and supported 11 partner organizations who ran voter registration programs. Prior to COVID, our program sought to register 75,000 voters. Due to the pandemic, we needed to adjust our program to be almost entirely online. Our network registered 21,094 new voters and provided 24,175 voters with information about Minnesota’s same-day voter registration.
Native American Table
Thousands of Indigenous community members live across the most rural part of Minnesota and are left out of our electoral systems. Minnesota Voice wanted to help change that and help strengthen the civic infrastructure. We partnered with local funders to help build out a full program that centers and is led by the Indigenous community.
We are currently funding two organizations, Native American Community Development Institute and American Indian OIC, who are organizing other Indigenous-led organizations to do long-term civic engagement work in the Indigenous communities. Their Make Voting a Tradition campaign gained national attention, giving quotes to national news outlets such as the New York Times and USA Today. They engaged 23,000 voters, registered 500 new voters in-person, and held 15 socially-distanced voter education events.