TurboVote//TDC Webinar

What Schools Need To Do This Spring to be Prepared for Voter Engagement Next

Fall

Sam Novey TurboVote Director of Partnerships sam@turbovote.org 410-903-6911

What TurboVote Does

• Support school efforts to institutionalize voter engagement

• Build technology that makes it easier for institutions to provide people with all the information and materials that they need to vote in every election from local to presidential.

Note: TurboVote is a non-profit, non-partisan organization

Hot Summers in Baltimore

Strategic Voter Engagement

• Not linear (more time does not always equal more results)

• Bottlenecks and empowering staff to pursue strategies to institutionalize voter engagement are key

Bottlenecks

• A bottleneck is a process like class registration or freshman orientation that a large number of students must go through every year.

• Strategic voter engagement efforts focus on integrating voter engagement into bottleneck processes as the default for each student.

Miami Dade College

University of North Georgia

University of Chicago

UNC-Charlotte

University of Florida

Bottleneck Planning: Fall 2013

• Identify your top three target bottleneck processes

• Characteristics to consider:– How many students go through this

process?– Does it happen in time for voting

deadlines?– Operational challenges?– Bureaucratic challenges?

Bottleneck Planning: Spring 2014

• Planning for your bottleneck–Which stakeholders do you need to

engage?–When do they need to be engaged?– Put a meeting on the calendar for the

relevant staff members at the end of the semester• Set expectation of voter engagement being

a default experience next fall• What materials and support do staff need?• Set check in dates to make sure they stay on

track

Bottleneck Planning: Summer/Fall 2014

• Execute– Check in with key implementers to keep

things on track– Troubleshoot as issues come up–Watch the sign ups roll in!

TurboVote Technology

• TurboVote builds technology that makes it easier for institutions to institutionalize voter engagement

• When they use TurboVote, colleges just need to share a single link with students and get them to complete a 90 second online process.– Then, the system automatically follows up with

each student to provide him or her with all the information and materials needed to vote in all elections from local to presidential.

TurboVote User Experience

TurboVote Partnerships

• Since 2012, over 200,000 voters have signed up through partnerships with over 80 colleges, 30 non-profits, and Google.

• Partnerships features– Co-branded user experience– Free experience for students– Data

Co-branded site

Co-branded email reminders

Covering student mailing costs

Data

More data

Wrap Up

• Strategic planning process is key to good voter engagement– Fall 2013: picking a bottleneck– Spring 2014: planning for your bottleneck– Summer/Fall 2014: execute

• TurboVote is a tool that makes it easier to institutionalize voter engagement

• Contact: sam@turbovote.org, (410)-903-6911