How nonprofits are engaging reluctant voters ahead of the presidential election

As Election Day looms closer, nonprofits are leveraging resources to galvanize nonpartisan voters in hard to reach communities across New York City. 

The GoVoteNYC funder collaborative, hosted at The New York Community Trust, allocates grants to nearly a dozen foundations with strong roots in local communities in an effort to educate and empower low-propensity voters. 

“The desire was to focus on neighborhoods where there are trusted community groups who could engage voters in increasing turnout, with a particular focus on low propensity voters,  basically people who don't vote very often,” said Neill Coleman, director of GoVoteNYC. 

Founded in 2021, GoVoteNYC funders have invested nearly $3.5 million in grants and more than $13 million in aligned funding to support nonpartisan voter engagement. In 2021 and 2022, grant organizations contacted nearly 2 million registered voters across five boroughs. These outreach efforts led to higher turnouts among BIPOC voters, of which 37% of those canvassed by GoVoteNYC partners voted, versus 20 percent of those unreached. 

“One of the challenges with low propensity voters, it’s a bit of a self-reinforcing cycle. Political candidates tend to focus on engaging high propensity voters –  people they know are very likely to vote,” said Coleman.

From canvassing efforts, workshops and nonpartisan get-out-the-vote activities – GoVoteNYC deployed nonprofits as “trusted messengers” to educate constituents on elected officials and policies. 

“Trusted messengers break through the noise of misinformation and scandal that we are all exposed to and restore people's belief that their vote matters,” said Eve Stotland, senior program officer at The New York Community Trust. “If people are just reading the paper, or listening to the news on Tiktok they're going to get a lot of information that's wrong and that confuses them.”  

Through trusted community leaders, nonprofit organizations are able to reach a wider range of reluctant voters, educating them on the impact of policies that can intimately affect their lives. 

“If the person who runs their children's after school program, or the person involved in their senior center, or a neighbor who they trust offers to speak to them about an upcoming election, it's going to break through all that noise,” said Stotland. “That’s why nonprofits are so important and do something that political parties often are uninterested or unable to do.”

This year’s GoVoteNYC grantees include The Asian American Federation, Center for Law & Social Justice at Medgar Evers College, El Puente, Faith in New York, Hispanic Federation, MinKwon Center for Community Action, New York Civic Engagement Table, New York Immigration Coalition, and United Neighborhood Houses.  

This spring, GoVoteNYC identified issues surrounding canvassers’ safety, the declining effectiveness of get-out-the-vote texting and youth disillusionment among key concerns preventing increased voter engagement. 

In response to the decreasing effectiveness of mass get-out-the-vote texts, GoVoteNYC partners are doubling down on relational organizing within communities to better target reluctant voters. Among young voters, GoVoteNYC reported higher rates of misinformation and disinformation through social media – contributing to higher rates of disillusionment. In response, grantee organizations like the New York Immigration Coalition, are focusing on issue-based engagement to help connect voters through in-person dialogues. Being among the few nonpartisan voter engagement groups in New York, GoVoteNYC grantees are able to reach a wider pool of low-propensity voters. 

“[We have] a partisan system in the United States at all levels of government, this means that many voter engagement activities are partisan, and there are a lot of people who are turned off by that, if they don't identify as a Republican or Democrat,” said Stotland. “They don't necessarily know what those designations mean. They want to know how to promote the interests of their families, neighborhoods and communities. Nonpartisan voter engagement does just that. It cuts through a lot of the antipathy between parties.” 

While GoVoteNYC partners anticipate higher turnouts throughout the federal election season, with mayoral elections and city council openings approaching in 2025, funders stress that GoVoteNYC campaigns need to continue year-round to ensure visible changes among skeptical voters. 

“We really want to try and move this into ongoing work. In New York, we usually have an election every year, but turnout varies significantly. We very much believe that this is an ongoing process, and we want to avoid that kind of boom and bust cycle of funding around elections and then tapering off,” said Coleman. 

While this cycle’s funds will last through the end of 2025 into local elections, GoVoteNYC partners hope to expand the number of grantmaking organizations best equipped to discuss issues with communities. 

“Community groups are providing services, they're representing people. They're known and trusted quantities, so they're not some group that's parachuting in from outside in the last week of the election,” said Coleman.