Voto Latino

MISSION

Voto Latino is the leading non-partisan American Latino youth civic engagement organization in our nation.  Since 2004, Voto Latino’s primary goal has been the civic engagement of the disenfranchised and the active involvement of Latino youth in the political process.  By leveraging youth, media, the latest technology and celebrity voices to promote positive change, Voto Latino works to empower our community to become an organized American Latino community on the ground and online, that is actively involved in civic and social issues affecting our community. Voto Latino is shaking-up America’s political establishment by bringing thousands of young Latinos into the process. It is this new generation of young American Latinos who will shape America’s democracy for generations.

 
HISTORY & BACKGROUND
 
Voto Latino was founded in 2004 by actress Rosario Dawson & Maria Teresa Kumar (a “go-to” commentator on Latino issues on MSNBC & CNN). We recognize that Latino youth are the primary ‘influencers’ in their families and engage them with efforts that include peer-to-peer contact, media, celebrity voices and the latest technology. Voto Latino is a leader in using text messaging to engage young people in rapid response campaigns and to register and vote.
 
In 2004, Voto Latino launched the first-ever national voter registration campaign via text messaging.  This innovative approach to youth engagement allowed young people to text the word “VOTE” to a designated number and receive information about registering and voting.  Radio DJ’s and bloggers publicized the information, allowing listeners to immediately opt-in and register via their cell phones. Voto Latino continues to use this tactic to capture information and have ongoing messaging with our audience.
 
Voto Latino took its civic engagement initiatives to new heights during the 2008 Election season, registering 35,000 first-time Latino voters and touching millions of viewers and listeners in all 50 states. Voto Latino conservatively estimates that it leveraged more than $6,000,000 in gratis air time for its radio and television PSAs via partnerships with major networks like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Univision Radio, Entravision, SBS, MTV Tr3s and LATV. Voto Latino’s “La Pasion de la Decision” parody telenovela PSA series was the subject of extensive critical acclaim and generated over 10 million online impressions. The spots generated extensive press interest and were also featured on CNN/Larry King, Extra, Access Hollywood and E! Entertainment Television.
 
Voto Latino’s United We Win 2010 mid-term election campaign registered more than 10,500 new youth voters in just three weeks in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, and Texas. We spent $13 per newly registered voter versus the industry average of $35 per voter. 50.11% of our newly-registered community turned out to vote, according to Catalist matches. Our GOTV program proved highly effective.  We attempted to contact voters 51,830 times through mail, phone, and at the doors, and made 44,361 contacts. Voto Latino contacted 30,507 newly registered and first time 2008 voters, and successfully identified 2,733 of them to vote. We made 9,241 calls and connected with 5,554 voters who committed to vote, most of them on Election Day. On Election Day, we placed 5,542 door hangers with voters’ polling place, election protection number, and our online election resource page on doors.
 
Our artist coalition was instrumental in motivating American Latino youth to participate in the election, and included such major names as Cameron Diaz, Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Wilmer Valderrama, Eva Longoria Parker and Jaguares. In addition to a high profile national PSA campaign that included more than 10 participating television networks and 75 radio stations, Voto Latino for the first time launched an integrated ‘on the ground’ campaign and hired Field Organizers for on-the-ground voter registration and outreach in California, Arizona, Texas, Florida and Colorado. The Field Organizers, in tandem with a volunteer corps, registered voters and distributed United We Win collateral at community college and college campuses, select high schools, swap meets, sporting events, festivals, and other locales. In heavily Latino neighborhoods, volunteer corps also went door to door registering voters. Field organizers were also instrumental in forging partnerships with local community groups in order to further the effectiveness of their work.
 
Our “Be Counted, Represent” Census initiative ensured that Latinos were counted in the 2010 Census. The Be Counted Census campaign trended Top 8 globally on Twitter and became a Top 4 non-profit channel on Youtube, generating 15,000 pledges to fill out the Census and generating $150 million in federal funding for U.S. Latino communities. Voto Latino’s Census campaign was also iTunes’ #1 campaign that year in terms of customer acquisition/conversation rate, with tens of thousands of young people redeeming their free songs from the Voto Latino/iTunes cards after reading a message about the Census. We distributed more than 100,000 Voto Latino/iTunes cards through our on-the-ground networks. Combined, our United We Win and Be Counted media campaigns in 2010 generated more than $7 million in gratis air time for radio, online, and television PSAs.
 
Voto Latino has produced award-winning, multiple-media ‘on the air’ campaigns headlined by celebrity voices that encourage young Latinos to register to vote and get engaged. Voto Latino simultaneously maintains an extensive field staff and implements integrated ‘on the ground’ campaigns to bolster the regional success of our multiplatform initiatives at a local level.
 

INITIATIVES
 
Voto Latino takes great pride in our innovative projects that bring together pop culture and politics, creating unique programming targeting bilingual/English dominant Latinos and harnessing American Latinos’ voices for large scale, social change. Each of Voto Latino’s initiatives is meant to capture user information and create a rapid-response, informed, organized American Latino community.
 
As we enter 2012, Voto Latino will take a very targeted and heightened approach to its mobilization and civic engagement efforts.  Our voter registration/mobilization campaign is a national, multi-platform initiative designed to register and mobilize tens of thousands of young American Latinos. Voter registration/mobilization campaign elements include:
 
Online & TV PSA’s -- In 2012, Voto Latino will use its award-winning creative team to craft star-studded PSAs spots that include today’s hottest, most recognized celebrity voices to educate and mobilize Latino youth to vote. In 2010, Voto Latino partnered with Mun2/Telemundo on a series of national non-partisan voter registration spots and MTV to create fifteen different 30 second celebrity Census Television PSA’s (in English & Spanish). The 2010 non-partisan voter registration television/online PSA’s featured Jessica Alba, Cameron Diaz, Eva Longoria Parker, Rosario Dawson, Common, Padma Lakshmi (“Top Chef”), Wilmer Valderrama and several others. Voto Latino’s partnerships with cable carriers like Time-Warner Cable and Comcast ensured that our television PSA’s aired across the country (generating millions of additional television impressions) on non-Latin networks such as Oxygen, Travel Channel, Comedy Central, and several other networks.
 
Text Messaging Initiative (“Text2Represent”) -- Voto Latino will expand its voter SMS Text Messaging initiative allows people to receive information about registering to vote. Radio DJ’s and bloggers will publicize the information allowing listeners to immediately opt-in and register via their cell phones. We will also expanded the program and send targeted (by state) text messages to tens of thousands of Latino youth to remind them of voter registration deadlines as well as urge them to vote during their states’ early voting periods. Voto Latino will also be customizing key words for partner organizations so that their members can opt-in for mobile updates.
 
iTunes Cards -- As part of its groundbreaking partnership with iTunes/Apple, Voto Latino has created and licensed a 35 song voting-themed digital compilation featuring major Latin artists (including Pitbull, Ozomatli & Los Tigres del Norte). Apple is providing Voto Latino with more 100,000 of the download cards, which Voto Latino will distribute across the country via its field staff as well as through partnerships with other non-profits and more than 80 radio stations.
 
DJ Online Media Center & Radio PSA’s -- Voto Latino’s radio PSAs air on 80 radio stations nationwide. The stations span multiple genres, including Hip-Hop, Latin Pop, Regional Mexican, Rock en Español, and American pop. As with our recent 2010 campaign, Voto Latino will create a dedicated website and digital delivery system for Radio DJ’s where they can easily download more than 15 different celebrity Radio PSAs as mp3’s for immediate radio broadcast.

Elements of field operations will include:  

DMV drive-throughs -- On the last day of voter registration, we will host drive-through non-partisan voter registration events at local DMVs. We ran a similar program in California during the mid-term elections with much success. The event generated significant radio and TV coverage. Next year we will try to secure two locales in each of our 20 target cities.  

Celebrity drop-ins
-- Members of our artist coalition will spend time in target cities at events hosted by Voto Latino or partner organizations to generate media coverage and bolster our on-the-ground registration efforts. Members of our artist coalition include: Rosario Dawson, Wilmer Valderrama, Pit Bull, Ozomatli, Eva Longoria, and America Ferrera.   

Dorm Storms & Club/Concert Nights
-- Field organizers and volunteers will travel to local universities and do door-to-door canvassing on campus dorms. Voto Latino will also coordinate with local DJs and partner organizations to promote club nights in select cities. Voto Latino will also coordinate with bands to register people to vote at concerts across the country.
 
Partnerships & Coordination -- Strategic partnerships, flexible technology and coordination will be essential to helping us reach our target audience. Elements include:
 
Graduation Kits -- Working with our partners at the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers, Voto Latino will be distributing voter kits to graduating high school students who are turning 18 in the Spring of 2012.
 
National Voter Registration Day -- Voto Latino, along with key partner organizations, is working to create a National Voter Registration Day in September of 2012.  During the event thousands of volunteers will hit the streets for a massive, non-partisan voter registration campaign supported by our celebrity coalition, on-air and online to push the urgency of registration. 
 
Planned Parenthood Promotoras Program -- The Promotoras Comunitarias provide peer-to-peer educational programs and reproductive health care and sexuality to members of the Latino community. Voto Latino will provide Planned Parenthood’s volunteers with our voter guides and mobile registration tool so they can register Latinos to vote while providing them with vital information on reproductive rights.
 
We will expand our educational efforts digitally through the use of the Election Center: News You Can Use.  In January of 2012, VotoLatino.org will debut The Election Center focused on providing our constituents with election resources, tools and relevant media. The Election Center will be designed to educate and empower voters to become informed citizens at the polls. This hub will include: local election calendars, voter lookup, polling locations, candidate info, and a checklist of what to bring to the polls on election day. It will also provide infographics, toolkits and interactive maps that define key issues, their legislative status, and which elected officials voted for what during past sessions. We will connect these issues to mobilization tools that will be accessible to local organizations to help them build long lasting infrastructure that empowers our communities to create positive change. News You Can Use is an ongoing means of communicating and educating our target audience and will remain an active part of Voto Latino’s outreach well beyond the 2012 elections. 
 
At the same time, we will lay the ground work for action beyond just the 2012 election cycle in several other key programmatic initiatives. 
 
To build new leaders, we will institutionalize our 2012 Youth Power Summit to become an annual event that trains youth in leadership, media and activism. Our Youth Summit will reach about 400-500 high performing Latino youth from throughout the nation and ensure that they have the tools and information to be active members of their local communities.  The Power Summit will educate, engage and empower young Latinos from across the country to create positive change in their communities.   At this two-day summit, to be held in the spring of 2012 at the University of Southern California, our participants will receive training from public officials, artists, grassroots organizers and business leaders on new media, public speaking, activism and community organizing. Voto Latino will make the Power Summit part of a permanent leadership institute, allowing young people a direct avenue to leadership positions across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.
 
Additionally, we will continue to be involved in changing the conversation around Latino political priorities in mainstream media, particularly as concerns the Latino vote and perceptions about the U.S. Latino community’s engagement with politics. Voto Latino’s ON SERIES will bring timely conversations to cross industry leaders about issues that are affecting the fastest growing demographic of Americans.   ON SERIES: Changing the Conversation and Voto Latino have been instrumental in not only getting American Latinos out and voting but also shaping the conversation in mainstream media. Its initiatives and outreach have played an important role in changing the conversation in the media, particularly as concerns the Latino vote and perceptions about the U.S. Latino community’s engagement with politics. Voto Latino has established itself as the “go-to” voice for political analysis about Latino youth, and will utilize a variety of communications tools to change the national conversation about American Latinos from one focused on immigration to one focused on citizenship, civil rights, and shared nationhood. 


RECENT ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Voto Latino has emerged as the leading non-partisan American Latino youth civic engagement organization in our nation due mainly to our innovative, multi-platform campaigns that engage young people via peer-to-peer contact, media, celebrity voices and the latest technology.   Our success these past few years has been notable and outlined below: 

SHORT TERM GOALS & OBJECTIVES

PROGRAMMATIC GOALS & OBJECTIVES

Non-partisan voter registration –  

The Election Center – News You Can Use

INAUGURAL Youth Power Summit

ON Series -- Changing the Conversation

 
ed.-rec'd April 2012