OUR GOAL
This website is about the special role and superpowers grassroots champions have to impact politics and elections, beyond supporting individual candidates or engaging in partisan political campaigns, starting with broadly shared community values.
Grassroots champions know their communities and the people who live there best. They are uniquely positioned to engage, educate, and dialogue with persuadable voters at the community level. Their voices can focus attention on the broadly-shared values community members hold, how those need to be reflected in what government does to support them, and how to hold candidates accountable to addressing them.
The goal of this website is to provide tools and resources for grassroots champions and groups to use their superpowers to ensure a more informed electorate and strengthen democracy.
VALUES TO VOTES RESOURCE PAGES
VALUES TO VOTES BASICS
VALUES TO VOTES BASICS
VALUES TO VOTES BASICS
People vote their values and not just their pocketbooks, and that is a good thing. Shared values can bring people together rather than divide them.
To get above the current partisan political noise, successful messages must be based upon shared values. They also must be presented by messengers with credibility and trust among those they seek to influence. They must be delivered in supportive settings where people are comfortable and receptive to hearing and discussing them.
Grassroots champions are uniquely equipped to deliver value-based messages, truly connect with people when they do so, and foster dialogues to inform voting.
The values to votes webpage provides the basics on developing value-based messages and the powerful role grassroots organizations can and need to play in doing so.
GROWING THE GRASSROOTS
VALUES TO VOTES BASICS
VALUES TO VOTES BASICS
Volunteers are priceless when it comes to grassroots advocacy. Many champions already are politically active and volunteer and contribute to political campaigns. They can be savvy organizers to help build a grassroots base.
At the same time, the power of grassroots advocacy is much more in the civic knoweldge and credibiltiy they bring and the people they know and can influence.
Building a strong team of grassroots leaders who have different but complementary areas of knowledge and ties within the community is at the heart of successful grassroots advocacy.
The building the grassroots webpage provides resources on building grassroots organizations and advocacy.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPACT
CANDIDATES AND NONPROFITS
CANDIDATES AND NONPROFITS
Being truly in their communities, grassroots leaders and their organizations have multiple ways to connect with other community members and opportunities to make use of specific talents of their members. Providing opportunities for dialogue is particularly important to understanding and subsequent action.
Being a part of their communities, grassroots leaders and organizations have multiple ways to connect with community members and opportunities to make use of the specific talents of volunteers. While there is a "redundancy value of redundancy" simply from hearing the same message multiple times, hearing messages in different ways and from different messengers magnifies overall impact.
The opportunities for impact webpage provides resources on achieving impact through multiple strategies.
CANDIDATES AND NONPROFITS
CANDIDATES AND NONPROFITS
CANDIDATES AND NONPROFITS
While directed to grassroots leaders and organizations, this website also has resources for candidates and for nonprofit state and national policy advocacy organizations -- and ways for grassroots organizations to engage with and draw upon them.
Many candidates are seeking to develop more grassroots connections and activities within their campaigns, and many state and national nonprofit organizations have resources and tools and memberships that can enrich grassroots actions.
The candidates and nonprofits webpage shares resources and tools for making these connections.