Facts and Figures on the NAACP National
Voter Fund and Americans for Equality
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is the nation's
largest civil rights organization. The NAACP's principal objective
is to ensure the political, educational, social and economic equality
of minority group citizens of United States and eliminate race prejudice.
The NAACP is now a network of more than 2,200 affiliates covering
all 50 states including the District of Columbia. Headquartered in
Baltimore, Maryland, total membership exceeds 500,000.
the NAACP initiated a separate organization, the NAACP National Voter
Fund (NVF) in order to engage in issue advocacy, including educating
voters about Federal candidates' stands on civil rights and increasing
voter turnout in the African American community through non-partisan
registration, education, get-out-the-vote efforts, and issue advocacy.
NVF has in turn created Americans For Equality (AFE) to further these
the 2000 campaign, NVF and AFE used all the tools of modern campaigns-mail,
media, phone and massive grassroots organizing-directed toward the
African American community. This is a historic effort--both because
of the scale of the resources, and because it has been organized in
such a professional and effective manner using the best of grassroots
organizing and modern campaign techniques. NVF strategy during the
election period has been to:
out this strategy, some of the pre-election activities of NAACP NVF
and AFE include:
- Hiring over 80 staff in the field with offices in over 13 states.
This included statewide and marginal congressional district work in
Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan,
Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and
Wisconsin as well as marginal congressional districts in California,
Kansas, Nevada and North Carolina.
- Registering 207,129 people (both on the ground and through our Hotline)
- Running a Get Out The Vote (GOTV) operation with 2 literature drops
and 2 canvasses of targeted districts leading up to the election to
pull African American voters to the polls. (Investing over $2 million
in this, alone.)
- Recruiting more than 8,000 volunteers who went door to door with
the canvass and on election day, getting out the vote. In addition,
over 50,000 volunteers were involved in the effort.
- Contacting on average 40,000 people at the door in each target city.
On election day, we will be pulling over 1 million people to the polls.
- Promoting a HOTLINE (1866-YES-VOTE) on the Tom Joyner Show and
all of our material generating over 90,000 calls, of those who want
to register or volunteer or had questions about the election.
- Showing paid media for all target areas, including 4 radio spots,
2 television ads and 3 newspaper/print ads on issues including education,
racial profiling and hate crimes as well as focus on our children
and our future. (Paid media budget was over $2 million.) ·
Procuring and enhancing voter files of over 3.8 million voters primarily
in 13 states. This includes 20 African American majority Congressional
Districts and 20 marginal Congressional Districts.
- Mailing up to 7 pieces of mail on hate crimes, racial profiling,
education, and get out the vote (At a cost of about $2 million).·
Making 7 phone calls to over 1 million households-4 that are live
operator and 2 that are non-partisan GOTV recorded calls (one from
Tom Joyner and one from President Bill Clinton) (At a cost of nearly
- Providing at least 7 million flyers and 400,000 posters
Providing grants totaling about $2 million to NAACP,
its local Branches and Coalition partners especially in target states.
- Three bus tours over 7 days through 10 major cities to Get Out the
VoteNVF and AFE funded the above activities by sharing sources with
other organizations and by receiving contributions from funders interested
in promoting a civil rights agenda.
beginning of the election cycle, most pundits were predicting the
lowest turnout of African American voters in history. The efforts
of the NAACP NVF, the NAACP and others helped to increase the African
American turnout by over 1 million votes in the areas in which we
were organizing. The turnout in New York increased by 22% over 1996
figures; in Florida by 50% and in Missouri by 140%.
For more information about the NAACP and its work visit: http://www.naacp.org/