About us

Who we are

Vote Forward is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization that empowers grassroots volunteers to send handwritten letters encouraging fellow Americans to vote.

What we do

Vote Forward’s flagship voter contact program trains and supports volunteers writing personal, heartfelt letters to potential voters with an easy-to-use online platform. The majority of our letter-writing campaigns are nonpartisan campaigns, supporting our core 501c(3) and 501c(4) social-welfare mission, which focus on mobilizing potential voters in communities that have historically been marginalized in the political process—such as people of color, women, and young voters. We also support 501(c)(4) partisan campaigns to encourage likely-Democratic voters to turn out in strategic states and districts.

Our approach

Volunteer-powered: Volunteers are the heart of this effective and inspiring way to make a difference in elections—and we provide the support they need to do it. Not only is letter writing a powerful tool for experienced activists, it’s a way to help new volunteers get started on their activism journey: More than one third of surveyed 2020 letter writers told us they had never volunteered for a civic or political cause before getting involved with Vote Forward. Anyone with access to an internet connection and a printer can sign up, download and print letter templates, and write to voters from anywhere, and we’re always working on making it even easier to participate.

Collaborative: We’re working to make letter writing available to the broader movement of groups working towards a stronger democracy. Over the past few years, Vote Forward has powered volunteer efforts by a diverse coalition of 100+ organizations—nonprofits, faith-based organizations, companies, political groups and more—providing our platform and support at zero cost to them.

Evidence-driven: From the very beginning, we’ve developed and refined our letter-writing tactic by conducting rigorous research, principally randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Vote Forward has tested the effectiveness of its letters on voter turnout more than 20 times over the past six years, and measured a positive impact nearly every time. Learn more about our experiments here.

Scalable: Our team can quickly launch and grow impactful letter writing campaigns—targeting anywhere from thousands to millions of potential voters—while supporting the thousands of grassroots volunteers who power them. That’s how we’ve been able to help more than 230,000 volunteers write more than 31 million letters since 2017, with a goal of 10 million more in 2024.

Our origin story

Vote Forward began in 2017 as an experiment conducted by Scott Forman in Alabama, where he sent 1,000 letters to encourage voters in the special U.S. Senate election. Encouraged by the success of that test, Scott and a small group of friends and colleagues built the first version of this platform to allow volunteers to take easy and effective action in future elections. We’re so proud of how this community has grown over the years—and the impact we’ve achieved together.