While there are many ways to frame your initiative, we suggest elevating "civic engagement" in your messaging. Voting is just one way that people can engage civically, which carries many societal and individual benefits. When you position encouraging voting as part of a broader goal of encouraging civic engagement, your focus becomes about a social good rather than about particular parties or candidates.

PACE (Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement)

"Civic engagement is the process of helping people be active participants in building and strengthening their communities, whether defined as a place or a shared identity or interest. It’s a spectrum of ways people can participate in self-governance, from interactions with government to voluntary associations, and everything in between. At its best, civic engagement provides personal fulfillment and builds trust throughout communities."

Civic Responsibility and Higher Education

“Civic engagement means working to make a difference in the civic life of our communities and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values and motivation to make that difference. It means promoting the quality of life in a community, through both political and non-political processes….A morally and civically responsible individual recognizes himself or herself as a member of a larger social fabric and therefore considers social problems to be at least partly his or her own; such an individual is willing to see the moral and civic dimensions of issues, to make and justify informed moral and civic judgments, and to take action when appropriate.”

While your initiative is anchored around voting in the US General Elections, you may choose to highlight that voting is just one path for civic engagement.

In addition to voting in elections, civic engagement looks like:

For many groups, running a "nonpartisan" - or, politically neutral - voting initiative is the best path because it is most inclusive and aligned with your organization's interests. For nonprofit organizations with a 501c3 status, it's also legally required to be neutral.

"The main principle for being nonpartisan is to conduct voter engagement and education in the context of your educational and civic mission and not in a way intended to support or oppose a specific candidate...When you do voter registration or remind people to vote, do it in the context of the importance of voting – encouraging active citizenship and giving voice to the communities you serve." - Nonprofit Vote

To ensure that your initiative is nonpartisan, focus on the WHAT, WHEN, HOW and WHY of voting, but stay away from the WHO. That is, help potential voters understand the importance of elections and help them with logistics, but do not discuss who to vote for.

You can (and should!) encourage voters to get informed about the candidates and measures on their ballot by recommending nonpartisan resources. But to remain nonpartisan, you should not make statements about who they should vote for.

Diving into more detail from Nonprofit Vote, these types of activities are permissible in a nonpartisan initiative (not comprehensive):