New three-year funding from Knight Foundation

You can probably guess what those million reasons are… we’re thrilled to announce major new funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation—$1,000,000 over three years. Knight first decided to take a chance on us in December 2011, and since then, we’ve celebrated a lot of incredible milestones. Yet Knight’s decision to double-down feels like our greatest milestone to date.

This grant will help us scale our tech, reach out to hundreds of additional college partners, and become financially sustainable—entirely supported by the colleges, nonprofits and local governments that cover the costs associated with serving their communities. And half the grant is structured as a match! We’re still raising an additional $2 million for our Sustainability Round of investment, so if you know anyone I should be talking to about funding, I’d love your introductions.

TurboVote honored by Ashoka (the Oscars for do-gooders)

Ashoka is one of the world’s preeminent networks of social entrepreneurs, and every year they give out prestigious awards to nonprofits tackling problems in innovative ways. And this year, they chose TurboVote! The award is an honor for Seth, our awesome team, and the hundreds of people who’ve helped us.

Working with government

We love working with colleges and nonprofits, but TurboVote can’t stop there—our mission is to modernize the voting experience for all Americans. To do that, TurboVote must expand our partnerships to include local governments and build technology that’s useful to the public servants doing the hard work of actually running elections (think: Leslie Knope).

(Okay, so Leslie’s actually a city councilwoman. But you get the idea.)

That’s why, this year, we’re going to expand our work by designing new tools for election administrators. Our goal is to reduce the costs of any local government that adopts TurboVote. We kicked off that initiative last month with service design firm Reboot. They’ve already traveled to election offices in Missouri, Kentucky, Vermont, Texas, and Florida to document exactly how election administration works on the ground and are finishing their research odyssey in Denver, Colorado this week. You can read more about their research goals and follow their progress on the Reboot blog.

Help us build a better democracy

While we await Reboot’s findings on what local election administrators need, we’re gearing up to start building these new services. If you know any software developers we should recruit to join this effort, please let us know!

tl;dr: Awesomeness.

To those of you who supported Clippy: we suppose the joke’s on us?

We want YOUR input on TurboVote’s new mascot!

Now, before you ask—Turbo’s great. Really great. But things just haven’t been working lately, so we’re splitting up. It’s on good terms, and there’s no rancor between us. You can keep inviting us to the same events. Sometimes, it doesn’t work out, and this is one of those times.

Anyway, we’re running a poll to determine TurboVote’s new mascot. Vote today! The finalists are:

Voting closes at midnight EST.

P.S. Turbo, if you’re reading this, can you please drop off our Peter Gabriel CDs at the office? Thanks.

We believe that if voting were more convenient, more people would vote; and if more people voted, we could reinvigorate local and primary elections, politicians would be held more accountable, our leadership would be more representative, and our democracy would work better (at least most of the time).

To that end, TurboVote is a web service that makes voting as easy as renting a Netflix DVD. We provide free email and text message reminders for all elections and mail (yes, snail mail!) completed voter registration forms and absentee ballot request forms, along with addressed, stamped envelopes.

We’re currently serving over 188,000 users and working with 58 colleges, several large not-for-profits, and a tech company you may have heard of before. You can learn more about us on ABC, Mashable, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

As this is a startup, we’re used to moving quickly. You will make sure TurboVote’s internal operations remain nimble and efficient while we grow.

Here’s what you’ll be doing:

• Streamlining internal processes
• Scheduling meetings
• Coordinating contract execution and fulfillment with our Partnerships department
• Invoicing
• Organizing staff travel
• HR related tasks, including maintaining vacation and sick day policies and new hire onboarding
• Assisting with grant proposals
• Assisting with the preparation of board documents
• Maintaining our insurance paperwork
• Assisting executive staff with operations-related tasks
• Keeping the filing system in shape
• Super special projects

Qualifications:

• Extremely organized (we can teach you how to manage HR and insurance documents)
• Great with words (can write warm and conversational emails without sounding too informal, can write with perfect grammar without sounding stuffy, can write an inspirational and well-researched paragraph about democratic participation that isn’t stiff or corny)
• Great with numbers
• A passion for getting details exactly right

You’ll fit in if:

• You want to get this done right now
• You want to get this done right
• You’re a not-so-secret idealist
• Why is your favorite question
• You enjoy pub trivia

Nice to have:

• Experience with QuickBooks
• Experience with data visualization
• Experience with nonprofit accounting
• Experience with writing grant applications and annual reports

This full-time position is be based out of our Brooklyn headquarters. Candidates should send a resume and write a pithy email about themselves to Seth and Anne at work@turbovote.org. The email should have the subject line: “Will work for democracy.”

Democracy Works is an Equal Opportunity Employer.  We encourage qualified diverse candidates to apply.  Democracy Works does not discriminate against any candidate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, religion, national origin, age or any other protected category.

Miami Dade College is like most higher education institutions in that unfortunately the only time there is a real buzz about voting and voter registration is every four years in the fall term prior to a presidential election.

MDC joined TurboVote in the winter of 2012, and we are proud that more than 2,400 of our students signed up during the fall term. We knew, however, that we could do better  for two reasons:

1. We have a huge student population spread among eight campuses, and 2,400 students is just a small fraction of those eligible to participate in TurboVote.
2. We wanted to make voting and voter registration a hallmark of the student experience at MDC.

With this in mind, we recently convened 70 students, deans, directors, faculty, students, and staff from all eight of our campuses.

The goals of this meeting were twofold:

1. Identify how MDC can integrate TurboVote in the admissions/registration/orientation processes so that every student receives all the information and materials to vote in every election, and
2. Develop an implementation plan to ensure that MDC is a national leader in higher education in student voter registration and participation.

The meeting was extremely successful because we were able to do a demonstration of TurboVote so everyone fully understood how it worked, and we were able to secure buy-in from key leaders throughout the college – such as student and academic deans, student life directors, registrars, chief information officers, directors of media relations, the college webmaster, campus presidents, civic engagement office directors, and many others.

We are now hard at work on an implementation plan, and we also will be naming a college-wide TurboVote implementation committee, and identify a point person for TurboVote on each campus. We are identifying where we can infuse TurboVote in the admission, orientation, and registration processes so every student is invited to sign up.

TurboVote builds software that helps people vote. Our goal is to push voter turnout as high as it can reasonably go, and then get it a bit higher than that. Currently, 188,000 voters use TurboVote, and on any given Tuesday, anywhere between one hundred of them and tens of thousands of them have an election coming up.

The operations team is the technical side of the organization, and as a technical startup, we have a number of projects in motion at any given time. We want you to help us with one of them in a big way this summer.

Here are a few hats you could find yourself wearing:

• Election API hacker: by the summer, we’ll have an election data API up and running. Come and hack on both internal- and external-facing tools, widgets, and gizmos using the API.
• UI/UX consultant: our core services are always growing. Work closely with the developer team to help us make sure we design new features right the first time.
• Election research/GIS wizard: elections can be hard to find and map. Help us work on ways to crowdsource election details and then efficiently input awkwardly-shaped election districts into our system.
• User intervention optimizer: help us study what does and doesn’t work well in our communications with users.

This list is not exhaustive; feel free to ask about other areas that we’re working on. Better yet,  suggest something we haven’t even thought of yet.

If this sounds exciting, you should email a résumé, two references, what sorts of things you’d be interested in working on, and the coolest book/article/paper you’ve read recently (and why) to Paul Kominers at intern@turbovote.org with the subject line “Will nerd for democracy”. Applications are due by March 15th, but we strongly encourage you to apply as soon as possible.

This full-time position is located in Brooklyn. It comes with a $3000 stipend, honor & glory, the opportunity to hack democracy, stellar connections, and great recommendations. The internship will take place from June to mid-August, although we can be flexible with dates as necessary.

You’ll fit in if:

• You like breaking things.
• You have strong opinions.
• You’ve looked at our site and already noticed several UI improvements that we could make.
• You’re not-so-secretly an idealist.
• You love of any of: trivia, bow ties, pizzazz, panache.

We believe that if voting were more convenient, more people would vote; and if more people voted, we could reinvigorate local and primary elections, politicians would be held more accountable, our leadership would be more representative, and our democracy would work better (at least most of the time).

To that end, TurboVote is a web service that makes voting as easy as renting a DVD from Netflix. We provide free email and text message reminders for all elections and mail (yes, snail mail!) completed voter registration forms and absentee ballot request forms, along with addressed, stamped envelopes.

We’re currently serving over 188,000 users and working with 58 colleges, several large not-for-profits, and a tech company you may have heard of before. You can learn more about us from the New York Times, ABC, Mashable, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

As this is a startup, we’re used to moving quickly. You will make sure TurboVote’s financial operations remain nimble and efficient while we grow.

Here’s what you’ll be doing:

• Manage and oversee financial operations; provide strategic financial guidance
• Analyze sources of income/revenue to identify revenue needs and shortfalls
• Manage day-to-day operations, including fiscal controls
• Prepare all periodic financial reports and information for internal review and external purposes including account reconciliations
• Develop and oversee the policies and procedures for financial control and reporting that meet current and future business requirements as well as relevant regulations affecting the organization
• Design and manage tracking systems for both restricted and non-restricted grants.
• Prepare annual reports and external documents for board meetings and funders
• Oversee organizational budgeting, project budgeting, financial forecasting, and cash flow
• Oversee the external audit, review and analyze results and recommend for approval the audited financial statements.
• Manage tax filings
• Handle insurance and risk management needs
• Super Special Projects

Qualifications:

• Minimum of 4 years experience in a finance and administration leadership role, preferably in the philanthropic or non-profit sector
• Strategic mindset, with the ability to build systems that will support Democracy Works’ growth and operations over the next 3-5 years
• Deep knowledge of finance and accounting principles, rules and regulations, with proficiency in a financial management software package (QuickBooks preferred) as well as spreadsheet and word processing tools
• Extremely organized with amazing time management skills and strong attention to detail. Great judgment. Also! Discretion with confidential information
• A relentless focus on results, with a demonstrated understanding of data management and analysis
• Great with words (warm and conversational emails that aren’t too informal, perfect grammar that isn’t stuffy)
• Able to build effective teams, coach and develop others
• A passion for getting details exactly right
• Degree in finance, accounting and/or management strongly preferred
• CPA designation preferred

You’ll fit in if:

• You want to get this done right now
• You want to get this done right
• You’re a not-so-secret idealist
• Why is your favorite question
• You enjoy pub trivia

This full-time position will be based out of our Brooklyn headquarters. Candidates should send a resume and write a pithy email about themselves to Seth and Anne at work@turbovote.org. The email should have the subject line: “Will work for democracy.”

Democracy Works is an Equal Opportunity Employer.  We encourage qualified diverse candidates to apply.  Democracy Works does not discriminate against any candidate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, religion, national origin, age or any other protected category.

This past year, 188,000 voters started using TurboVote, including over 35,000 students at our 58 partner colleges. This coming year, we will lay the groundwork for working with all 5,000 colleges in America by the 2014 mid-term elections.

We’re looking for an intern dream team of the best college organizers, designers, geeks, and writers in America. This team will work to raise up student voices across the country and call on college administrators to provide every student with all the information and materials that he or she needs to vote in every election.

Last year’s dream team

This full-time position is located in Brooklyn. It comes with a $3000 stipend, glory, the chance to revolutionize democracy, stellar connections, and great recommendations. The internship will take place from June to mid-August.

Candidates should email a résumé, two references, and a short description of the role you would fill on the intern team to Matt Cordeiro at intern@turbovote.org with the subject line “Will work for democracy”. Applications are due by March 15th, but applicants are strongly encouraged to apply as soon as possible.

As this is a startup, you’ll get to wear a lot of hats:

• Relationship expert: You’ll be reaching out to colleges and students from around the country to get them engaged in the work of institutionalizing voting on their campuses.  You’ll need the confidence and judgement to do so effectively.
• Designer: You’ll be envisioning and creating material that will help the organizers and our partner schools.
• Energizer: You’ll be rallying the team and our networks of local leaders to accomplish a very ambitious goal.

Qualifications:

• Ability to build rapport and effectively maintain relationships.
• Experience in political organizing, leading an organization, editing and designing, or business development is a plus but not a requirement.
• Strong organizational and writing skills.
• Ability to follow through on commitments.
• Entrepreneurial spirit and the passion to turn vision into reality.
• Genuine desire to innovate a better democracy.

We’re also looking for interns to do technical or analytical work. If you’re interested, send an email with the subject line “Will nerd for democracy” to intern@turbovote.org.

TurboVote serves nearly 200,000 users, and we’ve only just started. We plan to reach every American (and someday the rest of the world too), and it will involve building REST APIs and client-side web apps, pair programming, test-driven development, and a healthy dose of devops. We’re looking for people who have experience building web applications and APIs in any language, but we strongly prefer open-source platforms.

Our system currently runs on Ruby on Rails, MySQL, Apache, Passenger, EC2, Chef, GitHub, Redis, and Jenkins, to name a few. As a TurboVote software developer, you’ll be joining a growing tech team and helping us design and build our next-generation voter registration, vote-by-mail, and voting information platform. So far, we’ve designed a better user experience for voting—now, we’re working to build out a platform capable of integrating voter engagement with, well, anything you can imagine.

We’re also getting to know local election offices and designing tools to simplify election administration. And perpetually testing, scaling, and imagining new features to improve voting for our users and partners. It’s a great combination of challenging technical problems that no one else has solved and a dedicated mission of increasing voter participation.

The positions are based in either Denver or Brooklyn, but don’t let that stop you from applying if you’re based elsewhere and unable to move. We’re flexible. If you’re interested in working with us, please send your resume and cover letter to work@turbovote.org with the subject line “Will code for democracy.”

For the rest of their lives, we’re going to help all 188,000 of these folks stay registered and voting in all of their elections, from school board to presidential.

And this number will only keep growing. We won’t stop until every voter in the country is signed up. Yes, you read that right. Everyone.

How will we get there?

TurboVote partnered with 58 colleges this year, and we’re going to continue partnering with schools until every college in America is providing every student with all of the materials and information that he or she needs to vote in every election.

But there’s only one way to serve every single American. TurboVote is going to sell our service directly to the approximately 13,000 local governments that actually run our elections and modernize the infrastructure of our democracy.

And I’m excited to announce that the Rita Allen Foundation has just awarded TurboVote a grant of $150,000 to kickstart the research and design phase of our government initiative.

Here’s our vision:

Throughout the country, you should be able to sign up online, one time and then stay registered to vote for the rest of your life. You should be able to have your ballots come automatically in the mail for every election (like they do in Oregon, where everyone votes by mail and participation is consistently high). You should get a reminder text to return your ballot, so you remember to go online, get to know the candidates and issues, and mail it back on time.

This is the voting system TurboVote is building. A modern system that puts as much online as possible, sends Netflix-like seamless mailings when we need to, and fits the way we live.

By modernizing our elections, we can make registering a voter (not just one time, but registering them for life) as easy as sharing a link. We can make sure our voter rolls are accurate and auditable. We can increase participation in all elections.

We’re doing this because we believe that if more Americans voted in more of their elections, more Americans would stay engaged in their communities all of the time. Politicians would be more accountable. And most important: we believe that if government is by all the people, then government will work for all the people.

That’s the type of democracy America deserves. We have the power to build the democracy we want and now is the time to start.

Vote at the nearest polling place

You can vote at the polling place nearest where you are on Election Day, instead of your home polling place. To find an accessible polling place, go to www.google.com/elections/ed/us/vote. If you can do this, we strongly recommend voting in person.

Vote by email or fax

You can cast your ballot via email or fax. The deadline to request ballots via email or fax is Tuesday, November 6 at 5 PM.

UPDATE: as of 2pm on November 6, the Election Protection staff are urging voters in Essex, Hudson, and Bergen counties in NJ to vote at their polling places because of issues with fax/email voting.

1. Fill out a New Jersey ballot request form.
   • You still need to sign the application. (If you do not have a scanner, we recommend getting help from FedEx Office, the UPS Store, or a local printing shop or library).
   • If you are voting by email, you must include your email address on the form.
   • If you are voting by fax, you must write your fax number (you can use the email address space) on the form.
2. Send it to your county clerk using the fax or email information listed below.
3. Your clerk will provide further instructions on where and how to return your ballot—follow them carefully. You need to email or fax your return ballot by 8pm on Friday, November 9.