In August, the Fund for Our Economic Future announced the three award recipients of the inaugural run of EfficientGovNow. Two of those recipients were projects initiated in the Mahoning Valley.
Recently, we asked Tony Paglia, vice president of government affairs at the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber, to share his insights on how the Mahoning Valley successfully spread the word and inspired voters to cast ballots supporting Rollin’ on the River: Mahoning River Corridor Redevelopment Project and Mahoning-Youngstown Regional Information System (MYRIS).
Tony Paglia:
The “get out the vote” campaign for Mahoning Valley projects as part of the EfficientGovNow local government collaboration program was the culmination of about one-and-a-half years of work to promote regional collaboration in Mahoning and Trumbull counties. During that time, the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber and its 3,000 members supported and promoted the concept that local communities must work together and cooperate in order for the Mahoning Valley to grow and prosper.
The result was the creation and growth of a network of literally thousands of business, government and non-profit entities, including bloggers and individuals, interested in collaborating to promote all things positive for the Mahoning Valley.
To energize this network around EfficientGovNow projects based in our area, we spread our “get out the vote” messages in the following ways:
- The Regional Chamber asked its 3,000 members to vote for local projects and suggested that they ask their employees to cast ballots as well. All of the chamber’s largest employers sent e-mails to their employees asking them to join our efforts. Many others did so as well.
- Local government collaborative groups such as the Mahoning County Metro Leaders Roundtable, Trumbull County Council of Governments and Grow Mahoning Valley, as well as graduates of the Chamber’s Mahoning Valley Local Government Leadership Academy and Leadership Mahoning Valley, received e-mails urging them to spread the word about voting on the local projects.
- Messages were sent along social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Local blogs promoting the revival and resurgence of Youngstown, such as Defend Youngstown with an e-mail list of 5,000 people, were mobilized.
- The collaborative groups that applied for the grants, the Rollin’ on the River: Mahoning River Corridor Redevelopment Project and Mahoning-Youngstown Regional Information System (MYRIS) took advantage of multi-community ties to spread the word about cast ballots in their support.
- Finally, and most importantly, we engaged with a relatively new entity in the region, the Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative (MVOC), to forge a real grassroots effort to get out the vote.
The executive director of the MVOC, Kirk Noden, summarized the organization’s EfficientGovNow efforts.
Kirk Noden:
Last fall, MVOC raised $40,000 for “get out the vote” work (unrelated to EfficientGovNow), making 17,000 phone calls in support of the Western Reserve Transit Authority levy, registering 700 voters, providing rides to the polls and signing up 2,000 unlikely voters to get out and vote. MVOC has always viewed strong voter participation and engagement as a key piece of community change, and has been working to build electoral capacity as one of its key components.
MVOC essentially re-activated its “get out the vote” operation for the EfficientGovNow program, hiring neighborhood canvassers to hit festivals, the Eastwood Mall and high traffic areas to encourage people to participate and collect ballots. It utilized grassroots networks that organizers already had (through churches/neighborhood associations, etc.), and used its e-mail/contact database to get the word out. Each week, canvassers and staff tallied the votes and ran a campaign with the goal of getting 2,000 additional grassroots votes for EfficientGovNow participants from the Mahoning Valley. In total, the organization moved roughly 1,500 people to cast ballots, including about 500 in the last 24 to 48 hours.