The left-progressive Alliance for Youth Organizing (AFYO) is the successor of the Bus Foundation Civic Fund founded by Mathew Singer to activate youth voting for left-of-center candidates and issues. It is the sister organization of the left-of-center Alliance for Youth Action (AFYA).
Backed with funding from left-of-center foundations and corporations like the Open Society Foundations, Univision, and the Rockefeller Family Fund, AFYO seeks to shape a national organization made up of local organizations to advocate for young voter registration and a number of left-progressive election policy changes including automatic voter registration, lowering the voting age to 16, disconnecting criminal history from voting rights, and mail-in voting. [1] The group also calls for the mass elimination of student debt. [2]
AFYO provides a toolkit for organizing, webinars for sharing of experience, one on one assistance, and grants to partners who join the alliance.
History
Alliance for Youth Organizing, a left-of-center foundation established in 2017 to encourage left-leaning younger voters, is the successor organization of the Bus Federation Civic Fund. [3] [4]
Founded by Matthew Singer, the founder of Forward Montana, AFYO is an outgrowth of the Bus Project and the successor organization to the Bus Federation Civic Fund. AFYO was formed and headquartered in Portland, Oregon and later moved to Washington, D.C. to advance a national organization of local partners in each state. [5] [6] [7] [8]
Notable activities include the creation of a national voter registration day and the provision of a voter guide. [9]
Organization
Alliance for Youth Organizing activities include educating young people on left-progressive issues, training leaders for local partners, and mobilizing young voters. Annual conferences, one-on-one coaching, and site visits are some of the methods used to deliver support. The group also conducts lobbying, reporting $15,000 in lobbying spending for 2018. [10] [11]
AFYO’s Democracy Done Right initiative advocates broadened voter registration availability including automatic registration, pre-registration for 16 year-olds, same-day voter registration, mail-in voting for all, elimination of designated polling places, and disconnection of a person’s criminal history from voting rights. [12]
AFYO partnered with left-of-center Students Learn Students Vote Coalition; Campus Vote Project, an initiative of left-of-center Fair Elections Center that opposes voter identification and removal of those who have died from voter rolls and backs felon voting; and MTV to launch “+1thevote +1thepolls” to expand access to voting on campuses. [13]
Other activities include We Can Vote, a left-of-center resource for information and opportunities to help make elections secure, Work Elections a tool to connect poll workers to opportunities, providing a link to the Vote at Home Institute, a separate left-of-center non-profit, that seeks to expand mail-in voting. [14]
Government-funded “free” university tuition, a cap on student loan payments, expansion of publicly owned housing, rent caps, reserved labor union positions on company boards, and increased taxes on wealth are advocated in AFYO’s “Broke AF” initiative. [15]
Leadership
The Alliance for Youth Organizing shares staff with the Alliance For Youth Action but maintains its own separate boards of directors. [16]
Sarah Audelo replaced Matt Singer as executive director in 2017. She was previously millennial vote director for Hillary for America. Prior toAFYO she was political and field director for left-of-center Rock the Vote; policy director at Generation Progress, the youth action arm of left-of-center Center for American Progress; and led the left-of-center Advocates for Youth on issues of HIV/AIDS prevention, abortion access and LGBT interests. [17] [18]
Crystal Patterson, a board member, is global civic partnerships manager at Facebook and previously served as communications director at Center for American Progress. Earlier she worked as communications director for Representative Tim Ryan (D-OH); managing director with Petel & Co., a left-of-center political consulting firm; and as a strategic communications specialist with the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) government worker labor union. [19]
Board member Liba Rubenstein is senior advisor for the Civic Alliance and formerly senior vice president of social impact at 21st Century Fox. [20]
Board member LiJia Gong is counsel at the Public Rights Project, a left-of-center non-profit seeking economic and environmental justice via legal action, and previously served as senior legal analyst for U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). She is founder and member of Radfund, a left-progressive organization focused on racial and economic issues. [21] [22] [23]
Board member Catherine Lerza is a consultant and previously was senior philanthropic advisor at the left-of-center Tides Foundation. [24]
Board member Vaughn Frisby is director of individual giving at SPUR, an urban planning think tank, and previously held positions at the Sierra Club and San Francisco Aids Foundation. [25]
Finances
Revenue for 2018 was $4,410,817 consisting of $4,148,433 of contributions and grants and $233,845 in service revenue. [26] Expenses totaled $3,487,170 with $536,770 in grants and $595,750 of salaries and benefits. [27] The slightly more than $2 million in other expenses included $249,449 in travel, $376,989 in other salaries and wages, and $1,143,952 in sponsor reimbursements. [28] [29]
Assets at the close of the year were $2,703,657. [30]