Archives for 2024

You guys know that we are always on the lookout for new groups that share our goals and mesh with  our strategic fundraising criteria.

Now we are heading into North Carolina for the first time, with a dynamic youth voter registration / turnout group that is focused on people of color.  I can’t say it enough; we are super excited about this group we’ll be supporting in North Carolina!

If you want to know why we are headed into North Carolina for this cycle, please check out yesterday’s post:

It’s Up To Us Now, Next Stop, North Carolina!

What group are we supporting in North Carolina?

With your help, we are supporting the  NC Black Alliance Campus Engagement, a project of the North Carolina Black Alliance.

For the last ten years, they’ve been registering, inspiring, training and engaging students at North Carolina’s 11 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), including the largest HBCU in the country: North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.

Fun fact:  While Alabama has the most HBCUs, North Carolina has the most enrolled HBCU undergraduate students, according to the United Negro College Fund.

Here’s the big-picture goal of the Youth Voter Engagement Program in their own words:

Then there are the people, the rising tide of young voters across the state, engaged through protests against law enforcement, mass shootings, funding for education, women’s rights, and environmental issues, all of which are direct assaults on their rights as citizens.  Cycle after cycle has proven that engaging these [young] voters helps to fight back against the forces of opposition that seek to regress our state and nation.

Exactly what are we supporting in the Youth Engagement Program?

In typical Balloon Juice fashion, we’re going to help fund the expansion of their mission.  In short, we’re helping the organization take their engagement and registration template on the road, so to speak, to reach NC student voters of color outside the HBCU environment.  The plan is to do this in two distinct phases.

Specifically, our goal is to help them hire 2 field organizers – one field organizer for each of their two new efforts – just as we did with Voce de la Frontera to fund a field organizer, where we said we could fund half of a field organizer if they could find a match to fund the other half of the position.  So our goal is for Balloon Juice to  raise $30,000 now for the first field organizer, and then raise another $30,000 for the second field organizer, a bit closer to the election.  The external matches will fund the other half of the two field organizer positions.

To be clear, these new efforts would not be funding their efforts with HBCUs,  Instead, they will be working with other 4-year colleges with predominantly black students (Phase I) and expand their reach into 2-year colleges (Phase II).

Phase I: two 4-year colleges that are not HBCUs

Phase 1 involves an expansion into two separate four- year colleges – that is is what we’re funding in this month’s campaign.

The first, and smaller of the two colleges, is Chowan University, traditionally a predominantly white institution that has transformed into a predominantly Black institution.  As a bonus, Chowan is in NC CD-1, a seat held by an African-American first term Congressman named Don Davis.  Once a predominantly Democratic district, it was ultimately gerrymandered – through a convoluted history – into an R +1 district.  It’s a toss-up race according to the Cook Political Report.  Don Davis could use the help (and he may well be on our Fall candidate fundraising radar).

The second institution is the much larger University of North Carolina (UNC) at Pembroke, with over 6,200 students.

The UNC Pembroke component of Phase I also has some fortuitous Balloon-Juice fundraising synergy:  the school was founded in 1887 as a “normal school” (teacher training) for Native Americans.  Mid-century, it was the only state-supported four-year school for Native Americans in the US.  It gradually opened up to the general population, and is currently has a roughly 60% minority enrollment (12% Native American).  Pembroke sits in Robeson County, the home of the 55,000- member Lumbee tribe, the largest tribe east of the Mississippi and the ninth largest tribe in the nation.  Yes, we’ll be reaching out to Four Directions to see if there’s any potential partnership opportunities.

That’s Phase I in a nutshell.  We’ve set a goal of $30,000 – and with the $30,000 outside match, we’ll raise at least $60,000 to cover the staffing and expenses for this expansion.

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It’s Up To Us – Kicking Off Our North Carolina Fundraising!Post + Comments (89)