What if you could inform every voter?
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OUR MISSION:
The Shrug Foundation creates tools that drive grassroots civic education and engagement in Illinois and across the United States.
OUR VALUES:
TRANSPARENCY
We must always be transparent, independent, and tell the truth. The Shrug Foundation centers the principles of independent investigative journalism, and educates about the importance of transparency, evenhandedness, and honesty to the democratic process.ACCESSIBILITY
Make it feel like talking to a friend. The Shrug Foundation emphasizes the importance of narrative storytelling as a voter education and civic engagement tool, which allows information to reach community members wherever, and however, they are.
HUMOR
If they’re laughing, they’re learning. The Shrug Foundation educates about the importance of humor and artistic freedom to reaching uninformed and underinformed community members and prospective voters.INFORMATION DEMOCRACY
An informed voter is a progressive voter. The Shrug Foundation creates tools which drive voter turnout and education in accordance with an explicit set of values that lead voters to make more informed choices at the polls.
The Project
Phase 1: $50,000
Create a customizable web-based suite of tools that will be publicly available for anyone in the country to use in creating their own independent voter guide
Produce a Guide to Guides that serves as a playbook and development tool
Source a state-by-state list of transparency, research, and voter education tools for prospective writers
Help form national partnerships with local and national organizations so new guides have a built-in base of readership upon launch
Phase 2: $250,000+
Incubate voter Guides in key cities in states that elect their judges (ideal target cities of Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia)
Staffing for these projects to provide constant support for prospective writers
Projects receive two full election cycles of support, so they're ready to work solo
Make the digital toolkit bigger, better, and more accessible
Achieve a national scope with a local impact ripple
Who runs it?
Stephanie Skora (Founder, President) is a seasoned nonprofit executive with over 15 years of experience founding and leading organizations from the start-up phase to stable, multimillion dollar service organizations. She is also a civic engagement and voter education expert who has been producing civic engagement and voter education materials since 2012.In 2018, Stephanie became the Co-Founder of the Girl, I Guess Progressive Voter Guide, where she is currently Editor and Co-Writer. Girl, I Guess is the nation's most-read independent voter Guide, and has helped over half a million voters cast a more informed ballot.Over the past 8 years, dozens of Girl, I Guess readers around the country have asked how they could start their own voter guides. Despite the repeated queries, none followed through, spurring Stephanie to use her passion for democratizing election information and civic engagement spurred her to found The Shrug Foundation, so that anyone can use research, storytelling, comedy, and values to inform how their community votes.
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