Ask Your College

 

To watch a video of the Ask Your College learning event on May 27, click HERE

Password: **Vote2020**

To watch a video of the Ask Your College launch event on May 20, click HERE

Password: #Vote2020#

Description

In the time of our COVID-19 challenge, Ask Your College is a growing, nonpartisan volunteer campaign to urge colleges and universities to empower every eligible student to vote.

Volunteers ask a college they care about to commit to actively working toward the goal of full student civic participation – and to make a pandemic-proof plan now to register every eligible student to vote in 2020.  This includes taking responsibility for registering students whether they are residing at school or at home. Ask Your College empowers you to make a difference for democracy right now.

Please bookmark this page in your browser so that you can easily return to this site, and follow the steps below to participate in the Ask Your College campaign.

Action Kit

1. Sign Up: Use the Volunteer Action Form to sign up and identify colleges you’re connected to. From here, our team can support you in making your ask.

2. Make Your Ask: Your goal is to have the president of your college make the Higher Education Presidents’ Commitment to Full Student Voter Participation, an initiative of the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge.

The Resources below provides tools to help you:

  • Send a letter. The most direct approach is to edit the appropriate sample president’s letter and email it directly to the college president. We recommend copying the Vice President of Student Affairs. When you send a letter via email, please bcc askyourcollegecampaign@gmail.com.

  • Recruit others to join your ask. If you have contacts with other college community members – such as faculty, alumni, and others – you might choose to recruit them to co-sign the letter to the president. We have created social media options (such as for Twitter, FaceBook, and Change.org) for your use in the Resources below.

3. Follow up: With your college and our team.

  • With your college: Especially in this moment, college leaders are extremely busy. If you do not receive a response to your initial outreach in 2-3 weeks, we recommend following up and bcc’ing askyourcollegecampaign@gmail.com. By doing so, you are helping keep your ask top-of-mind with the president.

  • With our team: Fill out this Volunteer Self-Reporting Form as you complete actions so that we can track the campaign’s progress and support you along the way.

  • With your networks: Many of us know others connected to a college. You can have an even greater impact by recruiting more volunteers from your network to our campaign. See the Resources below for sample materials you can use to recruit others.

Resources

We have created a number of sample materials to help you along the way, whether you want to simply send a letter or organize your peers and campus community. We encourage you to personalize any of the documents to make them your own.

To use the sample documents, click the link and either 1) download the document, or 2) copy/paste the contents into a blank document.

To write a letter or email to college leadership:

You can learn if your college is a member of ALL IN and about their existing campus vote efforts HERE. Knowing about your campus’s current efforts will help you choose and tailor the right letter.

If you can contact your college by phone, you can use these talking points:

To mobilize others in your college community for your ask:

To mobilize others in your network to recruit them to Ask Your College:

Learn more about the existing work to advance college student civic engagement here.

Questions

The Frequently Asked Questions document may have the answer to your question. If not, or if you have suggestions for improving our Action Kit, please write to us at askyourcollegecampaign@gmail.com.