‘Tis the season of giving—giving thanks, giving gifts, and giving back to your community. Volunteering and charity donations increase during the holidays as people think more deliberately about how they can make a positive impact in other people’s lives.

As demanding as election administration can be, you make the world a better place year-round. Yes, 2020 will be hard. You’ll see record turnout, your cyberdefenses will be tested, and people will misunderstand or misrepresent the process. Take a breath. It’s important to remember why you do this. At the end of the day, you’re helping people.

Bristol, Connecticut ties Election Day with helping people even more explicitly. Voters are encouraged to bring food and cash donations to their polling place for local food banks and shelters. This initiative, Stock Our Shelters, raised over $6,000 and heaps of food donations in 2018 and is set to become an annual Election Day tradition.

“We have 35,000 registered voters in Bristol,” Democratic Registrar Kevin McCauley said. “If we have an above 50% turnout and everyone donated $1, that would go a long way to funding the overnight shelter.”

Organizing the Stock Our Shelters Initiative

The Stock Our Shelters initiative is all-hands-on-deck and entirely volunteer-run. The city recruits volunteers several weeks in advance, including partners like local Girl Scout troops. The volunteers are stationed at polling places and monitor the secure cash boxes and the food donation bins. When bins fill up, volunteers shuttle them to the United Way office and unload the food into the warehouse. The bins are then returned to the polling places to continue collecting nonperishable items.

There is absolutely no cost to the Registrars office. The volunteers do all the work, United Way is responsible for distributing the donations, and even the food collection containers are provided by the Bristol Post Office. Poll workers aren’t diverted from their responsibilities or disrupted in any way. “We want to be very clear that this is a voluntary activity and will not interfere with the voting activities or in any way disrupt that process,” GOP Registrar Sharon Krawiecki said. “It should also be noted that a donation is NOT required to gain entry to the voting area.”

The idea didn’t originate within the Registrars office—two city employees from the parks department and the public works office brainstormed the idea in 2018. Connecticut law allows some nonpartisan activity at polling places, like Girl Scouts selling cookies in the lobby. The two city employees double-checked the legality with the Registrars office and the Secretary of State’s office, then got to work. The mayor of Bristol was understandably excited about the initiative and became a key partner as well.

Helping Vulnerable Populations

The Stock Our Shelters initiative addresses a pressing need in Bristol. Local soup kitchens and shelters are facing increased demand, especially in the winter, without enough funding and food supplies. Donations go to Brian’s Angels, St. Vincent DePaul, The Salvation Army, Meals for Neighbors, and Agape House.

“We’ve had one soup kitchen go offline, which has put a burden on the other two. And we also have a funding shortage at St. Vincent DePaul, which is our homeless shelter, in terms of when we have emergency overflow,” said Mayor Ellen Zoppo-Sassu.

The Winter Overflow Shelter run by St. Vincent DePaul operates from December 1st through March 1st. The winters in Connecticut are brutal, especially when Connecticut’s Severe Cold Weather Protocol is in effect. The protocol enables anyone in need to seek emergency shelter or housing support by dialing 2-1-1, and relies upon Connecticut’s network of local shelters. In 2018, over 1,800 households from Central Connecticut called 2-1-1 for these services. But without sufficient funding, Bristol’s shelter can’t meet demand.

The over $6,000 raised in 2018 was influenced by the relatively high turnout—59%—for a midterm year. The lower turnout of 33% in 2019 raised only about $2,000, but it’s still a big help to the local food banks and shelters. The city intends to make Stock Our Shelters an annual tradition, so the record-high turnout we’re expecting in 2020 should translate into record-high donations.

Boosting Public Trust and Goodwill

You already know that public trust is key to civic participation. When people don’t trust the system, they don’t vote. The mistrust creeps in when they see headline after headline about hacks, glitches, malfunctions, long lines, purges, challenged results, etc. Stories about smooth, problem-free elections may not be as sexy, but getting it right isn’t enough. The public needs to know you got it right.

(Pro tip: this is why we include communications training in our Cybersecurity Series and our Post-Election Audit Series, and why we’re a partner of the NASS #TrustedInfo2020 campaign. It’s important.)

The Stock Our Shelters initiative earned plenty of media coverage both in print and on TV. Local news drummed up support and awareness beforehand and continued reporting on the story after Election Day. It’s an easy way to earn positive media attention. After all, it’s a compelling story that rallies the entire Bristol community together for a cause.

The communities with the highest turnout—in the ballpark of 90% and higher—trust the electoral process and associate voting with community pride. Mark Ritchie, Former Minnesota Secretary of State, has spent a lot of time thinking about the famously high turnout in Minnesota. In an article titled “Community Culture is a Big Driver in Voter Turnout,” he writes:

“Loving your home, feeling responsible for it, and making the decision to protect it by voting isn’t something we can bottle and sell, but we can promote the heck out of it if we figure out how. There is such good energy right now in the promotion of neighborhood and local food, music, etc. that I believe we have fertile ground for spreading a values-based set of ideas about taking care of each other, our place, and our politics.”

Turning Election Day into a donation drive is certainly one way to “promote the heck out of” voting as a community event.

Implementing in Your Jurisdiction

The Stock Our Shelters initiative is involved, and you probably don’t have the capacity to organize an entire initiative yourself. That’s okay! You can reach out to local food banks and charities and encourage them to take advantage of Election Day—most aren’t aware of the option. They can organize volunteers and publicize the fundraiser themselves. You’ll get free voter outreach and education, a feel-good story to feed your local media, and voters who associate Election Day with community, giving back, and civic pride.

Another way to capitalize on the spirit of giving and volunteering is to revisit the Adopt-a-Precinct spotlight article we wrote last year. Community groups use Election Day as a fundraising event, and they take responsibility for recruiting volunteer poll workers.

How are you engaging your community? Are you doing anything special to give back this holiday season? We’d love to hear about it!