 | |
| Formation | 2017 |
|---|---|
| Website | winthefuture |
Win the Future (WTF) is an American political organization. It was co-founded in 2017 by Reid Hoffman, Mark Pincus, and Adam Werbach following Donald Trump's election to the U.S. presidency.
| | |
| Formation | 2017 |
|---|---|
| Website | winthefuture |
Win the Future (WTF) is an American political organization. It was co-founded in 2017 by Reid Hoffman, Mark Pincus, and Adam Werbach following Donald Trump's election to the U.S. presidency.
WTF's website says that the organization is “a non partisan project lab exploring and developing techniques to give more voice and choice to the American voter. [1]
A December, 2018 article in the New York Times said that the group was created "to encourage every American to become an informed voter." [2]
On September 25, 2017 WTF projected a 70 ft wicked-witch themed image onto the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C. calling on Congress to protect the Affordable Care Act. The group chose this theme using a summer crowdsourcing campaign where they gathered ideas from their members on social media. [3]
In 2018, the group announced a collaboration with political comedian Samantha Bee to develop a non-partisan voter turnout game called This is Not a Game: The Game. [4]
Bee launched the game in the weeks before the 2018 U.S. midterm elections. According to Bee, the goal was "to make something that would drive voter turnout in a bipartisan way." [5]
After launch, the app was downloaded 50,000 times in the first 24 hours, causing outages for some users. [6]
WTF was seeded with a donation of $500,000 from Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus. Its board of advisors includes leaders from U.S. progressive political organizations. This includes James Rucker, the co-founder of Color of Change, who is also a board member at Moveon.org. [7]
The group's launch received criticism from some political groups. Critics described its founders as out of touch, and according to one article "all that is wrong with Silicon Valley." [8]
Rucker, admitted that the launch "may have been a little rough," but that asking "what it means to be pro-business" should be healthy. [9]
In political science, voter turnout is the participation rate of a given election. This is typically either the percentage of registered voters, eligible voters, or all voting-age people. According to Stanford University political scientists Adam Bonica and Michael McFaul, there is a consensus among political scientists that "democracies perform better when more people vote."
Mark Jonathan Pincus is an American Internet entrepreneur known as the founder of Zynga, a mobile social gaming company. Pincus also founded the startups Freeloader, Inc., Tribe Networks, and Support.com. Pincus served as the CEO of Zynga until July 2013, then again from 2015 to 2016.
Canvassing is the systematic initiation of direct contact with individuals, commonly used during political campaigns. Canvassing can be done for many reasons: political campaigning, grassroots fundraising, community awareness, membership drives, and more. Campaigners knock on doors to contact people personally. Canvassing is used by political parties and issue groups to identify supporters, persuade the undecided, and add voters to the voters list through voter registration, and it is central to get out the vote operations. It is the core element of what political campaigns call the ground game or field.
"Get out the vote" or "getting out the vote" (GOTV) describes efforts aimed at increasing the voter turnout in elections. In countries that do not have or enforce compulsory voting, voter turnout can be low, sometimes even below a third of the eligible voter pool. GOTV efforts typically attempt to register voters, then get them to vote, by absentee ballot, early voting or election day voting. GOTV is generally not required for elections when there are effective compulsory voting systems in place, other than perhaps to register first time voters.
Rock the Vote is a non-profit nonpartisan organization in the United States whose stated mission is "to engage and build the political power of young Americans."
Reid Garrett Hoffman is an American internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcaster, and author. Hoffman was the co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network used primarily for professional networking. He is currently a partner at the venture capital firm Greylock Partners and a co-founder of Inflection AI. On the Forbes 2021 list of the world's billionaires, Hoffman was ranked No. 1580 with a net worth of US $1.97 billion.
Adam Werbach, is a technology entrepreneur, environmental activist, and author. In 1996, Werbach became the youngest person ever elected as national president of the Sierra Club, at the age of 23. He is the author of the books Act Now, Apologize Later and Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto Werbach was a frequent contributor to The Atlantic, serving as the magazine's online "sustainability expert." He co-founded the re-use company Trove, and is now the Global Lead for Sustainable Shopping for Amazon.
Kongregate is an American web gaming portal and video game publisher. Its website features over 124,000 online games and 30+ mobile games available to the public. The company also publishes games for PC, mobile, and home consoles. It was purchased by GameStop Corporation in 2010 before being acquired by Modern Times Group MT AB in 2017.
Zynga Inc. is an American developer running social video game services. It was founded in April 2007, with headquarters in San Mateo, California. The company primarily focuses on mobile and social networking platforms. Zynga states its mission as "connecting the world through games".
Zynga Poker is a social game developed by Zynga as an application for the social-networking website Facebook as well as Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, Windows, MySpace, Tagged, and Google+. It was launched in July 2007.
The 2014 United States elections were held on Tuesday, November 4, 2014, in the middle of Democratic President Barack Obama's second term. Republicans retained control of the House of Representatives and won control of the Senate.
NGP VAN, Inc. is an American privately owned voter database and web hosting service provider used by the Democratic Party, Democratic campaigns, and other non-profit organizations authorized by the Democratic Party. The platform or service is used by political and social campaigns for fundraising, campaign finance compliance, field organizing, and digital organizing. NGP VAN, Inc. was formerly known as Voter Activation Network, Inc. and changed its name to NGP VAN, Inc. in January 2011. The company was founded in 2001 and is based in Washington, D.C., with an additional location in Somerville, Massachusetts.
The 2018 United States elections were held on Tuesday, November 6, 2018. These midterm elections occurred during Republican Donald Trump's term. Democrats made a net gain of 41 seats in the United States House of Representatives, gaining a majority in the chamber and thereby ending the federal trifecta that the Republican Party had established in the 2016 elections. The Republican Party retained control of the United States Senate, making a net gain of two seats and defeating four Democratic incumbents in states that had voted for Trump in 2016. As a result of the 2018 elections, the 116th United States Congress became the first Congress since the 99th United States Congress in which the Democrats controlled the U.S. House of Representatives and the Republicans controlled the U.S. Senate.
A general election was held in the U.S. state of Illinois on November 6, 2018. The elections for Illinois's 18 congressional districts, Governor, statewide constitutional officers, Illinois Senate, and Illinois House were held on this date.
Brigade Media, also known as Brigade, was a civic technology platform that was formed on June 4, 2014, and founded by James Windon, Jason Putorti, John Thrall, Matt Mahan, and Miche Capone. The platform was intended to help users connect with others who share the same or similar views and to voice their opinions, create debates, or organize petitions. This process was intended to make the users' concerns more visible to and influential towards the United States policymakers. In early 2019 the engineering team at Brigade was acqui-hired by Pinterest. The remaining company assets and IP, including the Causes assets, were purchased by GovTech app Countable.
Rus Yusupov is a designer and tech entrepreneur. He is best known as the co-founder of Vine and the co-founder and CEO of HQ Trivia.
Hustle is an American company that provides a peer-to-peer text messaging platform for areas such as politics, higher education, and non-profits. The platform initiates personal conversation between organizations and their targeted supporters or clients. Hustle was founded in December 2014, by Perry Rosenstein, Roddy Lindsay, and Tyler Brock.
Voatz is a for-profit, private mobile Internet voting application. The stated mission of Voatz is to "make voting not only more accessible and secure, but also more transparent, auditable and accountable." The company is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.
Acronym is a Washington, D.C.-based American 501(c)(4) non-profit corporation, co-founded by Tara McGowan and Michael Dubin in 2017. The organization is one of the major coordinators and producers of digital media campaigns aligned with the Democratic Party, and has been hired by or has provided support to various other organizations including the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Emily's List, Everytown for Gun Safety, and Planned Parenthood. It was the majority owner of Shadow, Inc., a technology company that made the mobile application software that malfunctioned during vote tallying at the 2020 Iowa Democratic caucuses, but later divested its stake in the company.
Courier Newsroom is a digital media company that operates news outlets and sponsors political content intended to support Democratic candidates. The goal of Courier Newsroom publications, according to an internal memo obtained by Vice News, "is to create shareable viral pseudo 'news content' to boost its preferred candidates." The Chief Editor is Lindsay Schrupp. Courier's founder is Tara McGowan, who used to work for the Obama campaign and for the SuperPAC Priorities USA.
