20 Feb Spotlight | Impact Council recap | Creating a business-led movement

This month, The Global Impact Relations Network held its second Impact Council on how to create a business-led movement.

Hosted by Levi Strauss & Co’s finest, Kelly Mason – Director of Corporate Communications – we learned about the Time to Vote campaign. 

Levis has a long track record of being a values oriented business. With conversations around civil discourse and social unrest spiking in 2020 and with it being an election year, Levis recognized the need for employers to facilitate voting access for their employees. 

Since the midterm elections in 2018, Levis has been working alongside like-minded companies through the Time to Vote campaign – a nonpartisan, business-led initiative to help ensure employees across America don’t have to choose between voting and earning a paycheck.

During her Impact Council, Kelly took us through the campaign’s objectives and learnings in 2020. Levis set out to:  

• Reduce obstacles to civic participation and advance voting rights through Community Affairs and Levi Strauss Foundation grantmaking 
• Build political power and voter turnout among young people and marginalized communities, and reduce obstacles to civic participation in low property demographics 
• Increase participation in Time to Vote to 1,000 companies 
• Engage employees in voter education, registration and volunteering efforts 
• Use the Levi’s brand as a vehicle to get voter registration, education and get-out-the-vote efforts to the cities and states where turnout is low

Overall, the campaign’s goal was to build a corporate culture where voting is encouraged, providing employees with resources and knowledge to better understand voting deadlines, their polling place and other aspects of the civic engagement process that can feel overwhelming to someone who is not historically an engaged voter. 

In 2020, the campaign surpassed its goal of engaging 1,000 companies, reaching 1,910 companies instead, including over 15 Fortune 100 companies and supporting over 9.4 million employees.

Tune in to the Impact Council Q&A that followed through our Youtube channel, here.