Who We Are
MVP is a one-stop shop for strategically investing in local organizations that win elections and transform policy.
MVP does the research so you don’t have to, maximizes your impact by investing in the best local voter engagement organizations, and streamlines your giving — operating like a “mutual fund for political donations.”
View our 2-Page Overview PDF »
The MVP Model
- Target the most pivotal places and races, both now and for the long term.
- Invest in the best local voter organizing groups, with a focus on youth, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color), LGBTQ+, and immigrant voters.
- Organize key voters who have the power to tip the scales.
- Win elections and transformative policy change at every level of government.
What We Do
Introduction to MVP
This 2-minute video explains the basics of MVP.
Want more? Here’s the 12-minute deeper dive.
Who We Invest In
MVP supports the best and most promising local community-based organizations, with a focus on youth, communities of color, LGBTQ+ voters, and other communities that bear the brunt of injustice in the United States.
Read why local organizing is the best path to lasting change.
Where We Invest
MVP targets swing states, close races, and geographies that will be competitive over the long term. We invest up and down the ballot, from the presidency to local school boards, in order to build progressive power and durable majorities at every level of government.
Read more about our political targeting.
Our Vetting Process
To identify and select groups in each state, we engage in a group vetting process led by a team of skilled State Advisors who bring years of experience focused on local, in-state movement building and political campaign work.
Why MVP
The Case for MVP
Local organizing wins pivotal elections, builds power that lasts, and fuels policy change — and if you want to fund local organizing, MVP makes it easy.
What Makes MVP Different?
- On-the-Ground Expertise: MVP’s team of State Advisors are not your traditional “program officers” making grants from behind a computer screen: They are political experts and experienced organizers, carrying long-standing, trust-based relationships with leaders on the ground.
- Builders, Not Just Funders: The MVP Capacity Building Program sets a standard for excellence in political philanthropy, giving our local partners the tools, skills, and support to strengthen, sustain, and scale their work.
- Long-Term State Power: Instead of just funding big-name groups working in siloes, MVP invests in a diversified “ecosystem” of emerging, growing, and established groups working together in key states to build lasting power.
- “Deep & Broad” Investment Strategy: We target an expansive map of swing states, close races, and long-term wins, up and down the ballot, in order to build progressive power and durable majorities at every level of government.
- Partnership not Paternalism: Our State Advisors rigorously vet, monitor, and ensure accountability with our local partners — while partnering with them to think big, operate creatively, and organize most effectively.
- Building a Movement of Donors: We are not just here to raise money and give it out; we are here to shift the culture of civic and political philanthropy by building a broad-based movement of donors who are committed to funding local voter organizing for the long haul. Our donors are not just clients but also crucial partners in this work.
Learn More
For a deeper understanding of the case for MVP, check out:
- Guide to Strategic Giving
- Evidence & Research backing up the MVP model
Track Record
2016-2018: Building a Model for Historic Grassroots Turnout
In early 2016, we spent six months consulting with more than fifty experts to develop an initial list of local movement groups organizing in key states and helped donors across the country support their organizing efforts.
We were deeply dismayed by the broader outcome of the 2016 election, but we did not stop organizing. In Alabama’s special Senate election in 2017, MVP played an especially unique role in seeding, helping to incubate, and funding two major locally-driven, Black-led GOTV efforts: Woke Vote and Black Voters Matter Fund (which in turn supported 35 groups in 17 counties). These groups drove historic black turnout that year, and built power for expanded organizing in subsequent years.
2019-2020: The Big Comeback
In 2020, MVP local partners helped flip key swing states for Biden, and were instrumental in close state-level victories in Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan.
Then, on January 5, 2021, they helped deliver an unprecedented U.S. Senate double runoff victory in Georgia, giving Democrats a trifecta governing majority.
2021-2022: Defying the Odds
2022 was supposed to be a Red Wave. But MVP partners defied the odds, picked up a seat in the Senate, came 6,675 votes shy of holding the House, and won a state Blue Wave.
2023: Keeping Momentum + Delivering Results
In 2023, MVP partners helped Democrats flip the Wisconsin Supreme Court; helped defeat an anti-democratic ballot measure in Ohio; and helped win November elections in Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere.
And, in the realm of policy, MVP partners helped achieve state and local victories that seemed out of reach a few years ago, from 100% clean energy plans to voting rights, gun safety, and more.
2024: Let’s Keep Winning
Ahead of November 2024, MVP is supporting hundreds of local organizations in key states to reach tens of millions of voters, win big, and pass progressive policy in 2025.
Our Board
![Laura Flynn](https://wp.movement.vote/wp-content/uploads/lauraheadshot-scaled-e1657218303680.jpeg)
Laura Flynn is a writer, organizer, and resource mobilizer living in Minneapolis, Minnesota on Dakota and Ojibwe lands.
Laura began her work in movement politics in Haiti in the 1990s where she was deeply engaged in the movement for democracy and dignity. She is the author of the memoir Swallow the Ocean (Counterpoint Press 2008), and editor of Eyes of the Heart: Seeking a Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalization by Jean-Bertrand Aristide, (Common Courage Press, 2000).
Since 2016 her primary work has been organizing donors on behalf of social movements in the US. In 2017, she helped to found the Movement Voter Project, and then served for five years as the Minnesota State Advisor at MVP. She supported Minnesota’s power-building ecosystem of grassroots organizations to grow their size and capacity, strengthen statewide alignment, connect groups across issue silos, and link them to other funders and resources. She is currently a philanthropic advisor to Win the Midwest and also serves on the board of the Solidaire Network.
![Melissa Giraud](https://wp.movement.vote/wp-content/uploads/Melissa-Giraud-e1650078375706.jpg)
Melissa Giraud is co-founder and co-director of EmbraceRace. She has spent a lifetime trying to center the voices, experiences and concerns of children and families, with a particular interest in BIPOC, immigrant, and first-generation children. She is the multiracial (Black/White) daughter of immigrants from Quebec and Dominica. Professionally, Melissa has sought to empower marginalized kids and families, first as an elementary school educator teaching in a bilingual (Spanish/English) program in a predominantly Mexican and Mexican American neighborhood in Chicago, then as an NPR producer in DC driven to recruit BIPOC voices and perspectives in the newsroom, and later as a radio reporter who collaborated with her former elementary students as they were coming of age to capture the experience of living biculturally and transnationally for NPR.
Melissa further pursued her interest in K-12 education and equity in graduate school and has been a consultant to numerous foundations and organizations, with special attention to the promise and perils of technology in advancing educational equity. Melissa has a B.A. in History from the University of Chicago and a M.A. in Education from The Ohio State University. She and her partner Andrew have two kids, ages 11 and 13.
![Esther F Morales](https://wp.movement.vote/wp-content/uploads/esther-morales-e1650078725256.jpg)
Esther Morales brings over 20 years of cross sector, business-facing and public service leadership to her work. Since January, 2021, she has served as the executive director of the Clean Energy Leadership Institute (CELI). Just prior, she was the Deputy Director of the California Office of the Small Business Advocate (CalOSBA) in the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz). Esther spent the preceding years, 2009 - 2017, working on policy implementation at the national level on a range of issues in Washington, DC including at the Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, the National Women’s Business Council, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and at the White House in the Office of First Lady Mrs. Obama. Before moving to Washington, DC, she spent ten years managing issue and candidate campaigns, and working with non-profits organizing around racial justice issues. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Princeton University.
![Billy Wimsatt](https://wp.movement.vote/wp-content/uploads/Billy.jpg)
Billy has more than 25 years of experience in journalism, philanthropy, organizing, and social entrepreneurship, and has advised hundreds of donors to strategically invest tens of millions of dollars in hundreds of organizations and initiatives in 48 states, often with crucial seed funding to start, to scale, to launch c4s and PACs, and to voterize their work. He prides himself on talent scouting, offering nurturing support and coaching, and facilitating a spirit of strategic collaboration. Over the years his work, in partnership with many others, has helped to swing hundreds of close local, state and Federal elections and to pass hundreds of progressive policies. Founding and building Movement Voter Project has been the culmination of decades of work to support movements and progressive electoral and social change.
Before MVP, Billy co-founded several efforts, including Gamechanger Networks, League of Young Voters, Generational Alliance, Ready for Warren, Solidaire Network, Coffee Party, VOTE MOB, Student Power, and Rebuild the Dream. He has consulted with numerous organizations including the 2008 Obama Campaign, MoveOn.org, Rock the Vote, the Ohio Democratic Party, and Green For All. He is the author or editor of six books on social change and his writing has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, The Nation, and Vibe. He has been invited to speak widely, including at Stanford, Yale, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and MIT’s Graduate School of Architecture and Planning. His work has received numerous honors, including a Firecracker Book Award for “Best Political Book of the Year,” “Best Feature Story” from the National Association of Professional Journalists’ Chicago Headline Club, The Source Magazine’s “Power 30”, Utne Magazine’s “Utne Visionary”, Finalist for “Organizer of the Year” with the New Organizing Institute, and a “21st Century Innovator” award from Midwest Academy. Originally from Chicago, Billy lives in Western Massachusetts with his family and two children (who out-organize him on a daily basis).