Quick facts about AAAF
About AAAF: Asian American Advocacy Fund is a grassroots, civil rights organization in Georgia dedicated to empowering, educating, and mobilizing Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander voters to the ballot box through voter engagement programs. The AAPI population is close to half a million and is the fastest growing group in Georgia. Through a combination of policy advocacy at local, state, and federal levels, and by supporting candidates that believe in their values, AAAF fights to create a better Georgia for everyone. AAAF amplifies issues of local importance, such as access to in-state tuition for undocumented students, driver’s licenses for all, Medicaid expansion, and immigration crackdowns, in order to generate voter enthusiasm for up and down ballot races.
In 2020, AAAF helped turn out the Asian American vote, contributing to Biden winning in the state of Georgia by a slim margin, and then intensified their organizing to help Democrats win both Senate seats in the runoff election in January. Read more about their 2020 successes here.
Reached hundreds of thousands of AAPI voters by phone, text messages, mailings, and face-to face encounters, educating and encouraging many first time voters
Mobilized Asian Americans using tactics such as statewide education, persuasion, and turnout programs run via robust digital media presence, and paid and earned ethnic media
Produced and distributed Vote by Mail videos in 6 different languages (Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese, Urdu, Hindi, and Bangla)
Hired ethnicity-specific community organizers and staffed multi-lingual hotlines to answer voter questions to build their culturally-specific relational organizing capacity
In 2021-22, AAAF will:
Continue their work by investing in year-round advocacy and organizing
Expand their community organizing program to include additional organizers with various language capacities, with the focus on hiring additional organizers from the Vietnamese, Chinese, and Indian communities
Educate and engage AAPI communities around redistricting and the potential implications of gerrymandering on immigrant communities and push back against attempts to further suppress their votes
Develop and implement a membership recruitment program for the first time!
Flip the Vote’s Support Means:
AAAF will be able to prepare for the intense work of the next few years, by funding critical positions and programs and sustaining them through 2022 and beyond
Hiring an Organizing Director, with an eye on the skills and leadership potential of their own staff so they can handle bigger and more effective programming in the future
Hiring a Communications/Digital Manager or Director, a new and expanded position, with a more seasoned and experienced staff member
Expanding their community organizing program to include an additional 2-3 part-time organizers with various language capacities to continue to dive more deeply into the growing Asian communities in Georgia