Quick facts about Advance Carolina
About Advance Carolina: Created in 2015, Advance North Carolina (“Advance Carolina”) is a Black-led organization with a mission to build political and economic power in Black communities and institutions in North Carolina. Advance Carolina educates and mobilizes Black and progressive voters to take charge of their communities and engages them to achieve inclusive, community-based political and societal solutions. Advance Carolina builds coalitions among grassroots organizations and local anchor institutions; provides leadership opportunities for youth, people of color, and women; and engages in political advocacy, including candidate endorsement and support for issue-based campaigns on issues prioritized by communities.
In 2020, Advance Carolina coordinated approximately 500 volunteers who engaged high potential voters considered unlikely to vote in the 2020 general election. These volunteers made attempts to contact over 150,000 voters via 73,000 text messages, phone calls to over 19,000 people, and literature drops at nearly 60,000 doors. For the 2020 election, Advance Carolina focused largely on women, faith-based communities, rural voters, and HBCUs. Of the people to whom Advance North Carolina reached out, 40% voted in the general election, representing record turnout for Advance Carolina’s target demographics.
Advance Carolina helped keep voters safe and informed by distributing 250,000 PPE kits with information on absentee ballots and safe in-person voting opportunities.
A notable local victory attributed to Advance Carolina’s efforts entailed flipping a conservative Board of Commissioners in a rural county to a progressive, Black majority. Also, a huge push in the final days leading up to the election propelled a Democratic victory in a highly competitive state Senate race.
2022 Action Plan:
In 2022, North Carolina has a highly competitive, open US Senate race, two races for seats on the state Supreme Court that will determine which party controls it, and significant opportunities to win US House and state legislative seats due to favorable redistricting.