Vote.net - Student-Run Business of the Year

Company: Vote.net, New York, NY
Company Description: Vote.net is a nonpartisan political website that allows students to share their ideas on current politics, have open discussions, and to elevate public health as a critical voting issue. The site is dedicated to building the political knowledge and power of young people enough to get them to register to vote. The site is student-operated by a small team at Hunter College High School in New York.
Nomination Category: Company / Organization Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Student-Run Business of the Year

Nomination Title: Vote.net - Your Future. Your Vote.

We are nominating Vote.net for Student-Run Business of the Year. Vote.net was originally conceived, built, and launched in 2017 as a student effort to engage his fellow high school students in the political process and to elevate public health as a primary issue of discussion. The site was launched in conjunction with the creation of a weekly student forum at Hunter College High School to openly discuss and debate the political topics of the day. The site and forum have created a constructive outlet for the expression of differing political viewpoints and a practical approach to influencing the political process through student activism.

We believe that Vote.net is deserving of the award of Student-Run Business of the Year. In 2020, Vote.net helped contribute to a new movement of political activism that started with a high school and that, through the power of the internet, rapidly grew its reach, influence, and positive impact on the future. Vote.net is serving as an important catalyst in giving voice to young people around the nation.

Since early 2019, our team of students:

Developed and re-launched new community-driven, non-partisan website targeting prospective millennial voters;

Chartered school-based organization at Hunter College High School focused on open political discussion on today's news topics;

-Assembled team of 15 content contributors;

-Doubled newsletter registration to 28,546 subscribers;

-Built a social media program with 1,580 twitter followers;

-Syndicated original content through over 150 RSS feeds;

-Partnered with Rock to the Vote to register new voters;

-Sponsored voter registration drives in NYC targeting eligible students;

-Launched a successful Gofundme Campaign; and

-Designed innovative mobile application to match voters with candidates.

While there has been significant coverage of voting and politics over the past two years, most would agree it was highly partisan and not focused on the issues that students care most about. The largest problems that face us today are those things that students are going to be most responsible for managing or resolving. The biggest issues --climate change, ourpublic health response to the pandemic, the recent increase in public debt - are of greatest concern to students and millennial voters, and will certainly impact our entire adult lives, but were not seriously debated.

Vote.net was one of the only places that students could get credible, unbiased news and have a real conversation about these matters. As such, we believe that Vote.net facilitated a series of fact-based discussions that led to thousands of students to vote in a more informed way across the United States.

The attachments that highlight the fact that we do not cover much of the same news as more mainstream sources are a) the homepage, showing what we believe to be the most important current events and original content and b) an original Covid-19 tracker that displays how the virus affects us differently based on your state's response, political beliefs and historical voting.