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Friend, 

Election season is just around the corner, with May and June home to primary and municipal elections. Our Election Preparation Toolkit has a variety of resources your League can use as election season heats up, from social media graphics to voter registration tools, and more.

Additionally, as we celebrate National Volunteer Appreciation Week, I wanted to thank you for all that you do. I hope you take time this week to celebrate yourself! I am honored and proud to serve with you and power our democracy every day.

Over the past few weeks, I have shared updates around the Transformation Journey and our current phase, Framing the Future. League voices are the foundation for this process, so we have assembled four core working groups and launched a League-wide membership experience survey. Thank you to the 7,000+ League members who have completed the survey! If you have not done so already, I encourage you to take our short survey and share it with your fellow League members. 

It is crucial that we hear from everyone in our League community, because all your voices are critical to our transformational success. The survey closes this Saturday, April 22. If you have already completed the survey, you still have time to share it with your League members and in your internal League communications. This link is not personalized to you: you can share or forward the link directly to other members. For more information, please visit www.lwv.org/framingthefuture. 

In other League news, I want to remind Leagues that operate on a calendar year to file their Form 990-N by May 15. All Leagues that receive less than $50,000 in income must file an e-postcard, or Form 990-N, every year. This form will only take a few minutes to complete and is entirely web-based; there is no paper version. More guidance on how to file your Form 990-N can be found on the League Management Site. 

Finally, we know our already polarized political climate can get more contentious during election season, with anti-democracy groups targeting voting rights organizations like the League. Attacks on our work and our nonpartisanship are efforts to intimidate us, and they indicate the League's powerful impact. However, it is important to remain vigilant — our nonpartisanship is our founding principle, and that has never changed in over 100 years. Our CEO Virginia Kase Solomón wrote an important piece, Remaining Nonpartisan in Hyper-partisan Times, that Leagues are welcome to reshare and quote to continue spreading our principles of standing up for voting rights and equal rights while informing voters. 

Always remember: we are on the right side of history when we stand up for ALL VOTERS in our nation.

Working with you and for you every day.

In League,

Deborah

See all upcoming events on the League Management Site.

Last year, LWV made a commitment to our future with the Structure Transformation Plan, investing in local and state Leagues and upgrading our membership mechanics. Now, we enter the next phase of our transformation journey: building out the framework of our future. In conjunction with four working groups composed of state and local League leaders, we are asking all League members to complete a short, 10-minute survey on their League experience before it closes this Saturday, April 22.

The survey link is not personalized to you, so please share or forward the link within your League community, even if you have already taken the survey — you can even text the survey to your fellow League members using League in Action!

Complete the survey here. For questions on our transformation journey or the survey, please contact transformation@lwv.org.

• Blog: What is ERIC?
• Blog: Activists Call for DC Statehood on Emancipation Day
• Templates: Election Season VOTE411 Graphics & Sample Posts

Leagues that operate on a calendar year need to file their Form 990-N by May 15. All Leagues that receive less than $50,000 in income must file an e-postcard return (also known as Form 990-N) every year, with only a few exceptions. Form 990-N should only take a few minutes to complete and is entirely web-based; there isn’t a paper version. More information can be found here.

State leaders are invited to register now for Council 2023. Council will take place June 22 – 25 at the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas, NV. Each state League is invited to bring one to three state-level leaders. State leaders can register here.

• Adam Ambrogi and Jeanette Senecal from LWVUS wrote about the importance of voter registration systems like ERIC. Read the piece: Ambrogi and Senecal: “Voter Registration Systems Need Both Access and Security – How ERIC Helps State Government Strike the Balance”
• The League of Women Voters of Virginia joined Common Cause Virginia to push back against election disinformation and express support for election workers in Buckingham County. Learn more: Common Cause, LWV decry Buckingham County voting office controversy.
• The League of Women Voters of Alachua County, FL, hosted their sixth annual civics challenge. Learn more: 7th graders turned their favorite subject into competition at 6th annual Civics Challenge.

Special Notifications: To help keep members informed, LWVUS sends this bi-weekly, internal email newsletter to state and local League presidents, as well as other highly engaged League members. The League Update includes important announcements about upcoming trainings and webinars, grant opportunities, messaging resources, stories from Leagues nationwide, and surveys to help LWVUS serve Leagues better. This newsletter is curated for League members specifically and is not intended for public consumption or distribution. 

Do you know a League member who wants to receive this email? Members can subscribe to receive the League Update here. Please do not reply to this message. To unsubscribe, please click the “unsubscribe” button at the bottom of this email.