Voter-turnout efforts have a long history at apparel maker and retailer Levi Strauss & Co. In the early days of the company, its eponymous founder closed his store in California and gave his employees days off so they could cast votes in the election of 1864. Some 160 years later, the company is still putting voting-rights at the center of its corporate activism—now with a campaign that aims to mobilize potential voters at community colleges.
Low turnout has long been a challenge for the U.S. political system: In 2020 presidential election, only 61.5% of the voting-age population cast ballots—and that was the highest figure since 1960.
One problem: In the U.S., unlike in many countries, election day takes place on a weekday and is not a holiday. In 2018, Levi’s teamed up with Patagonia and PayPal to launch Time to Vote, a campaign to persuade employers to give hourly workers time off on Election Day; that coalition now claims more than 2,000 member companies.
The company’s latest get-out-the-vote push aims to register more of the nation’s estimated 10 million community-college students. “They represent about a third of all undergraduate students, and they’re a highly diverse population,” CEO Michelle Gass tells Fortune. Yet on measures of voter turnout, she explains, “they're nearly 10 percentage points lower than students at public four-year universities,” based on results from the 2020 election.
The Community College Commitment, which Levi’s launched with Lyft, MTV Entertainment, and a coalition of nonprofit groups, aims to register 500,000 new college-age voters by 2028. As of mid-September, Spotify, Univision, Snap, Lime and chocolatier Tony’s Chocolonely had joined the effort. Last week, on Sept. 17—National Voter Registration Day—Levi’s supported registration "activation" events on more than 100 campuses across 37 states.
The company's voter turnout work earned it a spot on Fortune's 2024 Change the World list, which was published on Sept. 25.
Voter-engagement efforts pay off for Levi’s indirectly, by building brand awareness among college-age consumers. They also boost morale among Levi’s own employees, says Gass. “We encourage our employees to participate,” she says, “not only giving them time to go vote themselves, but to sign up to be poll workers, and really to be out there in the community,” handing out information at concerts and sporting events.
“This is absolutely a nonpartisan matter,” Gass adds. “Having a strong democracy is good for business…it creates stability, it creates accountability for leaders.”
“The more people can participate in a democracy,” she adds, “the stronger it gets.”
EDITOR'S NOTE: This article was updated on Sept. 25 to more accurately describe the roles of various partners in the Community College Commitment.
