The Cooperative Impact Lab’s 2022 Digital Innovation Fund awarded $15k 501(c)3 grants to state-based or multi-state focused organizations to fund pilots or continue existing work around digital engagement on TikTok. These programs focus on increasing engagement (online actions, voter registration, GOTV, petition signing, etc.) and shifting nonpartisan narratives through TikTok. In addition to the grant award, awardees receive:
Three training sessions by digital experts to help develop deep knowledge of organizing on the platform.
Individualized coaching from digital experts to provide support to ensure programs are as successful as possible.
Access to technical assistance from best-in-class experts in rapid digital content creation, data analytics for social media content, and digital organizing.
Access to a community of practice with peers + CIL researchers to share learnings, challenges, and best practices that can be replicated throughout the movement
About The Digital Innovation Fund
Research + Reports
In 2020, CIL launched the Digital Innovation Fund (DIF) to support experimental and innovative digital organizing tactics for state-based organizing groups and sharpen organizer skills in digital strategy and data analysis. DIF aims to seed innovation and create a cross-ecosystem community of practice where movement organizations and funders can collaborate, share insights, and build power.
Digital Innovation Fund 2022
Experimentation & Innovation on Emerging Platforms
The groups below represent a cross-section of tactics and focus areas, from local to national, and across a huge variety of under-served groups. The programs they’ve designed are thoughtful, creative, and ambitious. But what brings them together is a shared belief that TikTok can be transformative for pro-democracy work this year.
Our Partners
2022 Digital Innovation Fund Grantees
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A program where youth voters explain their vision of a truly representative Pennsylvania and how that vision can be possible through organizing, sharing information about candidates with family and friends, and registering to vote. They are targeting voters between the ages of 18-35, for whom TikTok is a primary social media platform.
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An ambitious program to run a Native micro-influencer campaign, focused on engaging Native youth in voting and politics. to source content by Native TikTok influencers from ANPL's membership base. According to ANPL, “As far as we are aware, this will be the first research done on Native youth civic engagement on TikTok, and will help us determine whether we can apply what we learn to other forms of political engagement.”
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A campaign of 10-15 TikToks aimed at young people of color and the formerly incarcerated in Chicago, designed to grow electoral engagement and awareness of their electoral power.
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Detroit-focused micro-influencer content to encourage vote-tripling among young people.
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Hyper-local content aimed at young people in specific political geographies throughout Montana.
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A campaign both to source Houston-area TikTok creators around the election, and to create an "info desk" to which other content-creators can go for trustworthy information if they want to get involved.
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A program to source 3 TikToks aimed at "showing young voters the power of their impact" on reproductive rights and other salient issues, and driving them to register to vote.
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Organizing Black workers to vote through content "drawing parallels between work conditions for Black workers and how their participation in the electoral process can protect worker rights, improve quality jobs, and provide access to equal pay."
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Targeting the members of the Black, Latinx, AAPI, and youth communities with in-house-produced content around a small set of key issues, and pushing this content out through influencer partnerships.
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Producing a drumbeat of reliable Spanish-language voting information in-house, and boosting them for greater reach and impact.
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An AAPI influencer campaign to register voters and reinforce the idea that young AAPI voters will be influential in this year’s election. RUN AAPI’s goal is “to see a cultural narrative shift in how young AAPIs engage with political content, where these followers are across the country, and how the public views our community’s growing political influence” Follow RUN AAPI on TikTok here!
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Developing 8 TikToks with a pledge-to-vote call to action in Washington State.
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Early stage integration of TikTok into organizing strategy; creating videos that highlight the behind the scenes + daily life of Youth Organizers at YRTX, and center on core issues relevant to the midterm elections