WomenCount was first formed in the late 1990s to increase voter turnout among women. The campaign slogan at the time? “They used to say women couldn’t vote. Now they say we won’t.” The campaign worked: Women now consistently make up the majority of voters.

Every political cycle since, WomenCount has pushed new ways to get more women involved and elected.

In 2008, WomenCount made headlines with our “Not So Fast” ad campaign, which called for an end to the pressure being placed on Hillary Clinton to bow out of the presidential primary campaign despite leading both in the popular vote and total states won.

After the election, WomenCount turned its energy to creating an online women’s political community, similar to MoveOn, and built a large audience of activists. In our most prominent campaign, WomenCount partnered with California Rep. Jackie Speier to introduce legislation in Congress to create a Presidential Commission on Women. Although the bill did not ultimately move forward, the campaign engaged tens of thousands of supporters in the effort.

Later, WomenCount partnered with The 2012 Project in a nationwide recruitment campaign to line up hundreds of women to run in this critical post-redistricting election. That effort, based at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers, played a role in the notable spike in the number of women elected that year.

WomenCount innovates with the times, and our name continues to reflect our mission. We launched our crowdfunding platform in 2015 based on two trends from the world of finance and politics: 

• Women candidates raise a larger percentage of contributions from smaller dollar donations than male candidates, which means they must spend more time securing individual contributions.

• Crowdfunding was a $16 billion industry in 2015, doubling year over year since 2012. Though the rate of growth in the industry has slowed since we founded our crowdfunding platform, it’s still expected to become a nearly $50 billion industry this decade. 

We believe crowdfunding for women in politics is a way to reverse the first trend by capitalizing on the second. And we’re proud to have seen success. Since our founding, we’ve raised more than $12 million for women candidates nationwide—running in local, state and national races.  

So get started on Pick a Slate.

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