Celebrating 20 Years of Michigan Voices
Michigan Voices is celebrating our 20th anniversary, so we’re honoring where we’ve come from, what we’ve built, and most importantly, how we continue to collaboratively build a movement that works towards a liberated future. Our partners have accomplished a lot over the past two decades: from the expansion of voting rights, to the challenging of emergency management, to independent redistricting, to defending reproductive healthcare. However, with our work under attack, it’s an important time to honor our history, strength, collaboration, coordination, and move into the future together.
When people think about Michigan Voices, they may initially think of the money we regrant to partners, but I think about our data support, training, the thoughtful partnership from our staff, and especially our efforts to platform partners to tell their own stories. Coordination and alignment are also a significant part of our work, because it’s important that we be strategic and use our resources wisely. We’re dedicated to building systems built for efficiency, and in 2024 alone we coordinated programs for 78 partners.
We are strengthened by being part of the State Voices network and knowing we have a national organization that has our back. We are able to learn from the folks at State Voices as well as the work of the other affiliated tables in our network.
We’re also strengthened by being part of strong infrastructure organizations in Michigan with America Votes, Engage Michigan, the Michigan Civic Engagement Fund, and Promote the Vote. Of course, none of this would happen without the dedicated work of our staff. I’m extremely proud of the team we’ve built, and I feel confident we are the most caring and thoughtful political team in Michigan. Everyone here genuinely wants to show up to do the work and make a difference.
The team has changed a lot over the years. The staff used to be quite small but we have grown to include trainings, development, communications, reproductive justice, and an expanded democracy department. Part of the reason our team has grown is because the number of our partners have grown. We have diversified the partners at the Michigan Voices table. At the beginning, there used to be a lot of larger statewide organizations, and although we still work with those groups, we have intentionally added a focus on community level work and over the years, we have seen those organizations grow their capacity and scale.
Our partners remind us that we cannot expect people to participate in democracy if their basic needs aren’t met, so many of them do both: they serve and strengthen their communities and our democracy. My favorite part of the work is hearing from our partners about the stories they hear from their constituents and learning about the innovative work they do to impact their communities. Partners like DHDC provide support to immigrant communities that’s really needed right now, ACCESS has health clinics they offer in addition to voter protection and know your rights work, and Miigwech organizes diaper giveaways when they’re informing families about their absentee voting options.
We are in a pivotal moment in this work. The 2026 midterms are important, but so are the 2027 and 2028 elections, and all of the elections after that. When I think about our goals for the next several years, I also think about the census and redistricting coming up. We need to stand united against attempts to roll back our voting rights, protect our immigrant communities, support trans kids, invest in education and our infrastructure, and continue to protect access to reproductive freedom.
Celebrating 20 years of Michigan Voices is celebrating each part of our movement that makes the work successful. We need people, partners, funders, and stakeholders to reaffirm the solidarity we have to one another.
Want to join us to celebrate our 20th anniversary? Get your tickets to our 20th anniversary event on Thursday, February 26 here!
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Sommer Foster
Executive Director, Michigan Voices
