At Levi Strauss & Co., we’ve long held a commitment to fostering a culture of civic engagement among our employees, consumers and communities. Our ongoing efforts serve as a source of pride for our employees, inspiring many over the years to be poll workers, register voters at concerts and festivals, and rally those around them to use their voice.
This year is no exception. While continuing to support our employees’ desire — and right — to take part in local and national elections, LS&Co. expanded on our civic efforts in the U.S. earlier this year by partnering with peers at Lyft and Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios to launch the Community College Commitment. The commitment — a nonpartisan business community effort with the goal of turning out 500,000 community college voters by 2028 — brings together leading American brands to ensure more community college students have the resources and tools they need to fully participate in our democracy. In addition to the founding brands, the Community College Commitment now also includes Lime, Snap Inc., Spotify, TelevisaUnivision and Tony’s Chocolonely.
This commitment is on full display as we proudly collaborate with corporate partners and civic engagement nonprofits to drive voter registration and education on community college campuses across the country for National Voter Registration Day (NVRD).
Through nonprofit partners Pizza to the Polls (PTTP), National Voter Registration Day and Students Learn Students Vote, LS&Co. is supporting NVRD activations at 99 community college campuses across 37 states. At four community college campuses in Miami, for example, LS&Co. is showing up with free pizza and working with on-the-ground partners Engage Miami and VoteRiders in an effort to draw students to exciting activations, register new voters and educate students on how to engage this election.
The Community College Commitment is the latest example of our work to reduce obstacles to civic participation and advance voting rights among employees, consumers and communities — but it’s by no means the only one. This year, LS&Co. is also supporting civic engagement efforts through:
- Employee engagement: Through a key partnership with BallotReady, we provide nonpartisan information to employees about how to register, where to learn about what’s on their ballot and the deadlines to vote wherever they live. Employees are also encouraged to volunteer to register their friends and neighbors in their own communities through our engagement with HeadCount.
- Corporate action: Time to Vote, a partnership launched in 2018 by LS&Co. in collaboration with Patagonia and PayPal, has helped more than 2,000 companies ensure millions of hourly workers don’t have to choose between voting and a paycheck by guaranteeing paid time off to vote.
- Grantmaking: We support nonpartisan efforts across the country to drive voter turnout through grantmaking.
- Levi’s® and Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios (MTV) have partnered with the Students Learn Students Vote (SLSV) Coalition, the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge (ALL IN) and Good Trouble Collaborative to drive a concert competition among community college campuses, with the winning campus getting a live concert on Vote Early Day.
- The Levi Strauss Foundation works to establish and protect a strong and inclusive democracy through grantmaking efforts across the country. In 2023, the foundation provided over $2 million to partners supporting democracy, with plans to increase funding for democracy to $2.5 million in 2024. These grants enable nonprofits like New Disabled South and VoteRiders to promote voter engagement, particularly among historically disenfranchised Americans.
“Democracy only works when everyone is given the opportunity to use their voice and vote,” said Alexis Bechtol, director of Community Affairs at LS&Co. “This belief, coupled with our long-held commitment to equality, drives our work on civic engagement to increase access to the ballot box and voter turnout each election cycle.”
