Our Mission and Roles
The League of Women Voters is a nonpartisan political organization encouraging the informed and active participation of citizens in government. It influences public policy through education and advocacy. We never support or oppose any political party or candidate.
The League of Women Voters has two separate and distinct roles.
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Voters Service/Citizen Education: we present unbiased nonpartisan information about elections, the voting process, and issues.
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Action/Advocacy: we are also nonpartisan, but, after study, we use our positions to advocate for or against particular policies in the public interest.
To conduct our voter service and citizen education activities, we use funds from the League of Women Voters of the Lansing Area Education Fund, which is a 501(c)(3) corporation, a nonprofit educational organization. The League of Women Voters, a membership organization, conducts action and advocacy and is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) corporation.
Our Vision, Beliefs, and Intentions guide our activities.
DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION
The League of Women Voters is emphasizing its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion through policy and education. Our local League enthusiastically supports this initiative.
The official policy of the national League follows:
LWV is an organization fully committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion in principle and in practice. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are central to the organization’s current and future success in engaging all individuals, households, communities, and policy makers in creating a more perfect democracy.
There shall be no barriers to full participation in this organization on the basis of gender, gender identity, ethnicity, race, native or indigenous origin, age, generation, sexual orientation, culture, religion, belief system, marital status, parental status, socioeconomic status, language, accent, ability status, mental health, educational level or background, geography, nationality, work style, work experience, job role function, thinking style, personality type, physical appearance, political perspective or affiliation and/or any other characteristic that can be identified as recognizing or illustrating diversity.
In other words as League members we hope to demonstrate a culture of inclusion. That means looking at personal and organizational implicit bias. It means being open to everyone. It means a commitment to dialogue over debate. It means we are willing to make an effort to measure up to our commitment.
Our local membership is proud to join with the national League in a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.
