Uber

The Challenge

Increase voter turnout through a nonpartisan campaign that educated and empowered Uber’s consumers, earners, and employees, while removing barriers to voting.

The Impact

Uber ran its largest civic engagement program in the company’s history, reaching tens of millions of consumers, earners, and employees in-app, by email, and on its social media platforms during the 2020 election cycle.

Services

Corporate Social Responsibility
Program Design
Program Impact Evaluation
Partnership Recruitment and Management
Communications Strategy
Social Media Content Strategy

51K

voter registration applications (via TurboVote)

449K

people helped to find their polling place or vote early

858K

food truck snacks delivered to polling locations (via Pizza to the Polls)

Summary

In 2020, Uber wanted to scale its civic engagement campaign and ensure the company drove real, measurable impact on voter turnout. It wanted to provide its consumers and earners with new in-app ways to register to vote, get an absentee ballot, find an early voting site, and get to their polling place.

Uber played a leadership role in the business community by responding to emerging needs caused by COVID-19. It quickly adapted its program to focus on educating consumers and earners about their options to vote early or by mail in the middle of the pandemic. Uber was a founding member of Power the Polls, an initiative to recruit a new generation of poll workers during an election when many elderly volunteers were not able to participate. Additionally, Uber Eats was the first company to respond to the long voting lines during the 2020 primary elections by launching a program to feed people at polling places with lines.

Impactual supported the Uber team to develop a deeply integrated program that leveraged the company’s core products, social media assets, partners, and leadership to achieve its goals. A key to the program’s success was the collaboration across functional teams and early company-wide promotion. The campaign engaged early with employees through Slack channels, regular reports, fireside chats, events with employee resource groups, and by sharing volunteer opportunities.