Black Voters Matter Says It Will Spend $15 Million in Battleground States

Black Voters Matter, the nonpartisan national organization focused on mobilizing Black Americans to the polls, will spend at least $15 million on voter engagement efforts through Election Day, its co-founder and executive director, Cliff Albright, said.

The group’s plans, which were shared exclusively with The New York Times on Monday, will span nearly a dozen presidential battlegrounds, including Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. They include radio advertisements, bus tours across cities and campuses of historically Black colleges and a vast canvassing operation aimed at increasing Black turnout in swing states and the Deep South. A key goal, Mr. Albright said, is to not only engage voters but get them to engage one another.

With the 2024 race being closely contested, both parties are aiming to increase their support among Black voters, a key constituency that has long been loyal to Democrats but in recent months displayed alarmingly low enthusiasm for re-electing President Biden. Black voters have since been reinvigorated by the candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris, who if elected would be the country’s first Black and Indian woman to be president, but concerns about whether they will turn out en masse to elect her remain.

The mobilization efforts will include some programming focused on Black men, a voting bloc that is more open to supporting former President Donald J. Trump, according to polling and focus group data. While the vast majority of Black men are likely to support Ms. Harris, Mr. Trump has sought to make inroads, which could matter at the margins in close races.

In an interview, Mr. Albright said that the seven weeks before Election Day were critical for voter engagement but that his group was also hoping to galvanize voters to complete mail-in ballots now or head to the polls during early voting periods next month. He also said the group’s work in educating voters about the stakes of the election has grown even more urgent, citing Republicans’ heated anti-immigrant rhetoric and threats toward the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio. The town has been rattled in recent days by bomb threats as former President Donald J. Trump and his allies continue to promote false claims about Haitian residents eating pets.

“When we say that this is the most important election of a lifetime, oftentimes it’s overused in previous years,” he said. “But in some very, very real and concrete ways that is the case this election year.”

His group’s organizing efforts are run largely through the Black Voters Matter Capacity Building Institute, which provides year-round civic engagement training to members of predominantly Black and low-income communities. The group’s work, which is not in support of any political party or candidate, began in August but its outreach and travel will kick into higher gear in the coming weeks, bringing its total investment in this year’s election efforts to $15 million. The next phase of their push to the polls will begin with a multicity concert series starting in Atlanta at the end of September.

Over the last several months, Black organizers have complained of dwindling resources and waning donor interest in their efforts.

That is partly why Black Voters Matter will also team up with other influential organizing bodies in Black communities like Black Greek-letter organizations and the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Mr. Albright said. His group also plans to sponsor billboards in battleground states, along with running text and phone banks.