Fuse is dedicated to a vision of shared and sustainable prosperity, equity, and justice for all people. Our mission is to achieve progress through government by the people and for the people in Washington state.
We are looking to add two new board members in January, and have decided to open up our recruiting process to grow the pool of candidates.
For your further information about Fuse, below is an overview of our strategic plan and racial equity statement. Here is a description of board member responsibilities.
To express your interest, please fill out this intake form.
The Fuse Governance Committee will review the submissions on a rolling basis. We will interview candidates during November and December and make our decision in early January, and candidates will be notified then. The first board meeting for the new board members will be our annual retreat on Friday, January 31st. We will conduct a board orientation before the retreat.
If you have any questions, please contact board-interest@FuseWashington.org.
About Fuse:
Fuse is dedicated to a vision of shared and sustainable prosperity, equity, and justice for all people. Our mission is to achieve progress through government by the people and for the people in Washington State.
Our strategic goal is to create a more progressive political landscape. We give ordinary people a stronger voice in government and help progressives win important issue and election campaigns more often, in ways that build power for the future.
Fuse is focused on three core capacities:
1) Organizing: We mobilize grassroots activists online and offline; we build councils of local leaders in key areas that drive the state’s balance of power. We also organize coalitions when leveraging collaboration is critical to a campaign’s success and Fuse is strategically well-positioned to do so.
2) Communications: We deliver stories and messages that move people through new media and the news media. We use values-based communications and storytelling to connect with and move our target audiences. We train other progressive groups and leaders to communicate more effectively and provide communications support to targeted campaigns as well.
3) Political troubleshooting: We provide creative problem solving and rapid response for critical political challenges and opportunities. We dedicate resources to overcoming both the short and long term obstacles to progressive success.
We focus our capacity and resources on achieving the following strategic outcomes that we believe are critical elements of a more progressive political landscape in Washington:
1) Strong & effective progressive activist base
We need to build a strong and geographically diverse base of engaged activists that are motivated to fight for progressive issues and candidates. We will organize to build a more powerful and more effective movement of people actively engaged in achieving a more progressive and just Washington state.
2) Motivated, informed, broader progressive electorate
We know that in order to achieve our political goals we must increase the number of people who are registered, turn out to vote, and support progressive values and issue priorities.
Our communications and campaigns are aimed at increasing the number of people who support and vote for progressive causes and candidates. We are seeking not just effective progressive majorities at the state and local level, but a more equitable electoral system. We want voter turnout that reflects the population who is eligible to vote, and elected leaders who reflect the electorate.
3) Accountable leaders that advance progressive priorities
Elected officials and decision makers who provide leadership and push the limits of what’s possible are critical to progressive success. We will hold decision makers’ feet to the fire when they let voters down, and we will back leaders who fuel progress. Our goals are that state and local elected officials prioritize and pass progressive agendas, and to create a culture of leadership and accountability in Washington’s state and local elected bodies
4) Capacity for overcoming the obstacles to progress
There is always a need for political troubleshooting. We make it a priority to provide short-term rapid response capacity and long-term campaign capacity for tackling strategically important political problems.
Racial Justice:
We believe that racial justice is a fundamental progressive value and that fighting for a just future is both a moral and a practical responsibility. We cannot achieve our goals for social and economic justice without challenging both personal and institutional racism in our country.
People of color are disproportionately impacted by physical, political, legal, economic, and environmental oppression on a daily basis. While some progress has been made, our country and state continue to systemically oppress communities of color as a way to maintain power and privilege for white people. We also recognize that people of color who hold overlapping marginalized identities experience the heaviest burden of oppression.
Fuse is dedicated to changing how we do our work internally and to fighting societal systems of oppression externally. As a predominantly white-led, political organization, we recognize that our role in the movement for racial justice is to work within the political system to prevent further harm to people of color while simultaneously working to change the system. This is in pursuit of our larger goal: A future in which race has no bearing on the quality of life or life outcomes in Washington state.
2018 Summary of Successes:
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Fuse registered more than 8,500 voters in critical places across the state.
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With Kim Schrier’s win in the 8th Congressional District, we helped flip a congressional seat that Democrats had never won and that Republicans had won by 20 points for the last several cycles.
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In our state legislature, Fuse played a critical role in flipping seven seats to create effective working majorities in the state House and Senate. Our Votes Count, a coalition campaign that Fuse organizes to target infrequent progressive voters in swing districts, won all ten of our target races with six pickups.
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The infrequent progressive voters we targeted provided the margin of victory in every single pickup, including the 8th Congressional District.
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Our Progressive Voters Guides reached more than 350,000 unique voters across the state.
The newly empowered majorities in the state legislature then passed a wide range of important progressive priorities into law – from climate change and health care to equity, affordable housing, and education.
