Supermajority, group organizing women around politics, is shutting down

Supermajority, the nonprofit organization focused on mobilizing women voters, is shutting down. 

Founded in 2019 by Cecile Richards, the former president of Planned Parenthood; Ai-jen Poo, co-founder and executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance; and #BlackLivesMatter co-creator Alicia Garza, Supermajority became a key player in the women’s resistance movement. 

Since its founding, Supermajority has contacted more than 20 million women voters, organizing for candidates including Democratic Govs. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Katie Hobbs of Arizona and Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, as well as for then-Vice President Kamala Harris’ unsuccessful presidential bid last year. The group plans to connect its volunteers with other organizations that do grassroots organizing work, starting with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). All 22 current Supermajority employees will be laid off; the organization will be winding down its work in the next several weeks.

Executive director Taylor Salditch said the shuttering of Supermajority reflects how politics and organizing have changed since 2019, becoming more community-focused, with people looking for ways to make a tangible impact beyond protesting. She also said that for many Americans, especially on the left, gender has faded as a focus. 

“I think when you have an administration that is so openly violent toward women, it makes all the sense in the world that women are not claiming that identity and running at it when it’s dangerous to do that,” Salditch said. 

Jess Morales Rocketto, another one of Supermajority’s co-founders, said the group’s founding was prompted by young women seeking a home for their desire to meet others and take action. Helping them organize is the group’s legacy, she said.

“There are organizations that exist now that didn’t exist when we started and there are leaders that exist now that didn’t exist when we started, and we trained some of them. That’s the legacy that we leave behind, and certainly a legacy that Cecile stood for, which feels very present to me in this as well,” Morales Rocketto said. “As organizers like to say, you want to organize yourself out of a job. I don’t think that we solved every problem for women, but I think that we have left something that can continue to build and grow that work.”

She also recognizes how much the current cultural climate has changed — and the impact that culture has on politics. But it doesn’t mean that she thinks the nature of this work has ended. 

“I would love if everyone in America felt like it was cool as shit to be a feminist — that’s what I want to happen. But even in times where it’s not sexy, we still have to organize,” Morales Rocketto said. 

Katherine Grainger, another Supermajority co-founder, also reflected on the “electricity and excitement” that surrounded Supermajority’s founding during the first term of President Donald Trump, whose first election in 2016 sparked huge protests. It yielded, she said, millions of mobilized women. 

“That’s what we wanted. We wanted it to be organic and grow, and for these leaders to start their own things and for it to kind of morph into what it would be. We’re at a point right now where I think a lot of the organizing and the way people are resisting and showing up is quite local, and we have trained millions of female leaders to do that at the local level.” 

By redirecting their nearly 600,000 members into the work of the ACLU and other partner organizations, Grainger said, the group is now able to move these same women into a model of activism that is more community-based than national. 

Deirdre Schifeling, the chief political and advocacy officer of the ACLU and another Supermajority co-founder, praised its work. 

“As Supermajority’s mission enters its next chapter, the ACLU will continue the fight for reproductive freedom, gender equity, and our democracy, strengthened by this movement and our own nationwide network of affiliates to help build durable power for the future,” Schifeling said in a statement. 

Grainger also reflected on the political power of Gen Z women, pointing to their role in helping elect democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York. 

“This is a generation of women who have only had Trump on the ballot their entire electoral lives. This is also a generation that grew up watching what happened when politicians didn’t mobilize to protect them, whether through gun violence, whether it’s the Dobbs decision and rolling back reproductive health protections,” she said. “Certainly right now, we’re seeing that all amplified.”

Last year, Supermajority launched a leadership training program called Cecile’s Leaders to honor Richards, who died of brain cancer last year at age 67. Salditch said she and the organization have felt Richards’ loss. 

“Cecile believed more than anybody that women were the ones that had the power to get it done, and that ethos has never left the organization, will never leave the organization. And long after the domain goes away, there are armies of staff and volunteers and leaders who have adopted that as their own raison d’etre and that won’t change,” she said. 

Most of all, Salditch hopes people don’t forget the people that Supermajority was founded to serve and empower.

“I hope that folks continue to try to imagine new ways to meet the needs of women, particularly young women, in this country because God do we have a far way to go to close the gap between our lived realities and what we really deserve.”