Activism 101: How To Host Your Own Campus ShowOUT!

By Taylor Kuether
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This post is part of the Youth ShowOUT campaign, a collaboration between the Feminist Majority Foundation’s CHOICES Feminist Campus Leadership Program, Advocates for Youth, and Planned Parenthood Foundation of America’s Planned Parenthood Generation campaign. To learn more about the campaign, check out our launch post.


It’s almost November, y’all! Are you ready to ShowOUT? I hope so, because from October 13 to 17, we’re double-dog daring you to!

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As part of the Youth ShowOUT Week of Action, we’re challenging you and your feminist group to get as many students on your campus to sign the Youth Show OUT pledge as you can! For the groups who go after it with all their hearts, there’s some sweet prizes to be won, too!

The student group that gathers the most pledges will will free admission to our 12th annual National Young Feminist Leadership Conference – an annual gathering of feminist activists from across the country to sharpen their organizing skills, increase the power of their activism, and meet other awesome, like-minded folks. The runner-up group will have the chance to sit down to lunch with the Feminist Campus Team during the conference and pick our brains (or just tell us awesome stories), and the grouyp that trails them will be able to read feminist news on-the-go and at home with a set of Ms. magazine digital subscriptions for the next year! Your chances to win double if your group is on social media, because whoever posts the most photos with their Youth ShowOUT swag to Instagram, Twitter, and/or Facebook with the tags #ShowOUT and #GOHV (that’s Get Out Her Vote!) will also win free year-long digital subscriptions to Ms.!

So, you’re like totally excited now, right. We thought so.

Here’s how to make it happen:

  1. First, find a location on your campus to table and engage with students. We recommend the student union, the campus mall/quad, or any place where many students congregate or pass through. Book the space through your university for any date and time between Oct. 13-17.
  2. Learn the voting laws in your state (we made it easy – just check out our Voting Information by state and our Ballot Measure guides!) and the polling places in your city and on your campus so you can answer students’ questions. You can put this information in a Powerpoint slideshow, on a flyer, etc. Get creative!
  3. Promote, promote, promote! Advertise on Facebook, in official school newsletters, by postering around campus, or via in-class announcements. Invite friends, classmates, and everyone else! Contact your campus newspaper or bring on other organizations as co-sponsors to spread the word and broaden your audience.
  4. Before the event, pick a playlist to put on in the background (check out Feminist Campus’ 8tracks playlists!) and read over our GOHV toolkit for some quick facts and talking points about student voting!
  5. At the event or tabling time, put Youth Show OUT materials on the table as well as voter pledge cards and the voter pledge sign-up sheet for students to sign!
  6. At the end of the week, scan and email the sign-up sheets to [email protected] and include the number of pledge cards that were filled out. Remember, the groups that get the most sign-ups and pledge cards win the prizes!
  7. Don’t forget to TAKE PICTURES! You can do this both at the event and all week long! Simply tag them with both #ShowOUT and #GOHV and they’ll be counted in the social media contest!

Before you start planning, please email the team to let us know you’re participating! To ShowOUT with us, we’ve got to get you tee shirts, stickers, buttons, and pledge cards! Simply email [email protected] with the address to which we should send those materials to get in on the action. We NEED to hear from you by October 8 if you want to compete!

Let’s do more than turn out this year. Let’s ShowOUT!

By Taylor Kuether

Taylor is a journalist, feminist, cat enthusiast, and proud Wisconsin native. She works for Feminist Majority Foundation as the Campus Communications Associate. Her two favorite things besides her cat, Emma, are coffee and art museums.

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