July 17, 2008 Project Vote 739 8th Street SE Suite 202 Washington, DC 20003 Dear Colleagues, Several

of you have reached out to me in recent weeks to express concerns over the financial integrity of Project Vote. These concerns arise not from any actions on the part of Project Vote, but from our relationship with ACORN, which experienced a theft in 1999-2000 by a long-time employee and the way in which the issue was subsequently handled by its chief executive officer. ACORNs leadership has been in touch with many of you about management changes and other steps they are taking to ensure transparency. Please know that Project Vote is a separate legal entity from ACORN. While our bookkeeping and accounting functions are provided by Citizens Consulting, Inc. (CCI), which has many clients, all Project Vote money is maintained in separate Project Vote accounts and all our expenditures made out of those accounts are subject to applicable legal rules, including the provisions of 4945(f). Project Vote works closely with ACORN and pursues a collective vision of a more just America. The relationship between ACORN and Project Vote began with collaboration on a number of voter registration drives and became much closer in 1994. Before Project Vote founder Sandy Newman left the organization that year, he worked to create a relationship with a non-profit organization that had experience managing national field projects, shared a common vision and conducted ongoing issue advocacy. He identified ACORN. One of ACORNs most senior organizers, Zach Polett. served part-time as Project Votes executive director until June 2008, when the Project Vote board finalized a transition plan proposed by Zach six months earlier to hire me as full-time Executive Director. The partnership between Project Vote and ACORN delivers significant benefits to Project Vote and its donors. It provides Project Vote with cost-effective access to an extensive network of professional organizing and management staff at the state level as well as a direct relationship with community leaders in the low income and minority neighborhoods. Most importantly, our voter registration program becomes an important element in an integrated strategy to spur civic engagement among underrepresented constituencies. Project Vote, for example, contracts with local ACORN offices to conduct surveys of public assistance agencies to assess their compliance with the National Voter Registration Act. In another example, we contract with ACORN in several states to investigate the accuracy of mail to new applicants returned to election officials as undeliverable. And, of course, we are currently operating a national voter registration programthe largest of its kind everthrough a structured Joint Effort Agreement with ACORN. Project Vote develops the systems, supervises the quality control program and manages the data analysis while ACORN hires, trains and
Washington DC Office 739 8th Street SE, Suite 202 Washington, DC 20003 Arkansas Office 2101 South Main Street Little Rock, AR 72206 1-800-546-8683 www.projectvote.org

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supervises the canvassers collecting voter registration applications. Senior managers from both organizations work together daily to review the program, solve problems and make operational decisions. We have in the past used the same bookkeeping and payroll services firm (CCI) and outside auditors that ACORN has used, and teamed up on some other administrative features. Going forward, Project Votes board and I are committed to continuing the aspects of the partnership with ACORN and its other allied organizations that make Project Votes work so effective and help root our plans and programs in the needs of low income communities. We are also making some changes which we believe will increase the organizations effectiveness and ensure that all donors are confident of the way in which Project Vote manages and accounts for our funds. The board of directors and I are taking the following steps: 1. We are hiring new accountants to maintain our books and will be phasing out our contract for bookkeeping services with CCI. We expect to have this completed by the end of November. 2. We are in the process of identifying a new independent auditing firm to conduct our 2008 and subsequent audits. We expect to have this completed by the end of October. 3. We are appointing an audit committee consisting of one board member and two outside members who have experience with grantmaking and financial management. We expect to have this completed by the end of September. 4. We will undertake a series of board trainings by qualified professionals that will help board members fully appreciate their responsibilities as directors of a nonprofit corporation with a 501(c)(3) determination and provide them will the skills to exercise effectively their oversight and governance functions. We also plan to increase the number of directors on our board from four members to seven members. We are beginning this task immediately and expect that action will take place in several steps between now and the end of December. We expect to make considerable progress towards accomplishing this goal in a board meeting tentatively scheduled for midSeptember. For those of you who fund Project Vote, I hope you share my pride in the 800,000 Americans we have already helped register this year and the nearly 2.4 million since 2004. Our board of directors and I are committed to managing Project Vote in an accountable, transparent and effective manner as we pursue programs to ensure all Americans can register to vote, vote and have their votes counted. I look forward to working with you as together we reshape the American electorate. Sincerely, Michael Slater Executive Director