More Than a Vote, a nonprofit organization founded by LeBron James in 2020, is rebooting this fall with a new focus on women’s issues and reproductive rights.
Nneka Ogwumike, a nine-time W.N.B.A. All-Star with the Seattle Storm and president of the players union, will take over James’s role in leading the organization, and has recruited a group of female athletes to her cause.
“It’s more than just abortion,” Ogwumike said in an interview. “It’s all about educating people about all the different roles that exist in society that support and protect the freedoms of women when it comes to family planning, I.V.F., birth control, everything. There’s just a lot that’s at stake.”
More Than a Vote was founded when, motivated by nationwide protest movements after the killing by police of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, athletes like James said they were starting to think more deeply about how they could use their platforms.
The organization was focused on protecting voting access for Black voters, including collaborating with NAACP Legal Defense Fund on a multimillion-dollar initiative to recruit poll workers. It partnered with teams to open sports arenas and stadiums as polling locations and created television ads and digital content designed to encourage voting. The organization raised about $4.2 million in 2020, twice the amount it expected. However, it has been essentially dormant for the past few years.
Ogwumike, who volunteered as a poll worker in 2020, began speaking with James this year. At that point, James and his associates had been discussing the prominence of discussions about reproductive rights, as well as the increased attention around women’s sports. (Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to make abortion rights a focus of her campaign against former President Donald J. Trump.)
“I started More Than a Vote to give athletes a place to educate themselves and get active authentically to who we are,” James said in an email. “It’s only right that this election be about women athletes. We’re all following their lead right now and Nneka is the perfect person for this election. I’m excited to support her vision.”
The group has tapped Stephanie Schriock as its 2024 senior campaign adviser. Schriock was the president of Emily’s List, an organization that works to elect female Democrats who support abortion rights, from 2010 until 2021, a year before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The ruling eliminated the constitutional right to abortion and opened the door for states to restrict access to abortions or ban the procedure. In some states, it has also affected access to fertility treatments, like in vitro fertilization.
Schriock said More Than a Vote had begun working with athletes on how to speak about issues related to reproductive rights. It has hired content creators and hopes to make digital advertisements with female athletes.
“They’re playing ball in all kinds of states with all different rules and all different laws,” Schriock said in an interview. “And I think that’s why this is such a particularly strong set of voices to have.”
In its first two fiscal years, the organization spent more than $4.2 million, which was double what it expected to do. It doesn’t plan on extensive fund-raising in this round either, rather focusing on using the influence of the players involved.
W.N.B.A. players were very politically engaged during the last presidential election cycle. Perhaps most prominently, members of the Atlanta Dream campaigned for Raphael Warnock, a Democrat who was running for a U.S. Senate seat from Georgia against Kelly Loeffler, the incumbent who was the owner of the Dream at the time.
So far this year, they have been less active, though Ogwumike expects that to change, particularly now that the Olympics have concluded.
“I think it’s important to understand, while we’re playing our platform is probably the largest,” Ogwumike said.
The group she has recruited for More Than a Vote includes the W.N.B.A. players Brittney Griner, Breanna Stewart, A’ja Wilson, Cameron Brink, Chelsea Gray, Naz Hillmon, Jewell Loyd, Jordin Canada and Allisha Gray. Former W.N.B.A. greats Lisa Leslie and Sheryl Swoopes are also involved, as is the college player Kiki Rice and Madison Hammond, who plays in the National Women’s Soccer League.
