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County Charters

Bring the League to your county.

Ten members and a willing organizer. That’s the whole requirement.

How a charter happens

Six steps, and none of them are supposed to be hard.

  1. Ten members. Ten people in one county who have joined the League. They don’t have to agree about anything except that a ballot should have more than one name on it. Realistically this is a dinner table, a library meeting room, a group chat, and two weeks.
  2. Nominate your officers. Your ten choose a Chapter Chair, a Vice Chair, a Secretary, and a Treasurer. Nominations come from your county, not from us. Nominate county leaders →
  3. Apply. One form. County, member roster, nominated officers, and a one-paragraph answer to “why this county.”
  4. Board review. The national board reviews at its next regular meeting — we don’t make you wait for a special session. We’re looking for three things: ten real members, officers willing to sign the nonpartisanship standard, and no conflict with an existing chapter’s territory.
  5. Sign the charter. Your chapter adopts the standard bylaws, runs the three-tier program, uses the name under license, and remits a share of dues.
  6. Get the kit and go. Chapter-in-a-box arrives: bylaws, event scripts, invitation templates, the voter guide format, the filing-week checklist, county records request letters, and press release templates. You are not starting from a blank page.

What a chapter agrees to

  • Adopt the standard bylaws. Uniform across every chapter. This is what lets one national organization cover every chapter with one insurance policy, one EIN, and one federal filing.
  • Run the three-tier program. Monthly meet-and-greets, quarterly workshops, and the annual Empty Ballot List and filing-week push. How you run them is yours. That you run them is the deal.
  • Hold the nonpartisan line — absolutely, visibly, and in writing. Charters are revocable for cause, and nonpartisanship violations are named explicitly as cause.
  • Remit a dues share. Suggested split: the chapter keeps 60%, national keeps 40%.
  • Report quarterly. Events held, members added, workshop attendance, and the filing-week count in May.

What a chapter does not have to do

  • Incorporate. Chapters are units of the national corporation, not separate legal entities. No nonprofit to form, no EIN, no IRS return, no insurance to buy. Ten chapters, one Form 990.
  • Fundraise to survive. A chapter can run its full annual program on almost nothing. Rooms are free or cheap; printing is the main cost.
  • Invent anything. The kit contains every document you’ll need for the first full year.
  • Be experienced. Most chapter chairs will never have run an organization before. The kit assumes that.

What if my county already has a chapter?

Join it. See chartered counties → If it’s dormant, tell us — reviving a chapter is easier than starting one, and we’d rather hand you an existing charter than draw a new line on the map.

What if I’m not in Washington?

Apply anyway. Our sequence is Washington first, then neighboring states, then anywhere members ask. But that sequence was written to be broken by anyone who shows up with ten members and an organizer. The out-of-state counties we charter first will be the ones that ask first — not the ones we picked on a map.

Idaho, Oregon, Montana, Alaska, anywhere else — if you have ten people, apply. We’ll work out the state-specific filing rules with you. The program model doesn’t change across state lines; only the deadlines and the fee tables do.

Apply for a county charter Talk to someone first