Electoral Organizing

Description

Have you noticed that nobody says "There's no real difference between Democrats and Republicans" anymore? Electoral organizing is a critical part of movement organizing and the stakes get higher every year. Come learn how to build walk and phone lists, import and export to and from external sources like the VAN, integrate online and offline lists and more as we explore how to use Powerbase to make your electoral organizing work more effective.

Prerequisite: Comfortable creating and using groups.

Agenda

Training materials, including login information on the training database will be sent to everyone who is registered.

Day 1: Importing Contacts

1:00 pm Eastern Time (approximately 120 minutes)

• Community Agreements and introductions - Data breaches - A & J
• Orientation - N
  • Review agenda
  • Introduce network site and training site
• Logging in and getting around - J
• Overview of Getting Data in and Out:
  • Sync vs Import/Export
  • The CSV file format
  • Common sources for electoral organizing
    • The Van
    • Cicero
• Importing Contacts - A
  • Demo: import, and oh no! import errors and duplicates - screencast
    • Examining your data in a spread sheet program first
    • Import contact screens: choosing your settings, selecting your fields
    • Adding imported contacts to a group...why?
• Work Time: complete a contact import - N
  • Practice import files

Day 2: Advanced Imports & Batch Updating

1:00 pm Eastern Time (approximately 120 minutes)

• Check in, Review questions, and getting logged in - N
• Demo: Batch Enter Contributions or Memberships - screen cast - N
• Handling import complications
  • But first, fix your spreadsheets! Spreadsheet tips on for importing - A
    • Exporting zip codes from Powerbase to excel and handling leading zeros
  • Create custom fields needed to accept your data - see tip sheet - A
  • Handling the dreaded fields with checkboxes or multiple select options - A
• Dedupe rules - screen cast - A
  • What, exactly, is a duplicate? (computers are kinda dumb)
  • General versus Unsupervised versus Supervised
  • Tip Sheet: Overview on Strategies around Duplicate Contacts and Merging
• How to export your data

Day 3: Walk Lists, Petitions and other electoral strategies

1:00 pm Eastern Time (approximately 120 minutes)

• How are things going? Agenda overview and getting logged in - J/N
• Evaluation - N
• Walk lists and Phone banks
  • What's the difference?
  • Creating walk lists
  • Creating phone banks
• Petitions
  • Basic petitions
  • Target an elected official
  • Dynamically target an elected official
• Closing questions - N

Additional Resources

• Basic Import of Contact Info - Trainer CSV with Dupe (Anne Irving & Winfrey Bentley)
• Import participants and register for event - Trainer CSV file