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 & N
• Orientation - N
  • Review agenda
  • Introduce network site and training site
• Logging in and getting around - N
• VOCAL-NY case study: working with Powerbase & the VAN for electoral organizing workflows - Tatiana Nobles Lee & Samantha Curatola-Wilbur
  • The Voter Engagement Data Life Cycle - A
  • VOCAL-NY case study: Electoral Organizing - slides
• Importing Contacts - A
  • Demo: import, simple import process - screencast
• Overview of Getting Data in and Out - J
  • Sync vs Import/Export vs Lookups
  • Common sources for electoral organizing
    • The VAN (NGP VAN)
    • PDI (Political Data Inc.)
    • Action Network
    • Cicero
    • Open States
    • Google Civic
  • The CSV file format
• Work Time: complete a contact import - N
  • Practice import files

Day 2: Advanced Imports and Segmenting

1:00 pm Eastern Time (approximately 120 minutes)

• Check in, Review questions, and getting logged in - N
• Segmenting: Custom fields vs Constituent Type vs Tags vs Groups - J
  • Segmenting Options
  • Diagram of Entities
  • Demo adding custom field - tip sheet
• Handling import complications - A
  • But first, fix your spreadsheets! Spreadsheet tips on for importing
    • Exporting zip codes from Powerbase to excel and handling leading zeros
  • Create custom fields needed to accept your data
  • Handling the dreaded fields with checkboxes or multiple select options
  • Dealing with errors
  • Putting imported contacts into a group
• How to export your data - N
  • Exporting Contacts - CiviCRM documentation
  • Exporting Contribution Records - tip sheet
  • Exporting Memberships - CiviCRM documentation
• Search Kit - J
  • Demo: Create phone list of donors or prospective donors, showing biggest donation, last donation date
  • Practice time
  • How to use Search Kit tip sheet and screen cast

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 - N
• Evaluation - N
• Dedupe rules - screen cast - A
  • What, exactly, is a duplicate? (computers are kinda dumb)
  • General versus Unsupervised versus Supervised
  • Tip Sheet and screen cast: Overview on Strategies around Duplicate Contacts and Merging
• Petitions - J
  • Basic petitions
  • Target an elected official
  • Dynamically target an elected official
  • Practice time
  • Working with petitions - tip sheet and screen cast
• Walk lists and Phone banks - A
  • What's the difference?
  • Creating phonebanks - tip sheet and screen cast
  • Creating walk lists (similar process to creating phonebanks) - see CiviCRM documentation
• 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