Transform legislative campaigns with Actions 2.0 targeting and reporting

04:03 PM Sep 24, 2009

I was happy to have the chance to wander up to Democracy In Action's offices in Dupont Circle in Washington DC for Third Thursday training in September to talk about why my organization, Clean Water Action, has been using the (still-in-beta) Actions 2.0 module for just about year. Two things that go a long way toward helping us achieve our organizational goals are 1) better targeting and 2) detailed reporting.

Better Targeting

Clean Water Action is a national organization but we do a significant percentage of our work on the state legislative level where the relationship between legislators and NGOs is a little bit closer than on the Federal level. With the Advocacy module we got a lot of feedback from legislators that they were getting messages from outside their districts. This was particularly damaging in our work with legislators who were not entirely supportive of legislation or other changes that we were working to get passed.

Better Reporting

Have you seen an Actions 2.0 report? Well, if you haven't, you're going to be amazed, and your organizers/program/campaigns people will be too if they're anything like my folks.

The reporting on Actions 2.0 gives you almost all the features you'd want (I can't very well say all because I'm sure someone will need something I haven't thought of). The report tells you:

1. how many total actions have been taken

2. how many unique supporters took action (because yes, sometimes supporters come back and send the letter or sign the petition again)

E-mail on this action went out on a Wednesday for a California state legislature session that closed on Saturday. Even though this was a small response, precise targeting helped defeat this bill.

3. what the count of messages is per target, whether that's custom targets or legislator or executive targets

Detailed information on which legislators received how many e-mails allowed our campaigners to go to Sacramento armed with hard facts and not just a "feeling" about how our supporters' (the legislators' constituents) thought about this bill.

4. if a message was customized - with the added bonus of being able to view those customizations right in the report screen

A quick glance can tell us if our supporters are just sending what we provided as sample text or if they're getting more involved.

Being able to view the customizations right in the report helps us to identify the level of involvement supporters have with a given issue. It also helps us determine whether or not our forms are being abused for purposes - such as using an action we set up on the Clean Water Restoration Act to lobby Congress on other issues - that don't align with the organization's mission.

But how does Actions 2.0 help us better achieve our organizational goals? In a couple of ways:

It significantly reduces the number of out-of-district messages our state legislator targets are getting. By easing this burden through better district matching, we're able to use the information we have on our online actions more effectively. But that's not all.

Actions 2.0 allows me to maximize the resources we do have in my department because all of its processes are streamlined into one simple interface.

In 2007 Clean Water Action used the Advocacy module to promote passage of the Clean Water Restoration Act. We did four rounds of actions and blast e-mails. The first two rounds were what is called "thank and spank" actions. This required that for each round of "thank and spank" I build a separate action for each group: 2 rounds x (1 Thank you + 1 Spank) means that I built 4 actions.

For 2009 we're now promoting passage of the bill through the Senate and, yes, doing "thank and spank" actions but this time we're using the Actions 2.0 module. We've done two rounds of actions so far and I've built 2 unique actions because the Actions 2.0 module incorporates this type of multi-content target action right into the tool.

While Actions 2.0 is technically still in beta testing and there are still some glitches, and while I know that the fabulous staff at DIA has some improvements planned, the good in Actions 2.0 outweighs the still kinda hinky.

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