How might we...
- Base Building: How might we improve our engagement with our members/base to build power?
- How might we develop key member leaders into community organizers?
- How might we get increased acquisition and activation from our 44K members?
- How might we work like a symphony across our internal departments to launch the neighborhood block captain program?
Hypothesis
Rather than being a dinosaur in a rapidly changing environment, WACAN will transform and change across tech, organizing, and leads teams.
Design
This method is a digital analog to the tried-and-true Block Captain/Neighborhood Team Leader/PCO model. WACAN would recruit and train members as Digital Block Captains (we can find a better name) who are in charge of a certain number (100-200?) voters with valid cell phones in their neighborhood.
We would give members a digital “turf” of nearby voters from the Voterfile, and assign them to cultivate relationships, and donations, from voters in their turf using an ongoing p2p text campaign. Rather than using p2p as a discrete “blast” about a particular event or ask, we could approach it as a conversation-starting/relationship-building tool, driven by members, with the end goal being a donation ask.
Metrics
Activation:
- How many Digital Block Captains complete their initial batch of text outreach?
- How many positive responses do we generate?
- How many new members / donors do we generate?
Capacity Calculator: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Vc_Wx4tVdb7ezIJXboEy6AcbCth4v9Z3d1cw40P5zho/edit#gid=0
- Compare to results of more traditional Block Captains
- Did we learn if this is a feasible replacement to membership canvas?
- Organizers focus in on leadership development of member leaders and expand their capacity.
- it will create a stronger affinity and get better results than texting w/out that neighborhood connection.
- it will inform become a viable alternative to door to door canvassing for membership growth and grassroots fundraising.
Learnings
- In order to right size the experiment, made a decision to focus on one neighborhood rather than 3.
- We may consider the power of the P2P texting tool for our canvas team, including fundraising in a future iteration.
- We need a basic way to collect data on our deepbase organizing.
- This experiment reinforced the lack of data infrastructure within the organizing team over the past 5 plus years that the current Organizing team inherited.
- This experiment has required cross department collaboration in historic ways, eg. data, organizing, canvas, comms teams.
- This experiment is creating openings to shine light on patterns and opportunities for change and growth for more cross departmental collaboration and especially the organizing team.