While he was the National Field Organizer for President Barack Obama in 2012, Jeremy Bird realized the power behind community organizing: building relationships. Bird is now the president and co-founder of 270 Strategies, a consulting firm that partners with campaigns, companies, and causes. Since 2013, the firm has particularly championed the integration of digital strategy in grassroots organizing:
In addition to her work as a neuroscientist, Dr. Terry Jo Vetters Bichell is a newly elected official in Davidson County, Tennessee. As the second-most populous county in the state, it was a crucial battleground for Democrats looking to flip seats from red-to-blue during the most recent midterm elections:
Continue reading “#TeamThoughts with Terry Jo Vetters Bichell”
RaCarol Woodard spent most of her day helping folks “get amped about voting” as a Relational and Digital Organizer for the Victory Tennessee campaign in 2018. Using digital apps like Team have made it easier for her to connect potential volunteers to organizers on the ground:
It’s kind of neat that in this day and age, an app can really push people to not only vote, but to volunteer. To be a good organizer, you need to have a good team. You also need to have a good group of volunteers: people that want to do the job. Continue reading “#TeamThoughts with RaCarol Woodard”
The Tuesday Company recently introduced the Team Chat feature as a space for “volunteers to ask logistical questions, learn more about the cause, and connect with the campaign on an interpersonal level.” It is also a critical, go-to channel for staffers to communicate with all their volunteers. With Team Chat, we are seeing a greater focus on building personal relationships between organizers and volunteers that go beyond a single issue or office visit.
For Emily, an organizer with the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party, Team Chat dramatically increased the number of people sending messages to their friends for her campaign. “The feature has made the app a lot more effective for the campaign,” she said. “Our volunteers weren’t really using it until we started messaging them directly over Team Chat.”
Continue reading “Building Relational Community: forging personal connections over Team Chat”
A recent poll from the Pew Research Center found that 62 percent of millennials are “looking forward” to the 2018 midterm elections, with registered voters expressing an even stronger support for Democratic congressional candidates than in the past. At its core, Team was created to meet these volunteers and voters where they are: online. Continue reading “Putting Yourself in Your Volunteer’s Shoes”
Team allows campaigns to build out their digital volunteering function simply and easily, but to most effectively use these volunteers, campaign staff need to be familiar with the Team Dashboard.
Think of the Dashboard as mission control for your digital campaigning outfit. There are two key ways for digital volunteers to help spread your message: by sharing campaign content on their Facebook pages and through direct, friend-to-friend outreach. You can facilitate both from the Campaign Management tab.
If you’re here, you’ve done the hard part. You’ve downloaded Team, created an account, found your friends, and shared an urgent message from one of your Teams to your friends. You’ve found a way to support the campaigns and causes you care about digitally. . But don’t pat yourself on the back just, yet because there is one more essential step: review your outreach with the campaign! Continue reading “Team Tip #3: Reviewing Outreach”
