Efficiency. Reporting. Standardization.

Any one who has ever headed up or been involved in a campaign fundraiser knows that getting people to effectively volunteer, get into place, on the phones, and actively calling is like herding cats.

First, you need to get volunteers to show up at the local HQ. Why? because that’s where the borrowed phones are and the printed out lists. (P.S.–can you spot two problems in that sentence?) Then you need to individually train each volunteer as to how to fill out the tally sheet, make the right comments, and not to skip around, leaving gaps in numbers called.

Now you have to spend 9pm- 11:30pm going through 32 coffee stained, crumpled, tally sheets to get some sort of usable report about activity of your phone volunteers and your district before the candidate calls in the morning. Sound familiar?

Here are the problems that can be solved for–

• Why does any volunteer have to show up at the campaign headquarters? They have phones and computers at home. Use those resources to your advantage.
• Training? This should be done electronically. You should not have to do this for every new batch of volunteers, or, worse yet, every single volunteer. Whatever tool you use should have video instructions, written instructions, and even inserted scripts. Maximize your time by standardizing repetitive activities.
• Let technology determine who your staff contacts. Want them to only call one zip code, but need everyone in that zip code contacted? technology should drive that process. A tally sheet NEVER will.
• Incomplete comments? Not sure if that says contacted or committed? It makes a difference which one, though, so how do you correct it? Standardize the response codes and make comments optional.
• Don’t want to hand 50 names to a volunteer if they are only going to get through 15? your campaign management system should only be serving up one name and number at a time, so there is no excess of voters to cull from 40 different call sheets.

A campaign management system should give you the capability to allow volunteers access to the voter information from their home computer. It should allow them to use their own phone resource-thus reducing campaign costs. It should be self explanatory and fully contained–simplicity in its design and functional in its use.
It should ensure that the only voter names given to a volunteer are ones they are going to work. How is that solved? Through a pull method of distribution that gives the volunteer one voter at a time and ensures the activity and status are clearly marked online.
The system should give you up to the minute reports that don’t have to be analyzed with a microsope or interpeted into English. No more late nights. In fact, the reports hsould be accessed by your entire leadership team wherever they are located-down the street, at home, or 3 time zones away.
Your candidate is running for change and adapting to the 21st century. Your campaign management of phone banks should be doing the same.