Now that I have had a couple days to unwind after the election, I thought I would spend a couple of minutes highlighting what we learned. Before I begin, I want to thank the DNC, Win Virginia and the DPVA. It was an honor working with all 3 organizations. Their efforts led to historic successes in Virginia this last Tuesday.
- Start Early!!! By far the biggest takeaway is that every day matters. Similar to any other type of outreach, a friend-to-friend outreach program takes time to grow. The ideal time to start with VoterCircle is 6-12 months before election day. If you persuade a voter on election day you can get one vote, however, persuading a voter early can lead to thousands of votes if they spread the word and their friends spread the word too.
- Involving Campaign Leadership is Critical. A successful friend-to-friend outreach program has to start at the top. Organizers on ground can help nudge digital canvassers to reach out to their networks, but the identification and recruitment of key leaders has to start at the top. A call from the candidate or campaign chair will be the most effective way to convince local leaders to reach out to their networks on behalf of the campaign.
- Super Influencer Mapping Grows Exponentially. In just a couple days, our Elect Virginia tool was able to identify thousands of super influencers across the state, with the social graph growing exponentially every day!
- Friend-to-Friend Outreach is a Forgotten Art. Fifty years ago most campaigning was done friend-to-friend. However, in recent history cold outreach had become the norm. For a campaign to be successful, they need detailed guidance on how best to roll out a successful friend-to-friend outreach program. Everything from timing, strategy, messaging and resource allocation has to be laid out in a step-by-step process.
- Involve the Democratic Party. Working with the party is critical to success. They are the only entity that has the complete picture on what it takes to be successful. If you are not working with the party, your efforts may be duplicative and wasteful, or even worse, counter productive.
- VAN Integration is Important. Most progressive campaigns leverage NGP VAN to host their data. Getting VAN integration in place was critical to a successful rollout. However, we also learned that we need to make our integration more robust (don’t worry, we are already working on this!)
To learn more about VoterCircle, contact Sangeeth Peruri at sang@votercircle.com or sign up for the VoterCircle newsletter here.
Sangeeth Peruri is the CEO and founder of OutreachCircle, a digital organizing platform that harnesses the power of personal relationships to inspire action and drive change. Formerly president of the Los Altos School District Board of Trustees, he serves on the boards of Orenda Education, Think Together and the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Peninsula. In his spare time, he is a fitness fanatic and competed on American Ninja Warrior 6 (check out his video here).
Sangeeth, you and VC are doing great work, thank you.
Great work this year and good article but I think that you are missing that, early on, you need to work with the local Dem committees (and now Indivisible and Resist groups) to build up enough trust to get those members to get the voter circle started? The tool is scary easy to use but also scary to get most people to use it. You need trusted agents to get up and explain how it works and encourage people to use it. You also need a standard statement that explains what will and will not happen if people use the tool.
Example:
Voter Circle will send an email on your behalf to only people you know, who are eligible to vote in an upcoming election. It will give them only the most critical information of who, when and where to vote. It will not share their information with anyone (we already have it). The point is for the email to come from you and encourage each of your friends to do the same to grow the voter circle and get more people out to vote, specifically in off year elections (like this one).