DFA-Link: An Underutilized Tool (Setting up an Account)

By Alta Price

Disclaimer – I don’t consider myself an expert in DFA-Link use. I am, however, starting to understand how useful it could be for online organizing since using it for the DFA Training Academy.

To make full use of DFA-Link, you need to create an account. There is a box on this page waaaayyyy down the right side with a link to Blog for America, or blogforamerica.com. I have Blog for America as one of my set of home pages, but you can just click or type in blogforamerica.com. Once you get there, click on DFA-Link.

The next part, I’m not sure what will happen because I created my account a long time ago. But you will have to give at least a valid email address and password, and quite possibly your name and address. You will be sharing this information with Democracy for America, and most likely get on their email list. However, they are very careful not to “burn” their list (translation – cause people to unsubscribe by sending too much mail) and I don’t think you will regret it. In fact, I use my “real” email address for DFA rather than the alternative “junk mail” address I use for most progressive groups. Also, I think DFA is a great organization and you should sign up anyway! (Just my $.02 worth.) When you log in you’ll need your email address and password. Keep your password handy, because you’ll have to sign in once each week for security purposes.

It took me the longest time to figure out what to do with DFA-Link once I was there. The basic idea: Use the search tool by entering your zip code and looking for groups, events, campaigns, or people. Once you find a group, event, or campaign that interests you, sign yourself up. Once you find a person, you can send them a message through DFA-Link without ever knowing their email address or sharing yours. We’ll go through the details of how to use each of these functions in subsequent tutorials!