Iowans, Get Wise When You Organize: Put Organizers Database On Your To-Do List

Every political campaign knows you have to identify and track your supporters. The Iowa Democratic Party (IDP) maintains a database of voters with all sorts of information that can be used by candidates to find voters likely to support them, or to target for specific messages likely to appeal to that voter. The IDP spends considerable resources updating and maintaining their database, and therefore campaigns have to pay for access.

If you are involved with a small campaign, whether for an elected office or for a political issue, you need to find and track supporters, too. Most likely you lack the resources to buy an existing database, or there isn’t an appropriate database available. If you are in this situation, I highly recommend Organizers Database for your organizing needs.

Organizers Database (ODB) is a free, customizable database developed for nonprofit organizations by Organizers Collaborative. It is used by hundreds of groups around the country. Personally I use it for our local Democracy for America – Quad Cities group and for precinct organizing. We also use it for Progressive Action for the Common Good (PACG).

You can choose from many different templates, based upon the type of organization, but that is just a starting point. You can easily modify the templates to suit your needs.

For example, PACG is made up of multiple different Issue Forums. The database has an area we modified to be a listing of all the Issue Forums. An individual in the database can be assigned to the appropriate Issue Forum/s. Not only that, we can make that entry a “1” to designate a leader of the Forum, a “2” for someone who regularly attends planning sessions, or a “3” for someone who will come to events or take action even though they don’t help plan.

So let’s say we want to find people to cover shifts at the county fair to collect Handprints for Health Care. Naturally we will send out an email to the entire PACG email list. But as a general rule of organizing, emails are not an effective way to get volunteers (especially if you need 55, like we did for the fair!). So you use ODB to generate a call list of everyone marked as a 1, 2, or 3 in the Health Care Reform Issue Forum and start making calls.

You can easily search the database to find people you want to ask to volunteer, give money, attend an event, or target with a message. For example, you could search for students from Illinois interested in local food issues. You could look for teachers and labor activists living in a particular district to lobby a state legislator on an education bill.

Organizers Database generates call lists, mailing labels, and group emails with ease. You can also keep track of dues or donations and print thank you letters.

The key to effective organizing is having good data. Organizers Database makes the technical part easy. The harder part is making yourself actually enter all that contact information you collected on those sign-in sheets from your last event! If you can get past that part, Organizers Database will help your grassroots group flourish.

As for me, I’m going to add the local Drinking Liberally people to my DFA-QC ODB today, so I can send an email and invite them to Sippi’s on Friday!

Alta Price is a
physician practicing Pathology in Davenport, Iowa. One of
the original Deaniacs, she stays involved with Democracy for America,
Iowa, and the Quad Cities. She advocates for quality, affordable health
care for all, primarily as a volunteer with Progressive Action for
the
Common Good (Health Care Reform Issue Forum). E-Mail Alta Price