Today we’re interviewing Dennis Raj, who’ll be leading Efficient, Effective, Affordable: How to Run a Winning Campaign with New Technology.

NN13 Training Session

Efficient, Effective, Affordable: How to Run a Winning Campaign with New Technology
Your next local campaign can have the bite of the big dogs on a budget anyone can afford. Advances in technology mean small investments net a big return. The availability of detailed digital voter data, combined with call-center capabilities on a budget, means campaigns can reach the voters they need more quickly and for less money. But in a ground campaign with limited financial resources, how do you know what technology is worth investing in? What moves the dial?

We won an uphill battle to raise the minimum wage in San Jose by a 60 to 40 percent vote, and we did it with effective use of technology. We’ll cover on-screen dialing, Firefox plug-ins, the online voter file and predictive dialing systems.

Interview

Q: Tell us about your campaign experience.

A: I didn’t start in traditional campaigns. My first endeavor was working on an effort to create grassroots support in red districts for a compromise at the height of the budget woes in Sacramento. I didn’t really even get the campaign bug until I moved to the California Democratic Party in 2010. I got a chance to participate in a statewide coordinated effort to elect Democrats, which really opened my eyes to the need for effective, well-run campaign offices. It also taught me that small increases in efficiency open up large gains in the aggregate. However, it wasn’t until I moved to the South Bay Labor Council that I really got a chance to work on a team that was already at the forefront of the technology spectrum for campaigns.

Q: In your opinion, can a limited budget really be overcome with the right technology?

A: Absolutely, no doubt.

Obviously, if you can’t pay to feed your volunteers or keep the lights on, you campaign is in dire straights and no amount of technology — no matter how wisely chosen — can overcome that. Once you have the basic funds necessary to run a decent operation, I’d argue that the best use of money is to invest in technology. Laptops won’t replace at least one round of campaign mail, but technology always trumps another round of lawn signs.

Q: What is the most important tool campaigners on a budget should consider?

A: Computers; even if they are old and on their way to be recycled. I’m amazed by the number of campaigns that are digital everywhere except in their field operations. One day, we’ll look back at paper lists just like the old school field hacks look back at index cards pinned to the wall. The fact that many people won’t get that reference validates my point.

Q: Why should folks attend your session at Netroots Nation?

A: The good people of Netroots Nation should attend my session because they are progressive, strongly liberal and willing to put in work all over the country. Netroots attendees are the ones in the trenches during campaigns, and I’m hoping that I can give them a new way to think about using technology to improve their odds of winning. Honestly though, I’m hoping open dialogue about tips and techniques we all use will help us all be better at winning campaigns for progressive causes and candidates. I’m looking forward to someone who does this differently asking a question that starts with “well, on my last campaign we did …” that sparks a group discussion where we all leave the panel with something new to try.

To attend this training, or one of the 39 others at Netroots Nation 2013 in San Jose, register now.

As we gear up for Netroots Nation 2013, we’re taking a closer look at some of the convention’s hottest training sessions. We’re interviewing the trainers and taking you inside some of online activism’s most popular and elusive topics.

Today we’re interviewing Nicole Rivera, who’ll be leading Introduction to Legislative Advocacy: How to Effectively Lobby Your Elected Leaders.

NN13 Training Session

Introduction to Legislative Advocacy: How to Effectively Lobby Your Elected Leaders
Learn tips for effective advocacy from the perspective of a past elected official staff member and successful grassroots organizers. The focus of this training session will be on Congressional and State elected official offices. Organizers will  teach tips about meeting with staff members at the local District office and staff members working on Capitol Hill. Participants will learn how to effectively advocate their position and how to build a successful symbiotic relationship with any elected official.

Interview

Q: Tell us about your experience with legislative advocacy.

A: I’ve been on both sides of the table as an activist, a lobbyist and as a representative for an elected officer. I spent five years in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office and worked with constituents on key issues such as housing, labor, education and veterans. I’ve taken hundred’s of meetings and I have seen both the best and the worst preparation.

Q: In your opinion, what are some of the most common mistakes that organizers make when lobbying elected leaders?

A: Lack of preparation, not being clear about what you are asking for or knowing what you are asking for, not saying thank you for the big and the small.

Q: What is the most important thing for organizers to keep in mind when lobbying?

A: When you’re going to lobby an elected official, participants and organizers need to always think about how to effectively advocate their position and at the same time how to build a successful symbiotic relationship with the elected official and their staff. The difference between doing that is similar to having a friend ask you for a favor and having a stranger ask you for a favor. The focus of this panel training session will be on Congressional and State elected official offices. Organizers will teach tips about meeting with staff members at the local District Office’s and staff members working on Capitol Hill and in the “Building”.

Q: Why should folks attend your session at Netroots Nation, and how can they connect with you?

A: Knowing how the office of an elected official operates is key to being an effective advocate. I will share insider tips gleaned from hundreds of meetings taken and given on both sides of the table. Attendees can connect with me @nicthebrick.

To attend this training, or one of the 39 others at Netroots Nation 2013 in San Jose, register now.

As we gear up for Netroots Nation 2013, we’re taking a closer look at some of the convention’s hottest training sessions. We’re interviewing the trainers and taking you inside some of online activism’s most popular and elusive topics.

Today we’re interviewing Chris Cassidy, who’ll be leading Kill the Press Release: Pitching Media in a New Media World.

NN13 Training Session

Kill the Press Release: Pitching Media in a New Media World
The press release was born in 1906, before the internet, mobile phones or television and just 10 years after the invention of radio. Since its birth, we’ve revolutionized the way we communicate. With everyone except media, that is. In 2013, most PR professionals rely on an expensive media database to produce their overly broad pitch lists, then blast that list with a one-size-fits-all message. This training will provide an overview on how to set goals, develop a pitch list without an expensive database and craft pitches that stand out in inboxes.

Interview

Q: Tell us about your media experience.

I jumped into media relations during law school, helping out a workforce housing campaign in San Francisco. Instead of spending my summer after law school studying for the bar exam, I worked as communications director for the 2008 campaign against an abortion ban in South Dakota. Since then, I’ve consulted on media relations for non-profits, progressive organizations and tech companies, and written for outlets like the American Prospect and Ms. Magazine.

Q: In your opinion, why is sending out a one-size fits all press release so problematic?

The press release is an ancient relic that may be more appropriate for the dustbin of history than a journalist’s crowded inbox. It was invented in 1906, when radios were brand new and there were only about 3 million telephones in the entire United States. Over 100 years later, we have unprecedented access to massive amounts of information and data. This permits organizations to tailor their communications, like online ads and emails, so that they use messages most likely to earn and keep the attention of their audience.

It’s bad enough to pitch a reporter with a one-size-fits-all message in a personally-tailored world. Beyond that, though, press releases are boring. They’re boring to write and they’re boring to read. Why torment the journalists you hope to engage with a formulaic message? In my mind, there is no excuse for not putting in the effort to pitch reporters with a message that reflects knowledge of their recent work and a respect for the many demands on their time and divided attention.

Q: What is the most important thing for folks to keep in mind when pitching media?

In thinking about public relations, many people seem to forget that journalists are not just a conduit to a broader audience. Journalists are people too — people with personal interests, bosses, deadlines, pet peeves and lots of other people vying for their attention.

There needs to be a golden rule of PR: Treat journalists as you wish to be treated. I’m not a huge fan of one-size-fits-all messages that don’t reflect an appreciation for my interests. I’m also not a big fan of receiving cold calls either. So why would I send journalists a press release, then follow-up with phone calls? To me, that sounds annoying and unimaginative.

Q: Why should folks attend your session at Netroots Nation, and how can they connect with you?

It’s going to ruffle some feathers, but the standard approach to public relations is way-hay-hay-haaay overdue for some changes. PR pros have used the same old formula for so long that it’s hard for most of us to imagine doing things any other way. In my years running Hustle Labs, I’ve helped dozens of organizations earn media coverage. I’ve handled public launches for companies, crafted the strategy for media regularly incorporating data from the world’s largest search engine, released microsites that received hundreds of thousands of hits, and earned extensive coverage of reports, videos, infographics and other content. And I’ve done it all writing fewer press releases than most PR professionals write in a single week.

I want to bring together people who are interested in thinking about a new approach to PR — an approach that follows the golden rule and treats journalists like the busy people that they are. I’m excited to share some of my guerrilla PR secrets publicly for the first time, and grateful to Netroots Nation for inviting me back to train the best and brightest minds in our movement.

Like any good fan of media, I’m easy to find where journalists are: Twitter. I tweet personally as @CitizenCassidy and professionally as @hustleis (which is also on Facebook here).

To attend this training, or one of the 39 others at Netroots Nation 2013 in San Jose, register now.

Today we’re interviewing Liz Banse, who’ll be leading Seeing is Believing: Visual Storytelling Best Practices.

NN13 Training Session

Seeing is Believing: Visual Storytelling Best Practices
You’ve heard countless times that a picture is worth a thousand words. In the mysterious inner world of the brain, pictures actually do take primacy over words. But how often have you actually taken that knowledge and opted for a picture instead of a paragraph to create powerful messages for your organization? Perhaps it’s time to shift from thinking “how can I say this best?” to “how can I show this best?” Resource Media’s Liz Banse will share the latest research about how the brain processes images and how you can apply that knowledge to your work. She’ll also share case studies featuring extraordinary visual storytelling and give you 10 tips for making your communications more visual and effective.

Interview

Q: How did you get involved in visual storytelling?

A: A few years ago, Resource Media’s staff were listening to a talk by a corporate branding consultant. He shared with us some anecdotes about the role of images in customer perceptions of products. No surprises there. The a-ha moment came, however, when we started talking about whether our nonprofit partners were using pictures to shape their brand image or to sell their organization to supporters or policy proposals to policy makers like Madison Avenue did for corporations and their products. Were there Mad Men amongst us? Yes, there were, but there could be more! We knew far too many nonprofits that started their persuasion efforts in the opposite fashion from corporations – with words. Oh, my, we sweat over every word choice, don’t we? But then we spend only a fraction of that time on finding a picture to go with our narrative, almost as an afterthought. This is the exact opposite way that our brains process information – the visual first, the verbal second.

I remember asking this guy whether there was a book I could read or a website I could peruse to learn everything I could about visual communications. As it turned out, there was no one stop shop, especially for cause communications. Just a tidbit here and a tidbit there and tons of people to interview. So, I ended up compiling the research and distilling it down to a few strategic recommendations that anyone in our community could apply to their work immediately. Much of the secret sauce can be found in Resource Media’s Seeing is Believing guide and I’ll share more in the NN13 workshop.

The good news for all of you who, like me, don’t self-identify as a professional photographer, the artistic type, a graphic designer or a film-maker is that you don’t have to be one to be a good visual storyteller. It is more science than art, not more art than science. You simply have to know visual communications strategy basics and how people’s brains process information and make decisions.

Q: In your opinion, why is it important to tell stories visually?

A: The timing could not be better for progressives to embrace the art of visual storytelling. As the traditional media world craters, nonprofits and other independent voices are taking on a growing role as a content provider. Images and video are no longer just stray add-ons; multimedia is avidly consumed and is at the heart of some of the most popular online news content.

Recent discoveries in brain science provide clues to why people respond so well to this type of communication vehicle. The result is that more people will click here, share there, engage, engage, and engage some more. The need to tell stories in new, more visual ways is only increasing. Our guess is that your metrics are telling you to “feed this beast!” So, if you are working in the field of cause communications, mastering the visual is incredibly important.

Q: What are the two most important things to keep in mind when telling a story visually?

A: 1) Tap into a certain set of human emotions. I will share some secrets from the subconscious that any of us who aren’t neuroscientists can do to influence people’s decisions.

2) The most beautiful photos are not the most effective photos. The same is true for video. I’ll tell you why at NN13…

Q: Why should folks attend your session at Netroots Nation, and how can they connect with you?

A: Have you ever bought things you wanted, but didn’t really need? Just thank the advertising execs from Madison Avenue. It’s high time that progressives shape-shift into Mad Men and Women and get more fellow Americans who need to be a part of our movement to want to be part of our movement. When we are at the top of our game in telling stories – with a visual punch – we are bringing in new, passionate supporters. I’m looking forward to sharing some of the best ideas I have come across from across our network and having session attendees share their ideas with the group.

I look forward to connecting with fellow NN13 attendees via Twitter, @LizBanse. When my tweets involve visual communications I will often use the hashtag #vizcom. Please join me in using that hashtag, so we can share more ideas via Twitter long after NN13. My colleagues and I are blogging on visual storytelling at visualstorylab.org as well. We welcome guest blogs from you! If you are interested in sharing your best practices or lessons learned around visual communications, please email us at vizcom@resource-media.org. Thanks and see you in San Jose!

To attend this training, or one of the 39 others at Netroots Nation 2013 in San Jose, register now.

They’ve got a handful of clients around the world doing some interesting work that showcase the platform. 38 Degrees is based in the UK and it’s a multi-issue advocacy group similar to MoveOn.org. You can see their campaign site here. Australia’s GetUp! is using the platform in a similar way. And here in the US Occupy our Homes is using it to organize around saving specific homes.

This kind of organizing isn’t right for every organization. You really need to have a grassroots member base and you need to have organizers on staff capable of working on campaigns that are catching on. But I hope to see a lot more organizations putting this kind of organizing to work in the future.

We interviewed ControlShift Labs’ founder Nathan Woodhull to get to know the platform.

What is ControlShift and how can organizations and causes use it?

ControlShift Labs is a not-for-profit provider of web products that help membership organizations engage their constituents in activism. Our first product brings member-generated petition campaigns to existing organizations. We help them move beyond broadcast email to embrace the skills and leadership of their members. We see this product as the first in a broader suite of tools that help membership organizations prioritize deep engagement and offline organizing, not just list building and fundraising.

Our mission is to shift the control in social movements from professional organizers to ordinary activists — in doing so, we empower people to work directly on the causes that matter most in their communities.

With our hosted software platform, any organization can create a branded site where their members can create campaigns to aggregate support and then deepen those connections with in-person meet ups and online collaboration. We work with them to support the campaigns that take place under their umbrella.

We’re particularly excited about finding ways for local leaders to create campaigns that support the work that national organizations do online.

What led you to create ControlShift and what values is it grounded in?

I’ve been inspired by some of the early experiments in member powered organizing that organizations like Change.org have done. Traditional online organizers are never going to A/B test our way to developing a campaign as compelling as one created by someone telling their personal story, working to organize their own community.  ControlShift believes that every membership org in the world can and should be able to use distributed campaigning tactics in their work. We’re at the beginning of an important shift in how membership organizations use the internet to fulfill their missions: towards activism that is more participatory, local, and offline.

ControlShift believes in a set of progressive values and we only work with organizations whose work, on the whole, aligns with those values. We’re proud to be focused on helping progressive membership organizations around the world be more effective. We’ve structured ourselves as a not-for-profit in part to ensure that we will never lose sight of that mission.

Does ControlShift provide a full service CRM solution or would you still need an existing CRM solution?

We do not aim to replace existing CRM solutions, but work along side them. Our software is designed to empower ordinary people to run their own campaigns for social change — but the organization itself still needs a traditional CRM to manage donations, send emails, and track action over time. In the same way that we aim to supplement traditional online organizing tactics, we also supplement existing toolset.

We already integrate tightly with Blue State Digital, ActionKit and the Getup/Purpose CRM platform. We include CRM integration as part of the setup process that we do with each organization who signs up, and are committed to integrating with all of the CRM vendors in the space, driven by customer demand. As soon as someone takes action on the ControlShift Platform, that information is pushed into that organization’s CRM.

Pictured below is the management screen for a petition creator.

If you’re bringing on a new client, how easy is it to get up and running? How much customization is involved?

It usually takes us about a week to bring on new clients. The process typically involves setting up a CRM integration and adapting the toolset to the customer’s brand guidelines.  We also assist the partner staff with adapting our default application copy to their needs, and helping their team figure out an organizing strategy.

We offer more in-depth customization and custom software development as a service for organizations whose needs we do not yet fully serve, but we’ve found that most partners do not require these services.

We’re familiar with what these kinds of sites look like from the user perspective. What kinds of tools do organizers have available to them?

We offer a comprehensive administrative interface for organizing staff to use:

• Hot Campaigns see campaigns that are trending now.
• Powerful moderation tools for approving petitions and the emails that members send to their signers.
• A CMS that allows site admins to edit the site copy inside the tool.
• Invite partner groups to create their own co-branded area of the site. Partner groups can create their own petitions, send email to the signers of their petitions, or download a CSV of members to start to build their own list.
• Innovative “efforts” feature allowing many local leaders to run campaigns against local targets that together form a national campaign.
• The ability to query data using SQL to perform advanced analytics.

Finally, what does the platform cost?

We charge a sliding scale that is based on the annual revenue of the organization using the toolset. We work with organizations around the world, so this lets us keep the toolset affordable for organizations in India, while charging a fair price to wealthy advocacy groups. We also offer “scholarships” for particularly awesome organizations with innovative organizing plans who wouldn’t otherwise be afford to use the toolset. Subscription prices range from a few hundred dollars a month, to several thousand dollars per month for the world’s most wealthy orgs. As a not-for-profit we reinvest all our revenue back into the product and the movement.

Can you share a little bit about yourself and your role at Care2?

I joined Care2 in 2005 after working for many years at the nonprofit Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), and an earlier career as a news reporter. At Care2, I lead the nonprofit services team, which works with our more than 1,000 nonprofit clients. We help them to grow their base of donors and supporters from among Care2’s 21 million members. I’m based in Care2’s office in Washington, DC. Our main office is in Redwood City, California.

What is Care2 and how can nonprofit organizations and causes use it?

Care2 is an online community of millions of highly engaged citizens who take action every day to support causes they care about. Our two websites are at www.care2.com and www.thepetitionsite.com. They are filled with cause-related content and “take action” opportunities, plus lots of member activity (including peer-to-peer) visible on our many “cause channel” blogs, discussion boards, e-alerts, our news network, our Daily Actions and other features. Care2 was started 14 years ago by our CEO, Randy Paynter, as a social enterprise, seeking to prove that you can make a profit and do good in the world at the same time. Four years ago, we became a certified B Corp.

Care2’s membership has grown entirely through word-of-mouth. We are ranked among the top 150 U.S. web networks by traffic (we’re measured directly by Quantcast). Thousands of citizens start petitions on Care2 every month, and many win important victories locally, nationally and worldwide. More than 200 media partners, including Daily Kos, The Nation, AlterNet, Mother Jones, Grist, TreeHugger and Democrats.com, feature a Care2 “take action” widget that brings Care2 petition campaigns to their own audiences.

Nonprofits use Care2 in many ways, including awareness-building and to drive traffic to their own sites, or to grow their Facebook presence quickly through a service we offer. But the “killer app” way that most nonprofits use Care2 is as a source to help them recruit lots of new donors and supporters for their organizations, fast and cost-effectively. Care2 actually pioneered 12 years ago the whole category of using behaviorally-targeted, contextual and (usually) advocacy-based campaigns to persuade activists to voluntarily sign up for a nonprofit’s email list. For this service, Care2 charges only a cost per signup recruited. So the client pays Care2 only for the most tangible result (the voluntary signup), without having to pay anything for the branding, awareness and advocacy value that Care2 provides to the client as part of the campaign. Nonprofit fundraisers and organizers see Care2′s model as a more attractive alternative to online advertising, which can cost a lot, yet provides no guarantee of any real results. Over the years, Care2 also has become a key alternative to direct mail, which has become less effective in recent years as a way for nonprofits to grow their donor base.

Tell us about the most successful petition an organization has run on Care2.

Success can be measured in different ways. Some petitions get huge numbers of signatures, but victory has not yet been achieved. For example, in partnership with TakePart and SaveJapanDolphins.org, we collected about half a million signatures calling for an end to dolphin slaughter in Japan’s Taiji cove, but the fight continues.

The right petition at the right time can make a big difference, even if the number of signatures isn’t huge. For example, an activist recently started a petition on Care2, calling for a halt to a development project in the Cayman Islands. An American ex-pat was planning to build an ecologically irresponsible seaport in the Island’s East End, destroying seven acres of healthy coral reefs. The petition became an organizing tool for the local community and a focus of local press. Over 65,000 people signed the petition. Petition signatures were brought to public hearings and delivered to the Premier. The project was cancelled, and local activists felt that their petition on Care2 was integral to the victory.

Hundreds of Care2 petition successes are cataloged here.

What’s the biggest thing organizations struggle with when running a petition on Care2?

Many petitions are created by first-time activists, and they need coaching on how to effectively use petitions to achieve real world change. Our Campaigns team has produced activism guides and works with petition authors to help them achieve success.

How does your tool further social change for good?

As a real community of millions of passionate people interacting with each other — and with nonprofits — all the time, Care2 is not a “tool,” per se. It’s a friendly army of people that one person or organization can mobilize, amplifying their voices and actions to achieve together what none of us could achieve on our own. However, it’s certainly true that Care2 provides our members with many tools – especially on our petition site — to organize and win victories for social change.

We also that think Care2 is unusually good at “meeting people where they are” and then levering them up to more actions, and higher engagement, so that they end up being very activist in their lives. So we “grow” new activists. We do this partly by providing many different “doorways” into the Care2 community — including simple things like healthy living tips and other content for personal growth and sustainability, to free electronic greeting cards, to Click-to-Donate pages, to our cause channels (blogs) and our “Daily Action” emails, etc. – but then we do our best to “cross-pitch” collective action opportunities to these same Care2 members, so that they gradually evolve into real activists.

We also track all of the actions that our members take, so that we can report back to them and celebrate victories that they helped achieve; this encourages them to keep taking action. We even award “Butterfly Rewards” points to our members as part of a really cool loyalty program we have in place, here. It’s sort of a mashup between an “Oxfam Unwrapped” style, symbolic giving program and a Jet Blue-style frequent flyer program. Our members can “redeem” their Butterfly points (it’s a kind of “currency for good”) for helpful gifts like food, medicine, trees and carbon offsets — for which Care2 is actually paying real dollars, not to our members, but rather to our nonprofit partners such as Oxfam, Unicef, ASPCA, CarbonFund.org and Trees for the Future.

What’s your policy for accepting sponsored petitions and causes?

Anyone can start a free petition on Care2’s petition site, and lots of people do this all the time. But our “sponsored” petitions are the ones that clients pay us to create (in collaboration with them) and then to promote to our millions of members. These petitions include the client organization’s own branding, and we work closely with our clients to help their campaigns succeed.

For 14 years, we have faced up to the messy challenge – and inexact science — of deciding how we reflect our values as a company in the clients that we agree to work with via paid petition campaigns. This includes nonprofits, NGO’s and the occasional for-profit social enterprise, too. Over those years we’ve become well known for helping nonprofits that are considered to be “doing good,” which of course can be difficult to classify in absolute terms.  Care2 wants to support organizations that are working to make a better world. So we think it’s our duty to accept or reject clients on a case-by-case basis, according to several factors, and especially whether they’re a good fit with our millions of members’ positive social values. For example, our members are passionate about protecting the environment, stopping the abuse of animals, defending human rights, providing equal opportunities to the poor, etc. These are mainstream social values that are at the heart of our purpose as a company and among the reasons that many Care2 members join our community in the first place. So we can’t accept clients that are in conflict with these social values.

One key point is that we see our sponsored petition campaigns as being very different from “advertising.” There are many differences, but the main one is that, unlike say, the Washington Post, which can publish ads at arms-length without endorsing its advertisers, Care2 cannot help but endorse every nonprofit whose paid petition campaign we conduct. That’s because typically our own staff campaigners personally write and sign the call-to-action email messages (which even include our campaigners’ photos) in which we urge Care2 members to voluntarily sign up for the client’s list — and sometimes to donate to the nonprofit, too. So in effect we are leveraging the trust that we’ve earned from our members, and asking them to trust the nonprofit, too. Our relationship with our individual members is very much at stake. That’s why it’s important for us to do our best, despite the difficulties involved, to identify those clients whom we can confidently endorse, and avoid working with organizations whom we can’t support. We’ve made mistakes in this messy process before, and may do so again. But we will fix mistakes when we recognize them, and keep building on our long record of trying to work only with the groups that we feel good about endorsing.

In the past, you’ve worked with Michelle Rhee’s group Students First, which is at the center of the Change.org controversy. Are you currently working with them and would your policies prevent working with her and similar groups in the future?

Yes, that organization was a Care2 client, and we recruited supporters for them until early June of this year. At that time we re-evaluated our relationship and decided to end it. We haven’t done any work for them since June; we have no relationship now. In terms of the future, we will always make those decisions case-by-case, and organizations can evolve in positive ways if they choose. But for now, we’re at peace with our decision to stop working with them.

Can you share a little bit about yourself and your role at SignOn?
I am the director of SignOn.org, MoveOn’s website to let anyone start their own online petition and MoveOn-style campaign. I’ve been at MoveOn since 2009, and prior to that I was the National Field Director for U.S. PIRG and later Environment America. Over the years I’ve organized rallies, phone banks, fundraising canvasses, precinct-level get out the vote programs, online campaigns–pretty much every form of grassroots organizing there is. With SignOn.org, we’re bringing it all together and putting regular folks in the driver’s seat.

What is SignOn.org and how can nonprofit organizations and causes use it?
The idea behind SignOn.org is that we want to give anyone the tools and support they need to run their own MoveOn-style campaign and win.

Anyone can start a petition at SignOn.org, and we then survey MoveOn members to ask them which petitions deserve support from our 7 million members. We’ve so far emailed hundreds of different petitions to significant segments of our list, connecting millions of people with the campaigns they care about most.

Since it usually takes more than just a petition to win a campaign, we want petition creators to send email their petition signers with updates and follow up actions, and our toolset provides unlimited, free access to do so. We also provide coaching on getting media attention, and we’ll even pay for printing!

Many organizations have used SignOn.org to connect with tens or hundreds of thousands of MoveOn members on their campaigns. We’ve seen groups use SignOn.org to get folks to attend rallies, sign up as precinct captains, host community meetings, make phone calls–anything that’s part of a grassroots campaign.

We’ve also recently launched our Progressive Partners program, which allows progressive non-profits to more seamlessly integrate signers of their petition into their own CRM email programs. (Sorry Koch Brothers, you don’t qualify.)

Tell us about the most successful petition an organization has run on SignOn.
There have been so many. But my favorite is probably from South Dakota, where they earlier this year tried to strip firefighters, teachers, police officers, and other public workers of their collective bargaining rights, following the lead of right-wing governors like John Kasich and Scott Walker. Given the way things were going in strong labor states like Ohio and Wisconsin we’d get slaughtered in South Dakota, right?

Wrong. Mark Anderson of the South Dakota State Federation of Labor started a petition on SignOn.org urging state legislators to vote no on the bill. We emailed the petition to our members in the state (twice, actually) and the response was so overwhelming that one legislator was heard saying that he’s never received so many emails on any issue ever. The Republicans knew it was going to be a huge fight, and they threw in the towel. The bill was defeated on a 13-0 vote in committee.

What’s the biggest thing organizations struggle with when using SignOn?
I think a lot of folks get stuck on what they think people should be excited about and don’t spend enough time listening to what their members are actually excited about.

A great example is our campaign to save the St. Mark’s Bookstore, a progressive bookstore in Lower Manhattan. The bookstore needed a rent reduction to stay in business, and MoveOn members just exploded with support. The petition went viral, getting all kinds of coverage in The New York Times and other local media. Patti Smith and Michael Moore did special events, and within days the landlord negotiated an agreement.

A lot of groups wouldn’t work on that campaign because saving a bookstore just isn’t as important as climate change or health care. Some said it wasn’t politically strategic because we really needed to be building support in swing states. But regular folks don’t experience politics that way. People get involved because they want to express their values or affiliate with something bigger than themselves. Also, politics have to be fun, and people love that bookstore.

Today, if you ask someone about the St. Mark’s Bookstore, they remember how they helped save this community institution, and how MoveOn helped them do it. And they’re a lot more likely to do stuff like GOTV calling because they remember how they stood up for something they cared about, made a difference–and that it was fun.

So my advice to groups that use SignOn.org is to try a lot of different petitions. Put a petition about every campaign you’re running into the system. We’ve figured out scalable strategies to get meaningful feedback from our members on literally dozens of petitions per day. We’ll help you find the pockets of grassroots energy and, if you trust your members, your power as an organization will grow exponentially.

How does your tool further social change for good?
Over the years, MoveOn members have worked together to win incredible campaigns. Usually the way it works is that we hear from our members about something they’re excited about, like ending the war in Iraq or electing the first African-American president in U.S. history. Our staff then identifies key ways for them to make a difference by organizing events or donating to pay for a snappy TV ad. MoveOn has run and won so many great campaigns that way, and we’ll continue to do so.

But the problem is that there are so many fights MoveOn doesn’t have time to take on. Think about your own neighborhood and all the problems you wish someone would do something about. Then think about all the other neighborhoods in your city, and the cities in your state, and the states all across the country. That’s a lot of work.

Plus, to be totally honest, after we got crushed in the 2010 election, the rise of the tea party, and Citizens United, we realized that we needed a game-changer. So we set out to re-invent online organizing by tapping into the passion and leadership of our seven million members. We figured that there were probably hundreds of MoveOn members who could start up and run their own campaigns if they only had the tools and support.

We were wrong–there are tens of thousands. Now we’re aiming to take it to the next level, to figure out how to help as many of those folks as possible turn their petitions into campaigns and their campaigns into even bigger, more powerful winning campaigns.

One of the big challenges going forward: Helping people raise money. SignOn.org will pay for the printing of petitions and occasionally some other basic campaign costs, but we need to figure out how to help regular folks raise money in a scalable way, learning from sites like Kickstarter and Causes.com.

The bottom line is that to achieve the progressive change we seek, we need to break down the barriers to political action so that it’s not just the Super PACs, corporate-funded front groups, and a couple big progressive non-profits in the arena. We need people not just sitting around waiting for the next email alert to tell them what to do, but dreaming up the next campaign that they can start–and then making it happen.

My background is in computer science and, more specifically, robotics. In 2008, I was finishing up my Ph.D. in the field of Distributed Robotics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland. I had seen then-Senator Obama speak in video clips online, and had been very impressed with his candor and intelligence.

Since I was finishing up my degree, I decided that I would head out to Chicago once I was done and do what I could to help Obama win the election. Come July, I hadn’t actually quite finished my thesis, but I went out to Chicago anyway and offered my help. While there wasn’t any way for me to directly apply my knowledge of robotics, they had just created an “Analytics team” in the New Media department of the campaign — my background in computer science made me a good fit to help out with that work.

I worked with the Obama campaign through the election in 2008, doing data analysis and helping with testing on our webpages and emails. I hadn’t planned on continuing with political work after that, but with the start of Organizing for America in 2009, I was lured back to eventually run the analytics and testing program for the Obama digital program and the Democratic National Committee.

Are there basic rules of testing you would recommend to nonprofits?

1. Start simple. Testing can be complicated, and it can be easy to feel overwhelmed. Instead of trying to do it all at once, start with the basics: try running a two-way subject-line test on your next email, and see which one does better. Once you’ve gotten into the routine of that, you can move on to testing three or four subject lines at once, email content tests, and webpage experimentation.

2. Randomize your audiences. Results from a head-to-head test are only valid if you use randomized groups for each test variant. If you forget to do this, it introduces bias into your metrics, with one group often having more active people than the other. This makes whatever results you get pretty much meaningless.

3. Ignore open rates. People often judge their emails based on what percentage of people are opening them. In reality, this is a completely useless evaluation metric — you don’t care about how many people open your email, you can about how many people take action. Look at action rates to evaluate how well your email did.

What is the most important element to test?

For email campaigns, the first thing to test is the subject line — it’s easy and straightforward to come up with a couple of different ideas for email subject lines for your draft, send them out to randomly selected groups of subscribers, and see which one people respond to most strongly. You can routinely get boosts of 15% or more with very little effort.

You can see a bigger boost (often 50%+) by doing email content tests, pitting different drafts head-to-head. This requires the additional effort in creating multiple drafts, though, so it’s only a good option if you have the person-power to pull it off.

Really, though, you should test everything you possibly can. It’s incredibly hard to predict which things will have a big impact on user response, so the best approach is to test them all.

Do you have an example of a success story in testing you could share with us?

One of my favorite testing stories is from when I was working on the Obama digital team, and we were running webpage tests on the “splash page of the Obama website which was the page that new visitors would see before they got to the homepage. We wanted to maximize the number of people who would sign up for our email list there.

The page we were using had already been through four or five rounds of testing, so we thought it was pretty optimized at that point. It showed a big picture of President Obama, the text “Join Me”, text fields for the user to input their email address and ZIP code, and a button that said “Get Involved”. This simplistic approach had consistently outperformed more complex pages that we’d tried.

As a final round of testing, we decided to try out some alternatives to the four words we had on the page: “Join Me” and “Get Involved”. We came up with a couple of ideas, one of which was “Fired Up?” and “Let’s Go!”.

After launching the test and waiting for a few thousand visitors to come to the site, we discovered that the new language increased the signup rate on the page by a solid 29%. That was quite the impressive boost for a difference of only four words.

What are the biggest mistakes people make when testing?

Not doing it. Usually when things start to get busy, testing is the first thing that goes out the window (I’ve even been guilty of this myself). Because the benefits you get from testing are often difficult to see, it can be easy to forget just how valuable doing it really is in comparison to your other work.

Any last words of wisdom?

Get to know your data. Test results and other metrics are a lot more meaningful when you have a good sense of what these numbers actually mean and how they vary over time. Pay attention to your email and webpage statistics to become more familiar with them, and all this stuff will start coming to you more naturally.

Thanks, Jim!

For today’s post, I interviewed Elijah Zarlin, Senior Campaign Manager (and expert online organizer) at CREDO Action. Our interview follows.

Q: How did you get your start in email campaigning and what led you to CREDO?

A: Luck and the New Organizing Institute. I applied to NOI’s first online training in 2006, with a vague notion that online campaigning was interesting, and wanting to get more involved in campaigns after a few months of door to door fundraising in Berkeley for John Kerry and the DNC in 2004.

After a week of NOI Bootcamp, I had formal training in a field that everyone suddenly needed on 2006 campaigns, but in which only a handful of people in the country actually had real experience. I knew the nationally relevant campaigns were happening outside of California, and after 2004, Ohio seemed like the center of the political universe. So I applied to work in Ohio and was excited to pack up my truck and drive cross country in the summer of 2006 to be the online organizer for Ted Strickland’s gubernatorial campaign.

I stayed in Ohio, made it to Chicago in 2008 to write emails for the Obama Campaign, and then spent a couple of years in California and DC consulting and freelance writing for a few non-profits. It was often fairly hands off, and frustrating to watch concepts get watered down in layers of approval and internal politics. Then Becky Bond got in touch with me about working on CREDO’s excellent 2010 ballot initiative, the Stop Texas Oil, Hell No on Prop 23 campaign. It was satisfying to be working in a place that so valued organizing and engagement, was quick and nimble, and wasn’t afraid to be unabashedly progressive. They gave me an awesome CREDO track jacket, and the rest is your inbox history.

Q: Fill in the blank. All of the most successful campaigns _______.

A: Have a clear, engaging theory of change. For candidate campaigns, it’s pretty straight forward. For issue campaigns, with multiple decision-makers and possibly multiple decision points, it can be more complex.  There are so many things that can make a campaign great: from good data, to good timing, to good art, to good follow up. But at the center of every good campaign is clear communication of why what you are asking someone to is important.

The Obama Campaign in 2008 took it a step beyond most candidate campaigns by really empowering people with the message that not just Obama, but people’s involvement in the process could change things for the better. At CREDO, we launch a lot of different campaigns, but for each one, it needs to be abundantly clear why clicking or calling or writing to the campaign target, at this moment, is the most important way we can make an impact on an issue.

Sometimes, you don’t have to explain it: It’s pretty clear why the Department of Interior shouldn’t allow a huge garbage dump next to Joshua Tree National Park. Other times a bit of context is required. But if it’s not evident almost immediately (“Why am I getting an email about Barn Owls right now?”) or the action doesn’t make sense for the issue (“How will posting a Youtube video effect what Congress does?”)  then people don’t engage. If you repeatedly fail to establish a strong theory of change, you lose your credibility with your activists. A strong, clearly communicated theory of change shows people you value their time and activism, and they’re more likely to engage, both on today’s campaign, and the next ones.

Q: Describe your most successful campaign and what made it a hit.

A: I’m proudest of the work we’ve done on Keystone XL. It’s a hard, ongoing campaign, but we’ve definitely made an impact. It started with Bill McKibben’s recognition of an extremely strong theory of change: That the decision to approve a “game over for the climate” pipeline rested almost solely with the President who we had elected on his commitment to fighting climate change. And facing his re-election, pressure from environmentalists would be painful and couldn’t be ignored.

By repeatedly communicating the importance of what had been a relatively unknown issue, we actually got people to travel across the country to DC and get arrested. As an email campaigner, that’s quite satisfying. And despite all conventional wisdom to the contrary, we forced the President to reject the pipeline, although he’s now doing his best to push through as much of it as he can, so we’re still fighting it.

My most enjoyable campaign was actually one of the more frivolous. After the first vote by Congress to repeal Obama’s healthcare law, I found the official federal healthcare plan opt-out form, and had our activists fax it to their representatives who received federal healthcare, but had just voted to deny it to others. The vote itself was purely political. So giving people a very tangible, satisfying response to call out their representative’s hypocrisy proved to be wildly popular. Even hard core activists and wonks need to have a little fun once in a while.

Q: What’s your creative process when working on an email campaign?

A: It totally depends. Sometimes something breaks that is so totally outrageous and urgent that it feels like the email just writes itself, and 90 minutes later, it’s built and sending. Other times, I’m working on an issue that I know is important but can be hard to boil down. I’ll read articles, blog posts, and other email campaigns on the issue to get a clear sense of the relevant points and the best way to frame the action. Sometimes it’ll take a few hours of writing, and 4 or 5 pages of scratch, before I piece together 300-500 words, in a sequence that makes sense. Once an email is built, I almost always make more changes to it, so that it scans clearly in our format. Hip hop and/or folk music, depending on the day, are also essential.

Q: How do you make people care when you’re writing about something that’s important, but not necessarily sexy?

A: Who said policy details weren’t sexy!?! Most people don’t read most emails. So for more complicated issues, it’s important to walk the line between honing in on the essential message or compelling hook that can be communicated instantly, and also providing more context and background, presented in such a way that people can dig in as much or as little as they want.

It’s also a matter of building trust throughout all your campaigns. At CREDO, we’re always talking to other organizers and experts to do our due diligence if the policy details or political situation of a campaign is complicated. We do follow-up on our campaigns when there are developments and victories. And if something urgent is happening, we try to get something out about it quickly. We care a lot about our activists’ experience, online and offline. We find all those things build trust with our activists. So that when we ask them to submit a comment about a Department of Interior coal auction they’ve never heard about before, they trust that it’s important.

The last thing I would say is to be honest. If something is complicated, it’s ok to say that. It’s ok to go into the details. If something is hard – like getting arrested – you should say that. Not all campaigns are the same, and not all campaigns can be explained in a short, urgent email with the subject line “Outrageous!” It might boost action rates in the short term (or it might not), but it doesn’t cultivate informed activists. Ultimately, that’s the broader measure of success.

We’ve got a similar set of conditions brewing in the video broadcast world right now. Turn the dial on your TV and you’ll mostly find right wing ownership of the air waves. News organizations have cut their budgets around the world for sending correspondents out to cover conflicts around the world. And the local TV coverage is mostly a joke. The technology to cheaply record video has existed for quite some time, most people have the ability to do that from their smart phones now. The technology to stream video in real time has become incredibly easy to use and free. You’ll see coverage of all types of events, concerts, discussion panels, and you’re even seeing some people broadcast live from Occupy protests.

I wanted to tell the story of someone I feel stands out from the crowd and has been doing something unique and valuable. I’d like to introduce you to Spencer Mills, better known as @OakFoSho on twitter. He broadcasts from the OccupyOakland channel on Ustream.tv and you can find him on the web at OakFoSho.com.

I interviewed OakFoSho last week because I wanted to tell his story, but I also wanted to share insights with the broader community so that everyone can do their own take on this whether they’d like to cover other Occupy encampments or things going on in their own communities. And I hope that it shows you that you don’t need to be Steven Spielberg to go out there and shoot video. There’s a lot of anxiety when the topic of video gets brought up, but don’t caught up in being so professional that you shy away from it completely.

Me: How’d you get started doing this? Did you have any training or experience with this previously?

OakFoSho: I’ve been at Occupy Oakland from the beginning, even before the camp was constituted and a small group was just meeting about it. I was really inspired by what they were doing in New York. I just considered myself a protestor, and I’ve been involved in politics a long time. I turned 18 the summer before the 2000 election; voting and volunteering for Al Gore was my first experience in politics. And I’ve been involved ever since.

I finished my MBA in 2008 at Loyola Marymount when the economy collapsed. I worked for the Obama campaign as a traveling volunteer doing field organizing and student organizing in Nevada and here in the bay area. Then I came back home and could find work. I tried starting my own small business, eventually I got a job doing some political consulting and fundraising but then I ended up unemployed after the 2010 elections again. I ended up working at a gym, losing 70 or 80 pounds there and that gym changed my life. It was a really difficult decision to leave that, the people there are great friends, but there’s times in life it’s important to take risks.

I didn’t consider myself a citizen journalist or anything. I’d been posting photos and tweeting about what was going on, I’d even been doing that as far back as the Oscar Grant protests. I just thought I was an Oaklander getting the word on Twitter.

My first live upstream was the night of the general strike, November 2nd. I’d just heard from someone, hey you’ve got a Droid X phone, you can download this upstream app, broadcast and people will follow and watch. I didn’t have any idea what it would turn into. It turns out I was the only broadcaster there that night and all of the traditional media had left earlier in the evening. So the traffic just skyrocketed that night, with my channel and the mirror over at Global Revolution we probably had between 10,000 and 15,000 viewers. We were basically a small cable TV show broadcasting from a cell phone.

It only really takes one event where you’re the only real source for things to blow up, and that’s true. If that night hadn’t happened you might be talking to someone else.

Me: Let’s talk tech. I’ve been tuning in recently and the rig you’ve got is pretty impressive. 6 cell modems, great quality on the stream, night vision. How does it all work together?

Note: If you want to check this out for yourself, ustream has tech and leasing information on their site.

OakFoSho: I’m not really a tech guy, but let me tell you what I know about the equipment. The equipment itself was loaned to me from the folks at Ustream. The people following me on twitter were all pinging Ustream and asking them to get me some real equipment. This was going on before the big raid in New York happened, and this was the first of these packs they gave out. They invited me to their office in SF and got their tech guys together to show me how this works.

It’s basically a backpack, and inside is a modem that has six cell connections. 2 on AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon. It sends 1Mbps of high quality video. Then there’s a firewire cable that can be plugged in to any firewire compatible video camera. I didn’t have a video camera so they loaned me a sony handy cam.

It’s really easy to use, you just push a button to connect and then once all the connections are done you connect the camera, do a screen test, and then hit play. As long as the batteries are good you’re able to stream, so I have quite a few extras. The most delicate part of it is the firewire connection into the camera so I reinforced that with some tape.

Going with the better equipment, HD video and getting rid of issues like having the video be really pixelated at night led to a much bigger following online.

Me: Ok so having good tech and being at the right place at the right time is part of it, but I don’t think you should sell yourself short here. You’re not only out there telling people’s stories directly, but there’s also an activist component to what you’re doing. And that makes the broadcasts interesting, not passive. Can you talk a little bit about your approach to interviewing protestors and also shining a light on police actions?

OakFoSho: What happened with Scott Olsen, the Marine that was hit in the head with a tear gas canister in Oakland and critically injured, really taught us all a lesson. What a lot of the cops in Oakland have been doing is against procedure and illegal. So I’ll go up and down the line and call out badge numbers and names. I’ll specifically look for and note individuals that are holding riot control weapons like tear gas guns or beanbag and rubber bullet shotguns. Those individuals are carrying less than lethal equipment, but they have the ability to kill someone if they don’t use it according to procedure. So I want to hold them accountable. I want everyone to know exactly who they are, and I want them to know everyone knows who they are. All of the cameras out there are essentially the buffer against them doing something stupid. It makes them think twice when you do that.

So if you’re going out to the protest then download the ustream app and start broadcasting. It doesn’t matter if you have a large following, that broadcast is a check on police power and if something happens that’s something that can be used in a case.

Even last week in LA, we had an officer that had his finger on the trigger and pointed his rifle directly at my head (video of the incident). That’s not ok, it’s against procedure and there are people telling me I should press charges. You’ve got to hold them accountable. Their duty is to protect and serve not to point and shoot.

I’m definitely an activist, some people get upset that I editorialize. But I’m a protestor too. I consider myself viciously non-violent, but non-violent doesn’t mean silent. I walk the line in-between.

I’m definitely against corporate money in politics, and I believe that as long as elected officials are taking money from the interests they’re supposed to be regulating that the system is fundamentally broken. That’s why I’m there.

Me: You’ve definitely got a unique set of things going here, I just have to say the interactivity of your stream is by far the best I’ve seen. You were responding in real-time to things said in the ustream chat room, on twitter and through texts you were receiving. That seems like something really impressive to manage, how do you pull it off?

OakFoSho: When I went down to LA I travelled down there with a friend from SF, PunkBoyInSF, he was shooting from his phone and providing some different angles on the night. Another Occupy Oaklander came down with me and she was just walking with me and reminding me to do things like drink water, giving me trail mix to keep my energy up and stuff like that. And then I had a friend back home in the bay area, @OccupyMills, that was monitoring things online and texting me updates.

So I consider myself autonomous guerilla media. I’m in touch with people on the Occupy Oakland media team, but I’m not officially part of it. And I can’t be officially part of it until a policy of nonviolence is adopted in Oakland. Right now it’s a policy of “diversity of tactics.”

So I’ll walk around with the pack and film, sometimes I’ll pull up Facebook, Twitter, or the ustream chat and just start answering questions on camera. And then my friend @OccupyMills was giving me updates as text messages as she was watching at home, texts are easier to deal with than 100′s of @ replies.

And on my stream I’ll ask people for information and then my friend would listen to the responses, do her own research and then text me answers or updated info.

I also had just a homemade, laminated press pass that I had around my neck and if I got questioned by the police I’d just pull it out and act the part so they’d let me by. That gave me the freedom to move around and cover different things.

Me: A lot of the people we serve are activists or organizers for non-profits or labor. Covering the conflicts and stories in the Occupy movement is unique, but what advice would you have for people that might be looking to tell stories from the picket line or at rallies and direct actions or even in communities they’re serving? Let’s say someone wants to get started here. What advice would you give them?

OakFoSho: To tell the story you need access. The equipment gets me in a lot of places, because it’s the same kind of stuff professionals have. They might have better cameras, but the same backpacks. Before I made up that press pass I’d just show someone the backpack if I was questioned.

But as far as documenting something, the equipment helps but I just try to be honest with how I feel and what I see. For example, when LAPD was doing a good job by not hitting people or following procedure I’d say that on the stream and give them credit. Try to show your viewers what you want them to see in as unfiltered as possible.

And you have to just get started somewhere. The first night I did it I didn’t really think about it I just went out there. You might not have many viewers, but that’s ok too. I always told myself if one other person was watching then it was worth it. Not all the videos I do get thousands of viewers, some of them only have a hundred. But there are that many more people that are informed. So just download the ustream app and press record. You never know what’s going to happen, whose life you’ll affect, what you’ll capture.

What people seem to like is my commentary and views, so just go out there and talk and interview people. Don’t worry about trying to be some kind of neutral journalist. If you’ve got a passion for something then make that clear.

Me: Last question, how can we support you? Do you take donations?

OakFoSho: Yeah I’ve got a web site up at OakFoSho.com with a donate button. People have been getting in touch to donate things like airline miles. I’ll be putting up an equipment and technical needs page. We’re going to be improving this site soon and I’ll be fully transparent about how the money is being spent right on the site.

I’m completely supporter funded, so head over and donate what you can.