The two most important metrics used to assess a campaign are doors and dollars. Your canvassing efforts prove your work ethic and ability to connect with voters face-to-face, and successful fundraising efforts reflect your support in the community and ultimately determine whether you’ll have the resources to run a formidable campaign. For most of our history at Voter Science, our ground game has been focused on Canvasser (codenamed TRC), a mobile app that helps you be more effective at the door, but today I’d like to introduce you to our new Fundraiser app (TRF).
You can download Fundraiser from the Apple Store or Google Play Store here:
At a high level, Fundraiser’s goals are simple:
- Organize and target your fundraising lists
- Integrate with latest public data for lobbyists and historical donors
- Automatically provision and scale to any elected office
- Expertly manage call logs from your smartphone
Here’s a quick slideshow of the app:
Usage
Like Canvasser, you can download Fundraiser from the app store for free and sign in without registering for an account or paying any subscription fee. All you need to do is provide an email address for us to send a PIN to verify your identity. Unlike Canvasser, however, you can create new call sheets immediately from within the mobile app by selecting New Sheet from the menu. Simply select the jurisdiction (local, legislative, judicial or statewide), office and district for your campaign from the drop-down lists and give your new call sheet a name. When you hit the Create button, a call sheet will be available within seconds based on historical donations to that district. Large lists will automatically be broken up into subdirectories to optimize for performance and reduce the footprint on your device.
Instead of creating a new call sheet from scratch, you may simply clone one of the examples like the GOP Lobby List. Any new call sheets that you create, clone or have shared with you will appear with a filled flag in the menu and allow write access to the call log, which is summarized on the Dashboard tab. The List tab shows the call prospects, sorted in the order you’ve selected in Settings. Prospects in the list are also color coded by propensity, which is based on the ratio that they’ve contributed to your party compared to others. Green prospects, contacts and organizations indicate they they’re likely friendly, whereas red ones might be less inclined to contribute.
While donors have been matched to public databases as well as paid lists of over 5 million records that include phone numbers and email addresses, lobbyist information is even more tightly integrated with public records from the PDC’s Open Data initiative. This not only includes names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses, but also profile photos, bios, and up-to-date client lists. Contribution records from the PDC are also matched using our proprietary fuzzy matching algorithm against Voter Registration Database records going back to 2008 and the latest Corporations and Charities Filing System from the Secretary of State.
Finally, there’s a statewide Search feature built into the application that will allow you quickly review campaign contributions of any individual donor. This feature was added by popular request and is especially useful during filing week to determine just how partisan new candidates running for non-partisan positions really are.
Video Tutorial
The following video tutorial should help you get familiar with using Fundraiser:
Pricing
The mobile app itself and access to all public data is absolutely free. A subscription charge of just $100 per calendar year is required for access to paid phone numbers and email addresses. Currently, about half of donors in TRF include paid contact information, and with your support we’ll be purchasing additional lists to make that coverage more complete. In-app purchases will be enabled to subscribe directly from your phone soon, but until then please just contact us at info@voter-science.com for more information.
voter-science.blog 