When you think about planning for next year’s election, keep this in mind: younger Americans are going to be a force. Voters between 18 and 29 saw a whopping 79-percent increase in turnout in the last election, according to the Census Bureau. Their turnout reached 36 percent in 2018, up from 20 percent in 2014,…
NASHVILLE, Tenn.—Walking through Blackbaud’s bbcon conference, it is inspiring to see how many organizations have gathered to bring about change. Thousands of people have come. All are engaged in social good. And all are here to learn and improve. One of the lessons here in Nashville is about the nature of those who power our…
Most of us care a lot about advocacy and civic engagement. At Phone2Action, we spend our days talking about impact, metrics, what works and what doesn’t. We know you do, too. Earlier this year, we created the State of Advocacy report, which used data to show how hundreds of organizations operate their programs. Now, we…
“It feels like a sprint,” said Margaret Taylor, director of global public affairs at AT&T. She’s talking about the start of the state legislative sessions each January. And when it comes to 2020, she’s not wrong. Lawmakers in 44 states will hold legislative sessions next year, considering thousands of bills between January and June. Add…
Next year’s state legislative sessions are going to be intense. Just look at the numbers. Legislatures will hold sessions in 44 states. By one estimate, roughly 100,000 bills will be introduced. Hundreds—maybe thousands—will be approved. And most of the action will transpire in the short period between January and May. Add to that the election…
By Patrick Haines Patrick Haines was a 2019 Civic Tech Fellow at Phone2Action, working on the Customer Success Team. How much time does your organization spend crafting your message? After working for months helping organizations create campaigns on Phone2Action’s Customer Success team, I can say without hesitation that how well you craft a message can…
Meredith Whipple, the digital content manager at Public Knowledge, has watched her organization’s advocacy program transform over time. One major catalyst was the move to professional advocacy software. “In the beginning, we did a lot of it manually,” she said, describing lists spread across systems, activity tracked in spreadsheets and a hard-coded button on the…
Most professionals have questioned their advocacy software at one time or another. Perhaps it was when you were transferring data manually between systems, or as you crunched numbers in a spreadsheet to get the right metrics. Or maybe it was when you tried to explain to the boss why it is so tough to acquire…
When most of us think about advocacy, we think about Washington or the states. Congress. Regulators. Legislatures. But that is only part of the picture. Local advocacy, activity directed at the city or county level, grew three-fold between 2016 and 2018, according to the 2019 State of Advocacy report released earlier this year. That’s a…
Across Washington and the state capitals, advocacy organizations are preparing for the 2020 election. Communications. Advertising. Personnel. Planning. The effort can be intimidating, even for the largest organizations and the most experienced pros. So the experts here at Phone2Action, who have decades of experience with elections, created a cheat sheet. Our goal was to provide…