Dealing with nameless prospects and supporters

In our field activities we sometimes (OK, often) collect information on people for whom we have an address, a level of interest or support, issues of concern, perhaps a commitment for a yard sign, but NO NAME. How do you recommend handling this sort of data in our Nation?

Official response from NationBuilder Support

For customers within the United States, I would recommend requesting voter data for your district from our NationBuilder Election Center. This will populate your nation with the names, addresses, contact information and voting history for all of the registered voters in your district, and enable you to search for people by their street address — even if you don't know their name. To learn more about how to use your voter file, click here.

For non-US customers, I would recommend acquiring your voter file from your local government authority and importing into your database, which will enhance your nation's database in the same way. To learn more about importing your custom voter file, click here.

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Ian Patrick Hines

Hines Digital
Hines Digital
Certified Architect
Certified Expert

Ian Patrick Hines responded with completed

posted 2016-06-09 13:58:19 -0700
Ian Patrick Hines

Hines Digital
Hines Digital
Certified Architect
Certified Expert

Ian Patrick Hines commented
Understood.

NationBuilder is really built for identifying and nurturing direct, personal relationships with supporters and potential supporters. Without a piece of unique identifying information, that will be very difficult to do effectively from within the software.
posted 2013-05-03 16:45:45 -0700
Donald Darnell

Donald Darnell commented
Thank you Ian. In most cases I have in mind we have an address, a level of support, and some information on issues of concern which might map to particular tags. We would also have a date of last contact (typically door knocking). If we do not have a name, we probably do not have anything that NB uses as a unique identifier.)
posted 2013-05-02 20:13:31 -0700
Ian Patrick Hines

Hines Digital
Hines Digital
Certified Architect
Certified Expert

Ian Patrick Hines commented
I suppose that answer would depend on what data you do have about them. Do you have their email address, for example? Their address? Their phone number? Etc.

If you could provide a little more detail about what data you do have (you mentioned that you learn something about them) it would help me answer the question in a more useful fashion.

Fundamentally, what NationBuilder needs is some sort of unique identifying information (UID) about the person. To learn more about what can be used as a unique identifier in NationBuilder, click here: http://nationbuilder.com/what_is_a_unique_identifier
posted 2013-05-02 14:38:26 -0700
Donald Darnell

Donald Darnell commented
Thanks, for those suggestions, Ian. We did find it useful in a previous campaign to use data from a voter database. Now we are in a municipal campaign for which no voter lists are provided. Lists can be purchased, but we have found that with these, as with voter lists, there are plenty of people (not yet registered to vote, incorrectly listed, etc.) that we learn something about without learning their name.

So our question still remains: How do you recommend handling supporter/prospect data on people whose name we do not know?
posted 2013-05-02 11:54:40 -0700
Donald Darnell

Donald Darnell responded

posted 2013-04-18 09:44:15 -0700