Dan Cowen recently graduated from Syracuse University and is running for Syracuse Councilor At-Large. His campaign challenges the machine politics of upstate New York with an integrated online and offline organizing strategy.
His communications director, Andrew Bauer, explained why they chose NationBuilder as the backbone of their political infrastructure to Information Space, the Syracuse University School of Information Studies blog:
NationBuilder has provided us with an invaluable, holistic approach for building Dan’s campaign. Above all, it is incredibly cost-effective. The platform allows us to manage everything from donor lists contributions to retweets on Twitter, and everything in-between.
I recently spoke to Andrew to get more insight on how they're running their campaign's nation. "Prompting a supporter to tweet after a giving a donation generated more leads for our campaign than any other activity," Andrew explained. "There's no better platform for running a campaign," he added.
Using the political edition of NationBuilder is not the only way the campaign is breaking new ground in Syracuse. They sponsored a bipartisan voter registration effort as a secondary site on their nation. Dan hosted an online townhall on the future of Syracuse, embedding a CrowdHall conversation in their nation. The campaign is currently focused on highlighting a SNAP challenge and gathering signatures to appear as a candidate in the Democratic primary.
Dan is one of five candidates for two open councilor at-large seats. To qualify for the primary ballot, he must gather 1,000 signatures from active Democrats in Syracuse during the month of June. According to Andrew, about 4,000 Democrats voted in the last non-presidential primary, so this minimum signature count represents a significant proportion of active voters in the city. Since there are two open seats, a voter can sign two councilor-at-large petitions, but no more. Typically, volunteers knock on doors while carrying the list of registered Democrats throughout Syracuse, a stack of papers four to six inches thick.
Andrew and Dan realized they needed a better way to canvas. When Andrew learned that a beta API for NationBuilder was available, he suggested creating a mobile canvassing app. Andrew is a recent graduate of the Syracuse School of Information Studies (iSchool) and has worked part-time at Starship NEXIS, an on-campus lab focused on social media, data visualization and data science. Dan provided feedback on the app during the development process and it is the backbone of their signature gathering campaign.
An administrator of any other nation can signup to use the app at CanvassNow.com. You'll need to grant the app access to your nation's database. It will then ask you which of your lists you want to use. The application will download the first ten people from your list so you can test the functionality. Only a person's NationBuilder ID, name, address, latitude, longitude, and phone number are shared with the app. You're then taken to a heat map of voters, where intense color indicates a high number of voters. Once you determine the area you'll be canvassing, a single person's record will appear in the app. You record contact in the app using the same variables that appear in a person's profile in your nation. Once you click save, that information is sent directly to your nation's database - nothing about your voter contact is saved in CanvassNow.
I've been rather inspired by my conversations with Andrew about the campaign and his new app. As a Peace & Justice Studies undergraduate, I knew I wanted to help change the world; but nothing I did during my senior year compared to the real-world affect they're having. Andrew plans to return to the iSchool in the fall to continue his studies as a graduate student. "I want to immerse myself more, continue to develop myself, and learn different coding languages," he explained.
Dan's campaign has already made a significant impact on local politics. Syracuse school board candidate Taino Palermo requested access to the canvassing app. NationBuilder was created to make the tools of democracy and organizing available to anyone. It's exciting to see how this vision can be implemented in local elections.
