How to use your voter file

Download the voter file screencast (Quicktime: 40mb, 6:49)

Pull a list of likely voters

• Use the Advanced Search tool under the People tab to query people who have voted in several previous elections. These are your likely voters whose support level you want to determine.
• Clicking the + button at the top of the search result will add everyone to an unsaved list. Click list (or the shopping cart icon) to name and save the list. 

Phone banking

• Create multiple lists of people you want to phone bank, and then share them with volunteers who will be doing the phone banking. Don't share the same list with multiple volunteers, or they'll be calling the same people.
• Phone bankers can call people straight from the control panel by loading their list and clicking Call Mode. 
• Print a call sheet from any list for those phone bankers without access to a computer. They can record information such as support level directly on the paper, and then enter it the control panel later using Data Entry Mode.

Canvassing and turf cutting

• Turf cutting splits up your list geographically into small enough groups that a couple volunteers can reasonablly be expected to knock on all the doors.
• Click on Map Mode when viewing a list to start turf cutting. You'll almost always want to sort by address when saving a list via turf cutting.
• Once you've spit your list into several geographic chunks, click on Print > Walk List to download and print a PDF walk list to hand to volunteers.

Support levels

• Support level is recorded on a scale of 1 to 5. 1 is a strong supporter, 3 is a possible voter, and 5 is someone who strongly opposes you.
• An eligible voter who has a support level of 1 or 2 will count towards the number of yes votes shown on your dashboard. If they are ineligible to vote for you, they are considered a supporter.
• NationBuilder can only determine whether or not someone is eligible to vote for you if you have your campaign settings such as district, City and State configured properly. Double check you have this information entered by clicking Settings > Campaign > Office. Determining eligibility happens automatically, but can take a while with large voter files. 

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Showing 13 reactions

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Donald Darnell commented 2012-01-31 13:02:33 -0500

You guys provide an exciting collection of tools and functionality for supporting field activities like canvassing and door-knocking. One thing that really gets in the way: your walk list ordering is not sophisticated enough to match a practical walking path. In cold weather we find that sorting through a multi-age printout while walking through a neighbourhood is just not efficient. (We currently follow a manual sorting process which is a huge pain!) It would be a HUGE step forward if you could provide a utility which would present a turf-cut list in map form and allow the user to set the order of the pathway — selecting side of street (even/odd addresses) and which order to cover blocks.

Donald Darnell commented 2012-01-31 12:54:41 -0500

We are using an iPad app to record door-knocking data in the field. The data ends up in an Excel spreadsheet, and could be easily translated into a CSV file. Is there some way we can upload this information rather than manually recording contacts? It sure would be nice!

Greg Brown commented 2012-01-24 03:21:06 -0500

To create small manageable list for interns to call, is there a way to take a large list and select portions of the list and create smaller sized lists that are more manageable. For example take list of 2500 prospects in a city and split that list of 2500 into 25 lists of 100, and then share the 100 sized lists with 25 different interns.

Are there any work arounds for this?

Jim Gilliam commented 2012-01-23 23:16:09 -0500

Oh, that’s great. We actually do have adding a map to the first page of the walk sheets on the list right now to get done, which is a much nicer way of solving your problem.

aaron pritchard commented 2012-01-23 21:57:28 -0500

What I really want to be able to do is turf cut a map and then print out that turf cut map on a 8.5 × 11 size page – so volunteers and easily read the a map and know where they are and plan their route. So 1) turf cut 2) print turf cut map 3) print walk list associated with turf cut.

I will learn how to screen shot and print out image in the mean time. Thanks.

Jim Gilliam commented 2012-01-23 21:38:28 -0500

Aaron- It would be pretty easy to print a turf cut, just screen shot it and print out the image.

We have no plans to “save” your turf cut settings on the map at this time. Feel free to add it as a suggestion if you want and others can weigh in on it. You can save a list of the people in each area you cut, but I know that’s not what you’re asking. You want to add people to a list at a later time and then pull up the same map that you’ve turf cut and create new lists based on those previous settings. Which is probably not what you really want… what you probably really want is the ability to automatically assign people to different field staff based upon whether or not they fit within a particular region you’ve turf cut.

All of that is to say, it’s generally best when submitting a suggestion to articulate what you are really trying to do, rather than ask for a feature suggestion that might seem like it would be easy for us to. Partly because most people are frequently wrong about what is easiest, and partly because we’re more likely to do things that solve an issue for a lot of people in an elegant way.

aaron pritchard commented 2012-01-23 21:21:06 -0500

I mentioned to Adriel that it would be nice to save the map that I turf cut as associated with the list – how long until I can save a turf cut? Is it even possible to print a turf cut map?

Adriel Hampton commented 2012-01-17 20:49:57 -0500

Yes, only people with control panel access – intern and up – can access the lists and update records.

Greg Brown commented 2012-01-17 20:46:17 -0500

In your screen casts, you shared the list with Jim Gilliam. What access level does Jim have in order for him to view the list? I’m having trouble sharing the list with a volunteer so they operate in call mode.

Do they need to have “Intern” access?

Ion I Buicliu commented 2011-10-21 12:49:44 -0400

All we need for the walk sheets is a name and address.and there is enough space left for comments. We ended up putting 2 lanscape pages on one portrait, to be more efficient. No need for other info for door-knocking. I would suggest a vatiety of template lists in pdf, some portrait, some landscape.

Jesse Haff commented 2011-10-21 10:18:09 -0400

The walk list PDFs are currently designed to print in landscape, and call sheets are in portrait. Both contain the most common fields required to canvass or phone bank. Feel free to suggest a feature for customizable fields and a portrait option for walk lists here:

http://nationbuilder.com/suggest

Ion I Buicliu commented 2011-10-20 16:33:34 -0400

The Print to .pdf feature creates a landscape document. How can I have it do portrait? Can i choose only the fields I need in any way, for export or print?

Procinct WatchCenter commented 2011-07-14 15:43:03 -0400

This is awesome – just what I was hoping for – NB, you guys do it right.