In the San Francisco Bay Area, where more than 80 candidates, campaigns, and political clubs use NationBuilder for their websites and supporter databases, College Board candidate Steve Ngo stands out as an incumbent aggressively using the platform as a communications hub for his down-ballot race.
Community College Board is a citywide race in which voters can pick as many candidates as there are open seats. Without a horse race between top candidates, the campaign and the issue of affordable higher education get little media attention. Since the voters first elected him in November 2008, Steve's used email updates to keep his supporters up to date on the nuances of his work on the board. Last December, he became an early customer of NationBuilder.
"NationBuilder is really user friendly and helps me create a unified media presence. I'm able to quickly target my messages to specific regions and groups of supporters," Ngo said. "I can't underscore enough how important it is for us to have our own ways of letting people know what's happening."
For the past few years, Ngo, an education attorney, has used email to communicate the detailed issues of his job. "No media is covering the inside baseball - but that's the important stuff." It's a great practice that's perhaps not common enough among elected officials.
The Farley Report
Steve Farley, an Arizona State Representative who also started early with NationBuilder, and is running for Arizona Senate, uses his nation to send regular "Farley Report" newsletters to his supporters during session. NationBuilder has helped him evolve the report from a direct mailing to a large email list. "It's the news you can't get anywhere else," Farley said, "Inside stuff that educates voters."
Farley said NationBuilder with its integrated website, email, and social media tools has helped him better understand the people he's reaching with his report. "It's not necessarily just for campaign season. It allows you to communicate with people who are interested in you all the time. People have told me that there is no other elected official that does anything like the Farley Report."
