Digital organizing is the future of union organizing. Amplifying your union's online voice around current issue-based or political campaigns is how middle class workers create change. We've seen it work. Let me give you a few examples.
In March, Australian union United Voice of Queensland organized thousands of childcare workers to win the largest funding increase in early childhood educators’ wages in history. By running a tight field operation, they were able to collect petitions, parent pledges of support, and track volunteer recruitment.
"We used NationBuilder to mobilize more than 12,000 of our supporters and 5,000 members to lobby politicians, both online and in the community. The petitions and social media integration really helped us win," said Steven Miles, the Coordinator of Comprehensive Campaigns at United Voice Queensland.
Labor councils such as the Sacramento CLC are organizing member events and running successful voter registration campaigns. During the 2012 election, they were able to recruit over 800 volunteers to canvass homes, phone bank, and register voters both online and in the field.
"We have several thousand people in our NationBuilder database. Whether it's for election day canvassing or our upcoming labor day BBQ, being able to pull a list of folks tagged as volunteers is an excellent way to do a quick call to action," said Teresa Villasenor, Office and Events Manager at Sacramento CLC.
The manual labor and time associated with administrative activities -- whether it be data entry, email blasting, or donation upkeep -- can be exhausting. It requires numbers of people and hours of planning to make one event a success. With NationBuilder you can aggregate all administrative activities, including social media outreach and online engagement to one central location, making face-to-face contact and on-the-ground mobilization so much easier.
NationBuilder is a robust and powerful tool. There's so much more an organization or political campaign can do when they don't have to use different tools to segment lists, send emails, track donations, and manage social media. Here's how unions can get the most out of NationBuilder:
- Organize your membership database. NationBuilder allows you to create tags and lists of folks important to your union. By searching a specific tag, you can pull a list of folks who became members within the last week.
- Get the word out with targeted text-blasting to your members. Today people are mobile. Cell phones are an efficient way to text blast members. You can send a call to action to quickly mobilize workers without interfering with outside employers.
- Donations for union PACs. NationBuilder allows you to accept donations on your website. You can even create subnations for additional campaigns or initiatives. Subnations are great for large locals or for giving regional units their own nations.
- Sync-up your site with social media. NationBuilder Match syncs Facebook likes, LinkedIn profiles, and Twitter accounts to the emails in your database, giving you an online social media base organized in one place. You can quickly build a strong base of social media supporters and turn them into social media ambassadors.
- Organize and engage your base with petitions. Petitions help spread the word about certain causes in your union. It's a good way of giving people the responsibility of taking action and supporting your local.
- Plus, free access to the voter file! This is pretty awesome. NationBuilder Election Center allows locals to request data for their region. The data becomes yours.
NationBuilder can help you run a substantial field campaign and massively mobilize people by just having a strong and consistent online messaging. We've seen it happen with United Voice of Queensland, we're currently seeing it happen with Sacramento Labor. It's time for other unions to take note and follow the online movement. Find out more how NationBuilder can help you amplify your unions solidarity megaphone by visiting our community page.