How an app can make volunteering for a presidential campaign easier than ever
When Nilza Serrano opens her Hillary Clinton app, the headlines aren't about the day's controversies, like the recent fallout surrounding her candidate's pneumonia diagnosis.
Instead, Serrano can scroll through a newsfeed of positive stories and blog posts on subjects like Clinton's proposal to increase on-campus child care services for students at two-year colleges and her post-graduation stint gutting fish at a salmon cannery in Alaska.
Serrano, a Barack Obama supporter who devoted herself to electing Clinton more than a year ago, spends a lot of time on the iOS app. She consults it while trying to convince voters to cast a ballot for Clinton. To "zone out" between work meetings, Serrano waters the plants in the app's digital field office and throws pieces of paper through a digital basketball hoop.
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But most importantly, Serrano, a 50-year-old business consultant who lives in a Los Angeles suburb, uses the app to instantly recruit friends and family to join her cause.
"It’s very exciting. It gives you a sense of, I’m waking up and I have a mission today," says Nilza.
"If I can encourage one more person to register [to vote] or encourage another young person to come on board — my goal is never just one, but one a day is my minimum."
Making it Easy
In the world of political organizing there are few assets as valuable as the passionate campaign volunteer ready to phone bank or knock on doors — or, in 2016, send pre-written text messages to friends in battleground states.
With less than two months left before the election, the Clinton campaign sees facilitating participation from volunteers like Serrano as an urgent task. To make that happen easily and efficiently, they're using digital tools new to this cycle, such as Facebook Live, Slack and the campaign app's ability to integrate a user's phone contacts for messaging, calling and texting.
The campaign also makes it possible for prospective volunteers to practice different types of outreach calls through an online interface. And if someone isn't sure how best to volunteer, a brief online personality quiz determines their strengths and offers specific recommendations like hosting a recruitment party and traveling to a battleground state.
"We want to provide onramps to deeper and deeper levels of activity," says Teddy Goff, Clinton's chief digital strategist and the digital director for President Obama’s reelection campaign. "If there are innovative ways to do that, great."
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The app, which will have an Android version in the coming weeks, has been a particularly effective tool for engaging less involved supporters, according to the campaign. Half of the users hadn't donated money, attended an event or volunteered prior to downloading the app.
Goff says Clinton's staff is careful to avoid using digital tools for the sake of novelty. Instead, the emphasis is on employing emerging technology to reach people who might not interact directly with a traditional field office. This includes mobile-only households and voters who work multiple jobs and may have time for little else than volunteering via the app.
If making traditional in-person connections isn't possible, the campaign wants to offer a digital experience that fosters similar enthusiasm and commitment. For example, volunteers are encouraged to use the messaging app Slack to share information and cheer each other on. Facebook Live has become a way to train volunteers and broadcast phone banking sessions in real time.
While the campaign won't disclose how many people have registered to volunteer to elect Clinton, an appeal from President Obama in August to recruit 50,000 new volunteers netted close to 60,000 signups.
Mike Conlow, technical director for Blue State Digital, a progressive digital and technology firm, says the Clinton campaign is wise to harness tools that streamline the work of volunteer engagement.
For the 2016 election, however, Conlow says the most important tool is the ability to help volunteers directly engage their networks of friends and family through their phone.
"The game changer is when you can craft an appeal where the messenger is trusted."
"The game changer is when you can craft an appeal where the messenger is trusted," says Conlow, who also served as the deputy chief technology officer of Obama's re-election campaign.
Indeed, the Clinton campaign recently began encouraging app users to take full advantage of that technology by emailing them with a request to participate in the "challenge" of reminding a friend to vote. (Goff says the campaign does not retain the contact information that users upload into the app.)
Completing that task earns the user 25 in-app stars, which can be used to upgrade their virtual campaign headquarters with items like a vintage sofa, new wallpaper and a pantsuit decal.
The Republican Playbook
The Clinton campaign, however, isn't alone in its efforts to connect more swiftly with potential volunteers via technology.
Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has his own iOS and Android app and launched an online phone banking tool for volunteers called Trump Talk. While the Trump campaign did not reply to interview requests for this story, the Republican National Committee provided Mashable additional information about the party's efforts to cultivate volunteers using digital mechanisms.
Gerrit Lansing, chief digital officer of the RNC, says the party has developed a system by which volunteers sign up online and are automatically matched to voter registration files. When that process is complete, it triggers a mention in a specific Slack channel, notifying the state director who is responsible for reaching out to the new volunteer. The goal is to coordinate an in-person meeting with local campaign staff within 24 hours.
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"We really prefer the in-person stuff," Lansing says. "There's only so much that digital internet-based training and organizing can do."
Since the RNC began working with Trump as the party's nominee, hundreds of thousands of volunteers have registered to work on the campaign, according to an RNC official. When Trump's son Eric tweeted an invitation to participate in a recent major volunteer event, which Trump himself retweeted, it led to four thousand new volunteer signups.
"It's fun for the user, better for the voter, and useful for the campaign."
As the election nears, Goff says Clinton's volunteers can expect to see the campaign try to engage them — and the public — in experimental ways, including through the app.
"For a lot of people, knocking on doors is a great experience. But for a lot of people, they’d much rather contact their friends," he says. "The recipient of that message may well be delighted to hear from an old friend. It's fun for the user, better for the voter, and useful for the campaign."
Serrano knows what's next in her volunteer commitment for the campaign: a weeklong trip to Nevada next month to try to deliver the swing state's six electoral votes to Clinton, and more phone banking with her 11-year-old daughter, who also calls voters and uses the app.
"She’s got her script down," Serrano says of her daughter. "She’s converted cold calls, and the app makes it easier."
Rebecca Ruiz is a Senior Reporter at Mashable. She frequently covers mental health, digital culture, and technology. Her areas of expertise include suicide prevention, screen use and mental health, parenting, youth well-being, and meditation and mindfulness. Rebecca's experience prior to Mashable includes working as a staff writer, reporter, and editor at NBC News Digital and as a staff writer at Forbes. Rebecca has a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and a masters degree from U.C. Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.
