Canvassing isn’t easy—your volunteers spend hours out in the heat or snow going from door to door on foot, tirelessly working to help your campaign. Grassroots Unwired makes the canvassing easy! Your canvassers can collect information from the constituents they interact with, take and share photos and videos for your constituents to share on social media, and even collect donations, all in one place.
In this Tools Episode, Joe chats with Russ Oster about how campaigns can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their canvassing operations using Grassroots Unwired. With Grassroots Unwired, your canvassers can collect data, take photos and videos for constituents to share on social media, and even collect donations. Listen in to learn how you can use Grassroots Unwired to stay connected with your canvassers in the field, drum up early engagement with voters, and determine if your campaign’s canvassers can benefit from this great tool.
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Joe Fuld
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Martín Diego Garcia
Twitter: @gmartindiego
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Presented by The Campaign Workshop
Joe Fuld (00:01):
Hey there. It's Joe Fuld. Welcome to How to Win a Campaign Tools Edition. This week we're talking to my friend Russ Oster about his company Grassroots Unwired. Russ, how are you?
Russ Oster (00:15):
Doing great, Joe. Thanks for having me.
Joe Fuld (00:17):
Absolutely. So talk to us a little bit about what your inspiration was to start Grassroots Unwired.
Russ Oster (00:24):
Sure. So I I've been working on political campaigns for longer than I care to admit. And actually one of the first people I ever met on campaigns was Joe at a, you, at a, at a DNC training. And I had been working on campaigns for about 15 years, mostly in the field and with the advent of mobile phones and how ubiquitous they were, it became kind of frustrating to me that we were still doing our door to door canvassing on paper, clipboards pencils, having to do data entry on the back end, all that kind of stuff. So we set out to build a solution for that. And out of that came grassroots on wire, which ultimately became a mobile platform for not just political campaigns, but nonprofits and other advocacy organizations to do all the different kinds of things they do when they're out in the field doing face to face outreach you know, obviously grabbing survey questions and answers getting signatures on petitions and pledge cards, collecting small dollar donations and even capturing content that can then be repurposed for a social and digital needs.
Joe Fuld (01:35):
So talk to us about what sets Grassroots Unwired apart from other canvassing tools. You talked a little bit about, it can be used for advocacy. It can be used for political campaigns, but dig into if I'm a, I'm a manager at a nonprofit, if I'm a campaign manager, why should I pick your tool over other tools? There are lots of them. We have them on our a hundred campaign tools list and you're featured there, but why your tool versus the other canvassing tools out there?
Russ Oster (02:06):
Sure. I think the, the biggest thing that sets us apart is the value that we can add to any type of face-to-face effort. Given the, the wide range of features that we've built out. Like I said, we were never satisfied to just have a tool that allows you to ask questions and record answers. We wanted you to be able to do so much more than just collect the survey. And we've set out to build those tools that give campaigns the ability to do that. And we've done it in conjunction with our clients. So they have been our biggest supplier of ideas. And invariably, when they come to us and say, Hey, it'd be cool if we could do this, it'd be cool if we could do that we'll get to work and actually do it. And so our platform is very much constantly growing and evolving. And I think that definitely sets us apart from other tools that are out there.
Joe Fuld (03:01):
So tell us a little bit about your new innovations for 2020, what you've added and what you're excited about.
Russ Oster (03:11):
Yeah, so I think the biggest thing that we wanted to facilitate in 2020 something that I've always been an advocate of just as you know, again, working on field campaigns for so long, is early engagement. I think you know, the reality is that your field folks are going to be out in the field now for an election that's in November. But you're looking at your mobile tools in your canvassing tools as things that just need to get you through September and October through the GOTV period. Our tools are built for early engagement. And so some of the things that we've added for 2020 are right along those lines, the most exciting things right now are two things that give you the ability to take content from the field and use it to populate your social media and digital activities. So one is called the social selfie that allows you to take a photo from within the app. That photo is then sent back to the voter embedded in a link, if the voter clicks on that link via email or SMS, however you want us to send it to them. It opens up a post in Facebook or Instagram or Twitter with the photo and with any hashtags and messaging that you want to make sure gets into that post. They just have to click post. And you've got somebody who you've just interacted with at the door, who is now promoting your campaign or effort on social media. The video capture tool that we've built into the app is similar in that we give you the ability to capture video and then have that video both attached to the voters record, let the voters sign a waiver digitally so that you have permission to use the video and then have that be able to access that video easily in the cloud so that then you can then repurpose it for any digital activities ads, website posts, things like that, that you want to use it for.
Joe Fuld (05:13):
Yeah. And I can see that both of those tools could be those offerings could be used both for political campaigns, but also for advocacy. It's those are really neat as far as new offerings that you're doing.
Russ Oster (05:25):
Yeah. And we have a couple of clients who are been at the forefront of using this who really are in the advocacy space and the, and the face to face fundraising space. And so anything that can help them get their message out to a broader audience and give more access to the support that they're seeing out in the field is, is just going to benefit the overall operation.
Joe Fuld (05:49):
Tell me now, as far as who can afford the tool and who can't, what are the size of campaigns or organizations that are utilizing your tool and what are campaigns that are too small to really be able to utilize it?
Russ Oster (06:05):
Yeah, so we, you know, we have campaigns where there's, you know, less than 10 people out there doing the work. We have campaigns where there's literally a thousand people out there everyday doing the work. So it does vary cost is always a consideration. We're, we're well aware of that, but we're also well aware that we work with, you know, nonprofits and other budget conscious organizations. So we're always happy to work on pricing that is, you know, that can accommodate the most users possible. I'd say the sweet spot is a campaign that has anywhere between 25 and 50 people out in the field a day. That could be in one location, it could be spread out across the country. You know, really doesn't matter.
Joe Fuld (06:47):
So how to advocacy and political campaigns train their teams on your tool, what are you doing as far as training best practices to get people up to speed quickly?
Russ Oster (06:59):
Yeah, so we will always provide as much input as a, as an organization needs in terms of best practices, but we've seen out in the field that we've seen people best leverage the tools that we offer. And generally that's well received because you know, if it's worked for somebody then other folks want to know about it and use it as well. But, and as far as the training we typically have a session that lasts about a half hour to train a trainer who is, you know, a field director or, or a campaign director or something like that. It's a fairly straightforward and intuitive and then they turn around and train the canvassers, or whoever's going to actually be out in the field using the tool. We have a comprehensive set of user guides that we provide in an online support portal that's available too, for any questions. But again, the, the application is, is pretty intuitive and we have people of all ages picking it up and using it, adapted to it very quickly.
Joe Fuld (08:03):
That's great. All right. So last question for you. What do you think the number one challenge that Grassroots Unwired helps nonprofits and political campaigns solve?
Russ Oster (08:16):
Yep. So I think the number one challenge we help political campaigns, nonprofits solve is the ability to do what they're doing more efficiently and effectively. Having stuff done on paper, having to deal with data entry having to wonder where your canvassers are and what they're doing, all of that is to the detriment of your end goals. So being able to provide technology to support all of that makes them do their jobs much, much more efficiently. It makes the whole effort that much more effective.
Joe Fuld (08:51):
Well, Russ, thanks so much for the time. We really getting a chance to talk about Grassroots Unwired. I look forward to seeing and utilizing these tools in the coming months. And we'll talk again soon.
Russ Oster (09:04):
Sounds great. Thanks Joe.
Joe Fuld (09:06):
Thanks for listening to this episode of How to Win a Campaign: Tools Edition. To learn more about great campaign tools, check out our blog and remember to like review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
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