manage data for a movement or campaign

Overview

This course focuses on the core skills and decision-making practices necessary to manage voter data for an issue or legislative campaign. You will learn how to use the Voter Activation Network (VAN) to build lists, cut turf, build counts and crosstab reports and more. You will also learn to manage the events calendar and schedule email blasts in EveryAction. 

VAN is a toolset used by progressive campaigns and organizations across the country. EveryAction is an accompanying fundraising management platform. Participants will be provided access to a VAN/EveryAction “sandbox” account with sample data for the duration of the course.

Who is this course for?

Volunteers and field organizers: If you are a volunteer or field organizer who has used VAN to enter data or look up voters, this course will take your skills to the next level. 

Tech-savvy individuals: This course is appropriate for people who are looking to get into movement data─maybe you’ve never used VAN, but you have experience managing a database. However, if you already know how to cut turf and build counts and crosstab reports, we suggest taking one of our other data and analytics courses.

Ideal applicants come from all walks of life, from seasoned organizers and campaigners looking to sharpen their skills, to beginners who are passionate about organizing and want to start their learning journey. Here are some attributes shared by all our applicants:

• Technical Aptitude: Whether you have experience in organizing online or not, we are interested in organizers and campaign practitioners who want to rapidly develop their technical skills.
• Organizing Insight: You don’t need to be a professional politico, but we’re looking for applicants with experience doing organizing work on the ground. That work can be tied to grassroots, electoral, and/or issue organizing. We seek to support organizers who are currently part of a campaign effort or are seeking to build one.
• Dedication to Inclusive Politics and Intersectional Solutions: At re:power, we center race, class, gender and sexuality across all our trainings – it’s part of our practice of inclusive politics. We want organizers to be open to new ideas regarding it and to the ideas and contributions from their fellow organizers who will reflect our diverse communities.

Lesson Plan

• Week 1: Introduction to VAN and Targeting
• Week 2: Building Targets
• Week 3: Walk Lists, Cutting Turf and MiniVAN
• Week 4: Bulk Uploads and Counts/Crosstabs
• Week 5: Forms and Email Blasts
• Week 6: Bringing It All Together—Final Exercise

Overview

This is a crash course in “movement data,” with a deep dive into data for legislative advocacy and organizing (including distributed organizing). Over the course of three weeks, participants will practice building an organizing plan with metric goals, learn how models work, and develop tests. They will also investigate and practice working with open data, and assessing the data safety of their organization.

This course is intended to be taken with a data engineering course.

Who is this course for?

Staff across departments: This course is helpful for staff across departments: Data, organizing, and digital staff will all find that this course takes their work to the next level.

Future Data Managers & Directors: Past students have successfully pivoted to data manager & data director roles after completing this course.

Ideal applicants come from all walks of life—we welcome everyone from data practitioners looking to sharpen their skills, to complete beginners who are passionate about organizing. Here are some attributes shared by all our applicants:

• Open to new things: Participants should be excited about challenging themselves to learn new ways of doing the work and partnering with others to come up with creative solutions. 
• Technical Aptitude: Whether you have experience working directly with data or not, we are interested in organizers who are able to pick up new technical skills quickly and proficiently. If you like spreadsheets and lists, or investigating innovative ways of organizing, you may be a good fit.
• Organizing Insight: You don’t need to be a professional politico, but we’re looking for applicants with experience doing organizing work on the ground. That work can be tied to grassroots, electoral, and/or issue organizing. We seek to support organizers who are currently part of an organizing effort or are seeking to build one. 
• Dedication to Inclusive Politics and Intersectional Solutions: At re:power, we center race, class, gender and sexuality across all our trainings—it’s part of our practice of inclusive politics. We encourage organizers to be open to new ideas regarding inclusive politics, especially from their fellow organizers who will reflect our diverse communities.

Course Expectations

This is an interactive course. We ask participants to write in the chat box, share verbally, and participate in breakout group discussion. We understand that folks have a lot going on though, so if you are not able to participate in a breakout discussion you can let the tech moderator know.

We encourage, but do not require, participants to turn on video during breakout discussions.

Participants should set aside about 5 hours a week for coursework—including attending live webinar sessions, homework, and optional office hours.

Optional office hours: Every other Friday, 3:00–4:00 pm ET

Lesson Plan

• Session 1: Intro to Movement Data
• Session 2: Data During the Electoral Cycle
• Session 3: Data for Issue Organizing Campaigns
• Session 4: Data Collection & the Ladder of Engagement
• Session 5: Open Data
• Session 6: Next Top Model

We will provide supplemental materials on Tests and Experiments, as well as Digital Safety, and also be able to answer questions on those topics during office hours.

Questions? Please contact us at data@repower.org