On the State of Mobile Advocacy
Matt Wilson, Mobile Commons
With all the communications sent to the Hill today,adding a voice advocacy program, backed up with mobile, can lead to increased visibility for your organization's grassroots lobbying efforts. Organizations are also using mobile advocacy to build their lists and add a new communications channel to drive response rates to other types of advocacy and online fundraising.
There are now several vendors working in the nonprofit sector who have built target-matching applications for voice calls, similar to the district-matching features in the online advocacy arena. This is allowing organizations to connect their constituents directly to the phone lines of Congressional offices, skipping the Capitol Switchboard. This leads to longer average call times, as advocates are more likely to abandon the call when they are connected to the switchboard.
Early evidence is showing that asking people to enter a landline or mobile number into a form, such as the one used by the American Federation of Teachers, instead of asking them to switch mediums and dial a number directly, leads to increased response rates. Advocates first get voice-recorded talking points before they are connected to their Senator's office. Some organizations also give constituents the ability to opt-in to receive mobile messages at the point of asking for a phone number in a web form like the one above.
Other techniques for getting started include other web tactics.The Humane Society of the United States incorporated a mobile sign-up action into their campaign to Stop the Canadian Seal Hunt. Additionally, HSUS allowed their mobile subscribers to sign the pledge via SMS.
Another example is NARAL Pro-Choice America, an organization that is building their mobile list from their online advocacy pages such as this action page advocating for protecting reproductive health coverage in health reform. By asking constituents to enter their mobile numbers, NARAL can use the list to drive voice calls to congress or to other online actions such as this recent message:
"NARAL: Ann Coulter sinks to new low, says Tiller murder 'was terminating Tiller in the 203rd trimester.' Watch video & take action @ http://ProChoiceAmerica.org"
Twitter and Mobile and Mobile Advocacy
At Mobile Commons, we frequently get asked how Twitter and Mobile can be used together, and I like to use this analogy:
An organization's blog is to an organization's email list as Twitter is to an organization's SMS file.
Like your organization's blog, Twitter is great for allowing people to find your organization or cause. One of our clients, the National Center for Lesbian rights, had a lot of success tweeting out messages asking people to text “nclr to 69866” to sign up to get the California Supreme Court's ruling on Prop 8 via SMS the moment it was ruled upon. The advantage of the SMS is that, like your email list, you can then own the data on your list, you can segment your list, and you can start building a relationship with individuals who have opted-in to your list, in addition to some of the other advocacy actions mentioned above.
To learn more about mobile advocacy and to find potential vendors to help you get started, check out MobileActive.org.
