9to5 requests support for costs associated with our custom, online database project. The project represents a profound leap in how we use technology to make progress toward our organizing and policy change goals.

New Technology Infrastructure; Training; Strategic Technology; Database upgrade

www.9to5.org

$5000

9to5 National Association of Working Women respectfully requests $8,000 from PTP’s Organizing Technology fund for costs associated with our custom, online database project. The grant will be used to cover part of the first-year fees and training for all staff to become proficient and comfortable with the new system.

Organizational Background
For 34 years, 9to5 has worked to build a movement of low-wage working women to achieve economic justice. We are a multi-issue, multi-racial organization with a membership directly affected by the policy issues we work on everyday – low-wage jobs, family-flexible policies, nonstandard work, welfare and discrimination. Our work is national in scope, in order to promote a national policy agenda and create an effective movement, as well as local in scope to promote state and local policy agendas. We’ve developed a national organization with staffed offices in 4 cities, a network of local chapters, and activists in 200 cities, in all 50 states.

We focus on involving directly affected low-wage and no-wage women in campaigns to improve corporate and public policy in four areas: work-family and good jobs, including living wages; welfare and income supports; nonstandard (part-time and temporary) work; and anti-discrimination. In all of our areas of work, we utilize grassroots organizing, advocacy, leadership development and training, coalition building, public education, and civic and voter participation programs.

Some of 9to5’s current programs include:
o Job Retention Skills Training: 9to5 offers workshops on job skills training and workplace issues including rights on the job, interview skills, conflict resolution and balancing work and family.
o Leadership Development: we provide women training, direct support and opportunities to get involved as activists on low-wage women’s issues.
o Policy Advocacy: we work with 9to5 members and other grassroots coalitions for policies such as living wages and family friendly workplace policies.
o 9to5 Job Survival Hotline (1-800-522-0925): 9to5 provides legal advice and referrals to thousands of women each year who are experiencing workplace inequities or discrimination.
o Election Connection: we do broad outreach and non-partisan voter registration, education and get-out-the-vote efforts to increase participation among working women and hold elected officials accountable to our issues.

We are currently in the process of greatly improving the way we track and maintain data about our members, activists, Job Survival Hotline callers, donors and allies. The software that we currently use to track members and hotline callers is extremely outdated and difficult to adapt to online functions such as e-mail alerts. Our membership information is housed in one office and is not transmittable electronically to other staffed or volunteer chapters. The membership database is run on Q&A, an ancient program that is not produced anymore. Each office uses disparate systems to track potential members, contacts, allies. We do use DonorPerfect Online to manage our donor database, but we have not been using it at its full capacity. For a period of three years, we worked on and off with a technology consultant to remedy these problems. The consultant was never able to move us very far toward our goals.

The project was renewed when Progressive Technology Project invited staff from the Atlanta office of 9to5 to participate in its winter 2005/06 “Community Organizing and Technology Institute”. Through this series of trainings, staff gained the knowledge and skills to develop a comprehensive technology plan and to evaluate and choose a more up to date and functional database system, based on our unique organizing work. The data system we chose after careful consideration, The Databank, can be accessed by multiple staff persons anywhere there is an internet connection. It will provide a central system where we can more effectively manage all of our constituent information.

Along with solid information about technology planning and database best practices, the PTP-led training sessions reinforced the importance of staff participation, buy-in, and effective training. All 9to5 staff have been regularly briefed on the database improvement project and invited to participate in a “tech team” that will oversee implementation and training. Because of feedback from staff on the importance of live and one-on-one learning, in May 2006 we held an in-person training session with staff from The Databank, in which all 9to5 staff participated. We coordinated the training with several other organizing groups we met during the PTP technology trainings, who are also new Databank clients, in order to share and minimize costs.

We chose this particular system after carefully assessing our unique organizational structure and organizing needs, and conferring with other organizing groups who currently use The Databank through the PTP convenings. The Databank came with high recommendations from other groups, for its solid technical support, customized design, online accessibility, and solid security. In addition, The Databank was created with social justice nonprofits and their unique needs in mind.

To ensure sustained funding for the database and civic/voter engagement module, we have written a long-term development plan with strategic steps to increase funding from individual donations and earned income such as speaking, training, and publications.

Overview of 9to5’s Organizing Goals
In the coming year, 9to5 will continue to document problems that low-wage women face. We will provide analysis and personal stories related to these problems, identify policy solutions, disseminate this information nationally, and organize policy campaigns with coalition partners. Leadership development activities will be offered to members and activists on campaign-related issues. All of our issue campaigns will be led by directly affected low-wage women. Members will be provided with effective issue education and skills-building training and opportunities. We will increase low-wage women’s participation in the electoral process around all four issue areas.

All of our goals involve improving public and workplace policies on the issues that directly affect our members; including demonstrating the need and building pressure for the changes we seek. Goals also include working toward ending all forms of discrimination by educating working women about their rights and steps to enforce their rights; encouraging women to take individual and collective action to solve workplace problems and improve corporate and public policies; and taking steps to close the pay gap faced by women and people of color.

Using Technology to Advance our Goals
The requested technology improvements will allow us to vastly increase our outreach methods as well as our outreach effectiveness. We are incorporating the voter enhancement and civic engagement functions The Databank offers in addition to the data management “core” function. These functions will allow 9to5 to greatly expand the scope and impact of our ongoing policy campaigns, including family-friendly workplace policies, living wage jobs, welfare and income supports, and anti-discrimination as well as our Election Connection voter engagement project. The technology will also streamline many of our organizing and outreach tasks, allowing staff to accomplish tasks easier, faster and more efficiently.

We currently engage our constituency through mail outreach (action alerts, fact sheets) and in-person outreach (at meetings, community events, neighborhood outreach, government or direct service offices). We do send some e-action alerts, but they are basic email messages and generally do not incorporate pictures, extra resource links or links to elected officials. Our methods for sending these email blasts are outdated, ineffective, and time consuming. Although our constituents, who are mostly low-wage and no-wage women, have historically had less access to the internet, this is still a growing and vital method of communication for grassroots organizing groups. 9to5 is currently engaged in a strategic planning process, in part to analyze how we can advance our organizing goals through an increased web presence and through internet technologies. Throughout the process, which begins in January 2007, we will be identifying ways to improve our programs through better use of technology, including the internet and our Databank system.

The Databank includes an action alert system that will integrate with the new database and our web site. It will enable us to send personalized email calls to action, through which our members and constituents can send a message by email or fax to their own elected officials with just a few clicks. It will also allow our members to access names and contact information for all their elected officials via our website. These tools will make taking action simpler and easier for our constituents. The tools will also give our organizers another way to effectively identify and develop leaders. They will be able to track who is taking regular action on what issues, and give those members the support and tools they need to become spokespeople and leaders.

The system will also improve our ability to collect and track data on our effectiveness and our impact. It will allow us to measure our impact by recording how many contacts with elected officials our alerts generate, and who is taking the action. Our constituents will be able to forward our message with a “tell a friend” feature. We will also be able to target our efforts by easily finding who our members are within a given “target” district. This function will allow us to communicate to and mobilize our activists within a particular elected official’s district, when quick action is needed to pressure an official on a certain bill or policy issue.

Our Election Connection get-out-the-vote project will also be more effective with this technology. Through a partnership with the Gill Foundation, we get all our constituent data enhanced to find registration and voting history, change of address and other key information. The Databank will let us manipulate this enhanced data to target our education and outreach efforts, for example, to constituents who are not currently registered to vote or have not voted recently.

The technology will build our organizing capacity by giving our volunteer chapters and activists easy access to much of the same information and tools our staff organizers have. Volunteer chapter leaders currently do not have access to the database that houses their chapter members’ names, contact info and history with the organization. With the Databank, volunteer leaders will be able to view their members, pull reports, print labels, and track individual contacts with members or potential members. This will make it much easier for volunteer leaders to organize in their cities, as they will not have to call a staffed office and wait for the information they need (such as mailing labels) to come via email or postal mail.

Our toll-free Job Survival Hotline provides lawyer and government resources as well as information about rights and steps to take to address unfair and illegal on-the-job situations. In addition, our “Response Team” members provide local resources and support to persons from their area who call the hotline. The Databank will give our Response Team members access to the hotline call log of persons who are referred to them. This will increase their ability to recommend the right resources and connect with the callers, and will allow them to record their contact.

The Databank will also give 9to5 a more stable, accessible way to house information about our constituents and our allies. Organizers currently keep data about members and potential members in varied ways, from individual databases to notes on scraps of paper. The new system will enable us to enter and track useful information and contacts that will be easily accessible to other staff. This will help to eliminate some of the information gap that occurs when there is staff turnover—the transfer of knowledge to new staff will be more systematic. We are aware that in order for this to happen, our organizers must be well trained in the system, and committed to using it in such a way that maximizes its benefits to the organization.

Our media and public relations activities will also become more effective with the Databank tool. We currently collect “Voices” stories from our constituents, which are personal testimonies of the need for the policies we seek, such as living wages or paid sick days. The database will allow us to store them in a central place, and easily search by keyword. We often get calls from the media looking for personal stories on a particular issue or by a particular demographic. We will also be able to link our “Voices” web entry page directly to the database.

The Databank system represents a significant leap for 9to5 in the way we record, track and manipulate data regarding our constituents, members, allies, elected officials and funders. The system will also provide far easier and more effective communication between staffed offices and between staff and volunteer chapters. Tasks that currently require planning and communication between two or three offices can now be completed by one person much more quickly than before.

We are currently uploading samples of our data into the Databank and making small changes to the design. The next step is to survey all staff once again, make final design changes, and upload all of our data. Once the system is up, we plan to conduct extensive training for all staff and key volunteer leaders.

Our staff members and volunteer leaders have very different levels of experience and comfort with computers, databases and internet technologies. Partly due to the PTP trainings that some 9to5 staff have attended, we recognize the importance of ongoing training and support for staff and volunteers who will use the system. We are also committed to in-person trainings where possible, because our staff has expressed this is key for them to learn the system well and feel comfortable using it daily.

We plan to conduct a second in-person training in the forst quarter of 2007 for all staff either at an all-staff meeting or at each staffed office. All staff will also take part in the basic “webinar” trainings the Databank offers. We will then follow up with each staff person individually to identify any specific areas of the database they need additional training on, and have other 9to5 staff or Databank staff do the extra trainings. Databank capability, relevant to each staff position, will be included in all job descriptions and yearly evaluations. Ongoing Databank updates and trainings will be provided at 9to5’s yearly all-staff retreat, which is held every January.

Because our database will be hosted online by the Databank company, they are responsible for regular backups and technical support. In working with them thus far on the project, we have found their staff to be very helpful, always available and have an understanding of the unique needs grassroots organizing groups have.

This technology does come with added yearly costs for the organization. One way we plan to sustain the costs is by increasing our income from individual donors and through our speaking and training activities. The databank will support these activities by giving us a central way to track and engage donors as well as outlets for our speaking and training enterprise. We have also contracted with a consultant, who is an expert in her field and knows 9to5 well, who will produce a business plan to guide us in increasing our earned income.

9to5’s staff and key volunteer leaders will evaluate the Databank project regularly, with regular reporting to our national Board of Directors and local chapter Boards. Calendar year 2007 will be the first year we will use the product. In 2007, we will conduct monthly evaluations with all staff and volunteers who use the Databank, to gather information on how they are integrating the system into their daily tasks, what problems or issues arise, what works well with the system and what may need to change. As we fully develop the e-advocacy components of the system, we will track action taken, evaluate the success of our efforts, and modify our systems as needed. Monthly evaluations will be coordinated by the project manager who has managed the Databank project from the start; e-advocacy evaluations will be conducted by our Organizing Director.

The evaluation will guide our plans for ongoing training on the system, both peer-to-peer and with a trainer from the Databank. Feedback from the ongoing monthly evaluations will be compiled and shared with all staff at our January 2008 organizing retreat. This will be an opportunity to review how the system affected our organizational capacity and organizing goals in 2007, and how to most effectively integrate it into 2008 strategies and activities.