PTP Blog

I had a conversation yesterday with someone who’s trying to wrap his head around how to talk with organizers in his organization about what a database does and what value it provides - why they should use it, and how to think about using it.

As I talked with him about his database questions, I realized that it might be a useful exercise to get this out on the net somewhere. Although I suspect that most of us who do tech work with organizers have had some version of this conversation many many times, I don’t know that I’ve seen it in print, so here goes:

I usually start by asking organizers how many people they can track without any additional technology - no paper, no clipboards, no computers, etc. Most folks think about it for a minute and say somewhere between 10 to 20, and that number trends downward as we get into the details of what they feel is important to keep track of – add in things like occupation, number of children, personal history or stories related to the issues in question and folks rapidly downgrade their initial estimates.

Then I ask how many people they can keep track of using the original organizer’s database - the clipboard and various paper forms - and the number usually jumps up to around 40-50 or higher depending on how long the person’s been an organizer and how meticulous they are about record keeping.

Then I’ll ask how many people the organization usually turns out at events like direct actions, press conferences, etc. Organizations without databases, working in urban areas, tend to turn out 30-50 people if they don’t have a good data management process. Organizer’s math suggests this means that they’re capable of making around 100 contacts to turnout those 30 people.

I wrap it up by saying something like “you’ve been turning out around 30 people to most of your events for the last several years - and what’s it going to take for you to build at a bigger scale so you can demonstrate more power and really move your agenda?” The clear answer is always more people and it doesn’t take a whole lot to go from more people to a better way of managing member info. Bottom line is that if you want to contact more people, you need a system to track the information that goes beyond the limits of paper and personal memory.

One of the biggest challenges organizers face with a database is generating good, usable lists for organizers to use when talking with people door to door.  Setting aside (for now) the challenges related to quality of information on the lists, I’m interested in how you all deal with the other challenges related to generating good lists:

• how do you generate lists so that your organizers and canvassers don’t have to go back and forth across streets because your database printed the street numbers consecutively?
• How do you decide what information to include on the sheets?  Do you have a standard set of information that is on every sheet?
• Do you train people on using the sheets?  How?  What does your training include beyond talking through the at the door rap?

We’re in the middle of a COaTI right now, and as a result, I’m talking with lots of groups about their database questions and challenges.  These types of questions come up pretty often, so I thought I’d kick them out to all of you to see if we can start a broader conversation about what it takes to really integrate a database into community organizing work.

Rich Cowan says that he is getting closer to completing the Release 1.0 of Organizers’ Database (ODB), an organizing database that works well for smaller groups. It uses the MS Access database engine. It’s free to download, has a track record and it seems to be becoming open source.

PTP’s board - made up of a majority of organizers - has decided that the lack of a decent database solution is hobbling organizations as they attempt to grow. From what we’re seeing, a major obstacle to successful mobilizing is the lack of an easy to use database in this sector. While there have been products put together in the nineties, as standalone applications they are no longer meeting the needs of organizing as organizations need to straddle both the offline and online organizing environment. Although the vast majority of the people that community organizing works with are off the ‘net, organizers still have a need to move up to a platform that allows them to work in both sectors. This need will increase in the next five years. Finding and developing the application is only a part of the project, though. Without training and technical support, it will fail. Consequently, we are going to put together a comprehensive project plan which will be used in a proposal to seek funding from foundations and major donors.

We’ve got an interest in the CivicCRM project of SocialSource Foundation because, once it is successfully built, it would make a great platform for this project. We still have some homework to do, but we think it’s a good candidate and we’re glad that they are investing in this development.

We’ve been looking into the database problems that community organizing groups had with list enhancement projects last fall. It points up the real problems that groups have with their database software. While the activities of community organizing don’t vary much from one organization to another, the same cannot be said for their software, in fact we estimate that 60-75% have custom software.

They are using spreadsheet programs, custom-built applications written in MS Access or Filemaker Pro, modified versions of ebase, donorperfect, organizer’s toolbox, ms Outlook and a few scattered mySQL applications.

Bluntly stated, the situation is a mess – a mess because, without some effort to standardize, it’s nigh on to impossible for groups to share their experiences with each other. The training costs are enormous. There is no economy of scale for the community. PTP is interested in getting a community of practice going within the organizer’s community, but the ability to share best practices will be terribly hindered unless and until a more common technology platform is developed.