State legislative · County · Municipal
You don't have time for a vendor.
Congressional campaigns raise millions and have vendors competing for them. A state house race on forty thousand dollars has the candidate's nephew and a spreadsheet. That gap is why this exists.
Free. 73 days to the general
Read this before you apply
The clock changes what is worth asking for. Better you hear it now than after a call.
- This late, ask for a fix and not a platform. A number, a list, a pipeline, ten thousand documents turned into rows. That is days of work and we can start this week. A tool your organizers log into is a three-month project, and three months from now the election is over.
- Scope down and you almost always get a yes. Most campaigns describe a platform when what they need is one query nobody can run. Naming that correctly is most of what the first call is for.
- You still need one person who answers. Usually the manager, doing four other jobs. Even a fast job needs someone reachable for a day.
When we cannot help a campaign it is nearly always because the ask was too big for the calendar, not too hard. Scope it down and the answer is usually yes.
What actually helps a downballot campaign
- Making your voter data usable. You are licensed for a file and probably cannot get a useful list out of it. Cleaning, matching against your own supporter and donor records, and producing the cuts your field plan needs.
- Turf a human can walk. Routes built from street geometry instead of rectangles, the difference between four doors an hour and twelve.
- Volunteer logistics that hold. Shifts, reminders, no-shows, and a Monday morning number that is true.
- Knowing what happened. Contact rates and where the plan is behind, while there is still time to change it.
- Election night. Pulling returns from a clerk who publishes them as a scanned PDF, and having a number before the local paper does.
Money, plainly
Our work is free and always will be. It is donated by individual volunteers, which is not a contribution under federal law and is not something your treasurer has to report.
You pay for your own infrastructure, you open the cloud account, the committee's card goes on it, usually under $40 a month. We are strict about it because donated hours are free and donated dollars are not. Money spent on your behalf is reportable, and it is better for both of us if there is nothing to report.
If that bill is the actual blocker, say so on the form. Full explanation here.
