Bringing Science to the Art of Relational Organizing

How Arizona Democrats took a scientific approach towards reaching voters.

By Jonathan Miller

Introduction

During the 2020 general election, the limitations on in-person organizing and the increasing number of voters who don’t answer calls from unknown numbers meant that many voters couldn’t be reached by traditional organizing tactics. To address this issue, the Biden for President campaign partnered with Democratic state parties across the country to create relational organizing programs, where instead of calling and knocking on the doors of strangers, volunteers contacted voters they knew on behalf of the campaign.

I was tasked with designing the relational organizing program on the Arizona Coordinated Campaign — the joint organizing effort between the Biden campaign and the Arizona Democratic Party.

Relational Organizing’s Impact in Arizona

Our relational organizing program was primarily an effort to recruit Arizonans to have “friend-to-friend conversations” in which they would help someone they know make a plan to vote. These types of conversations are proven to be 3–4 times more effective at mobilizing someone to vote than an ask to vote from a stranger.

During the general election, the Arizona Coordinated Campaign’s relational organizing program facilitated 41,062 friend-to-friend conversations — the most of any state on the 2020 National Coordinated Campaign.

Many of these voters didn’t answer calls from unrecognized numbers or had an outdated phone number in the voter file. As a result, they were only contacted by the campaign through a relational organizing volunteer. In a state President Biden carried by 10,457 votes, reaching them was critical.

Our program was able to reach them by experimenting with new tactics, simplifying our volunteer asks, and prioritizing the user experience. Here’s a look at what we did and what we learned from it.

Table of Contents

The article is broken up into two parts. Part 1: Relational Organizing is an overview of the program and relational organizing specific takeaways. Part 2: Building the Program is for those running (or aspiring to run) organizing programs and covers the work of building the program.

Part 1: Relational Organizing

I. Relational Organizing Workshops
II. How We Recruited New Volunteers
III. Paid Relational Canvassing

Part 2: Building the Program

IV. A Scientific Approach for Improving Fast
V. Tips on Creating a Culture for Growth
VI. Conclusion and Takeaways

I. Relational Organizing Workshops

Vote Joe 101

The foundation of our program was a relational organizing workshop, led by volunteer leaders and held over Zoom, called “Vote Joe 101” — named after the Biden campaign’s relational organizing app, “Vote Joe”.

The relational organizing workshops had two parts:

1. A training on how to relationally organize
2. Time spent relationally organizing

Three Key Lessons

This section consists of three key lessons we learned and how we used them to restructure our workshops in a way that sent our numbers soaring.

In the first two months that the Vote Joe app was available, Arizonans had 4,200 friend-to-friend conversations.

In the first 8 days after implementing our new workshop structure, they had 4,700.

Here’s a look at what we learned.

Lesson 1: Eliminating options increased usage

From our first relational organizing workshop slides. Credit Biden for President.

The Issue: Overwhelmed Volunteers

In our first workshop, we introduced volunteers to relational organizing and taught them how to use the Vote Joe app (the Biden campaign’s white-labeled version of Outvote).

The Vote Joe app allowed volunteers to:

• Share prepared posts on social media
• Identify Biden supporters in their network
• Send pre-written text messages to their friends and family

We presented slides on how to use the app, answered questions, and then eagerly awaited for people to use it. They didn’t.

Most volunteers were overwhelmed by the number of different actions they could take. By giving them several options, we inadvertently caused them not to choose any.

What Worked: Eliminating Options

Encouraged by a study showing that, “A text message from a friend increased likelihood to vote by 8.3 percentage points, far exceeding turnout effects from traditional organizing methods”, we removed every function from the app except texting. Now when an Arizonan opened the Vote Joe app, the only thing they could do was text friends and family and the only thing they could text them was an ask to make a plan to vote.

The Impact

Immediately, more volunteers started using the app. And, our volunteers confirmed that their friends were replying to the texts and they were leading to real conversations.

Our slide showing volunteers how to text in the Vote Joe app.

Lesson 2: A shared goal turned volunteers into vol-stars

The Issue: Lack of Accountability and Encouragement

Now that we settled on texting, we ended our presentations by asking each volunteer to text 20 people they knew and to do it right then. Unfortunately, most people only texted a few friends and few came close to hitting their goal.

What Worked Better: Competition

We split the next workshop into breakout rooms and held a competition to see which group could contact more friends and family — thinking replacing individual goals with team goals would create more accountability and encouragement.

The results were mixed. When one of the breakout rooms was informed that they were behind, morale plummeted. Yet, they were behind because the other group did great! Thus, the team goals worked great but the competition caused issues.

What Worked Best: Creating a Collective Ambition

The final slide in our workshop presentation. (Explained below.)

The next time, we set a group goal with the hope of replacing competition with a collective ambition.

1. The final slide in the presentation was a countdown starting at the number of volunteers x 20.
2. After sending a batch of texts, a volunteer would introduce themselves to the group and say how many texts they sent.
3. Then, the moderator would subtract that amount from the countdown and ask all the other volunteers to give the volunteer a round of applause.
4. The group continued until they hit the goal or the workshop time was up.

The Impact

This new format was a game-changer.

Applauding each volunteer and having a shared goal helped turn a Zoom workshop amongst strangers into an exciting communal experience.

Now, twenty conversations per volunteer was no longer an aspirational goal but simply the baseline of what we should expect.

Vote Joe 101. The relational organizing workshop at the heart of the program.

Lesson 3: Volunteers didn’t use the app outside of workshops

The Issue

On October 10th, Arizonans had 2,101 friend-to-friend conversations using the Vote Joe app — our largest workshop to date. The day before, we didn’t have a workshop, and Arizonans had three such conversations.

What Worked: Maximize Workshop Time

Our best chance for volunteers to have conversations was during the 1-hour workshop they spent with us. This meant a few things:

• The training needed to be as short as possible. This way, volunteers could spend more time working. When we started, the slide deck for our workshops had 48 slides. At the end of the campaign, it had 12. The shorter we made it, the higher our numbers were.
• We viewed the texts as conversation starters. We wanted volunteers to use our time together starting as many conversations as possible since we knew they were unlikely to do so outside of the workshop. We expected these conversations to continue after the workshop ended.
• We didn’t ask for IDs. We didn’t ask volunteers to identify supporters since that would take away from texting time. This was a tradeoff, but since time was limited, we chose to have volunteers mobilize their friends rather than do data entry.

Bonus Lesson: Experimenting drove innovation!

We tested lots of ideas to address these issues. Some ideas worked better than others and some not at all. Regardless of the outcome, each test brought us closer to discovering something else that worked.

II. How We Recruited New Volunteers

Once we learned how to run effective workshops, we needed to recruit volunteers to attend them. Below are some of the methods we used to bring new volunteers into the program.

Partnering with Coalitions

Michael Ramirez (Arizona Digital Organizing Director) set up meetings across the different departments so we could find ways to work together. This quickly led to a series of relational organizing workshops hosted by a number of the campaign’s coalition groups (Women for Biden, Young Americans for Biden, etc.).

One of the great benefits of relational organizing is its ability to reach voters within hard-to-reach communities. Partnering with coalition groups helped ensure the campaign reached a diverse group of constituencies.

Virtual House Parties

After attending a relational organizing workshop, we recruited attendees to host a virtual house party for their Biden-supporting-but-not-yet-volunteering friends.

There, Damon Clark (Digital Organizing Associate — Relational Organizing) or a volunteer leader would facilitate a relational organizing workshop that was identical to the normal workshops, except all the attendees were recruited by the host. Throughout the campaign, every single attendee of a virtual house party was volunteering with the campaign for the first time.

Virtual House Parties allowed us to mobilize the friends of friends of our volunteers — oftentimes, less engaged voters who were the exact people we were trying to reach.

Amid the pandemic, these events were often filled with heartwarming moments as friends and family isolated from each other were able to gather together online and work towards a common goal.

III. Paid Relational Canvassing

At the end of the campaign, we had an exciting opportunity to grow the program through a paid relational canvassing program.

The program recruited Biden supporters from Tribal and Latinx communities, as well as college campuses, and paid them to reach out to their networks and mobilize them to vote. This was done through workshops, led by Ethan Damon (Digital Organizing Associate — Paid Canvass), which were a modified version of the volunteer relational organizing workshops.

The relational canvassers identified 3,000 voters in these communities in the last 9 days of the campaign.

Again, for many of the voters our canvassers reached, this was the only time they were contacted by the campaign. That is the power of relational organizing.

How it Worked

Canvassers were paid a flat stipend that covered multiple shifts. This ensured that they were paid not just to send out a batch of messages, but also to reply and have impactful conversations. This multiple shift format also allowed us to spend time collecting IDs as well as provide assistance as replies came in.

Recruiting for a program like this was tricky and time-consuming. My biggest piece of advice is to start recruiting early!

Closing Thoughts: The Need for Experimentation

Relational organizing can be used in so many powerful and creative ways. It was only by experimenting with new ideas that we discovered what worked for us.

Part 2 looks at how we made experimentation a part of everything we did and the impact it had.

IV. A Scientific Approach to Improving Fast

Rather than rolling out a finished field plan on day one, we developed our program through a process frequently used by startups to rapidly improve products in beta testing.

This process, based on the principles of the scientific method, looked like this:

1. Test
2. Get feedback
3. Improve
4. Rinse and repeat

Step 1: Test

In the beginning, we weren’t recruiting a ton of volunteers for our workshops. The most time-efficient thing we could have done would have been to shift all of our volunteers into a single weekly event.

We did the opposite.

Our goal was to host as many events as possible and treat each one as an essential learning opportunity.

It didn’t matter if they were small, as long as they were big enough for us to test and improve.

Throughout the campaign, we averaged roughly five workshops a week — as opposed to the one we would have had if we held them weekly. The impact of this was huge:

• Assuming we could improve the program in at least one small way each time, we could improve five times a week instead of one.
• Everyone, from the staff to the volunteer facilitators, would get a month’s worth of experience in a week. This was key for rapidly onboarding volunteer leaders.

Step 2: Get Feedback

Immediately after every workshop, we would call every attendee and ask them how it went. We learned a lot from these calls.

Why call people we just met with?

• Speaking up on a large Zoom call can be intimidating. People were much more forthcoming one-on-one about their concerns and moments that confused them.
• It was efficient. We could have a conversation with a volunteer and not take away from the valuable workshop time.

Whether you had a good workshop or a bad one, the important part was that you were able to articulate why you did. It wasn’t enough to have a good event, we needed to know why so we could intentionally do more of what worked in the next workshop.

Step 3: Improve

After the calls, staff and volunteer leaders would reconvene to:

• Share what we learned from the event and calls.
• Discuss issues that occurred during the event (technical issues, a troll or very concerned volunteer, etc.) and make changes to prevent them from happening again.
• Share what worked so we could do more of it next time.

It was critical that the volunteer leaders were not just included in these discussions, but that they, the ones facilitating the workshops, were the major contributors of ideas and improvements.

The Results of this Process

Building the program was a series of trials and errors. Regardless of the outcome, each test provided us an insight that helped us improve the program in some way. These improvements built on each other and created a snowball effect that caused our numbers to grow exponentially.

Each improvement built on the ones before and overtime created a snowball effect.

V. Tips on Creating a Culture for Growth

To improve each day, you need to be willing to admit you could have done better the day before. It’s an inherently vulnerable process.

Here are some things we did in an attempt to create a culture that encouraged that process to take place:

Set the Tone

I started one volunteer leader training recapping all the things I got wrong when we started and all that we had learned since then. I hoped to show that not all of my ideas were right and that there was always a way of doing things better.

Taking the volunteer leaders on the journey of what we had learned also had the benefit of quickly building buy-in as everyone understood the why behind what we were doing.

Lower the Stakes of Failure

Jack Spiegelman (Digital Organizing Associate — Online Communities) had an idea for a new text script to recruit volunteers. So, he took a small list and tested it on them. It worked brilliantly and he recruited more volunteers than we knew what to do with.

But, it might not have worked. By mitigating the downsides of failure, he created an opportunity to succeed.

This was our approach to all new ideas: test them in a small way, see if they worked, and scale the best ones.

Celebrate the Attempt

If anyone asked to test a new idea, the answer was almost always yes. As our story shows, this meant sometimes trying things that didn’t work.

When this happened, we would celebrate the attempt, make sure the team learned all we could from it, and get ready to try something new.

VI. Conclusion and Takeaways

These are some of my biggest takeaways from the experience. These aren’t specific tactics, but rather ideas that I hope are applicable regardless of the unique circumstances you find yourself in.

1. Guesses make messes. Most of our gains came from a few tweaks to the workshops that at the time seemed inconsequential. It’s difficult to predict what will work. So don’t. Test instead.
2. There is no substitute for first-hand observation. We meticulously tracked and reviewed all sorts of metrics. None of them replaced seeing things first-hand. Data tells you where to look, your eyes tell you what’s happening.
3. Push power down and share what works. Empowering staff and volunteers provided a constant stream of ideas. When someone’s idea worked, the initial impact was small. It was only when they shared it with the rest of the team that we were able to fully capture the benefits of their innovation.
4. To grow fast, you need to learn fast. The math behind this is striking. Improving by 1% every day adds up to a 37x improvement at the end of the year. Few things have a stronger return on investment than creating systems to ensure you keep learning to do things better.
5. What in the system caused this to happen? Learning to regularly ask myself this question was a personal milestone in my development as a manager. Whenever something went right or wrong, asking this question helped identify the root cause and develop solutions to problems and ways to scale things that worked.

Closing Thoughts

Getting better every day is hard work. Yet, few things are as exciting and rewarding as seeing it pay off.

It’s also necessary work.

If we hadn’t made continuous improvement an intentional part of the program, we would have reached only a sliver of the voters we ultimately did.

In a state won by only 10k votes, that may not have been enough.

Thus, I hope this article provides you with ideas and encouragement to run your own experiments and build an even better program. We need you to.

Acknowledgments

Campaigns are a team sport. Fortunately, we had a stellar team. Here are some of the folks responsible for the program:

The Vol-star Team: The legendary group of volunteer leaders that ran 72 relational organizing workshops. Alix, Eric, Jed, Joey, Jony, Josh, Julie, Laura, Luz, Mel, Michelle, Rain, and Rebecca, thank you!

The 1,439 Arizonans who attended those workshops and asked 41,062 of their friends to make a plan to vote.

Damon Clark, Digital Organizing Associate — Relational: Damon was in charge of managing the volunteer leaders and making sure all of the workshops were ready to go. This often entailed juggling three different Zoom calls at one time. Damon did an incredible job and the country is grateful for it.

Jack Spiegelman, Digital Organizing Associate — Online Communities: Once volunteers attended a relational organizing workshop, Jack ensured they continued to mobilize their networks by turning relational volunteers into digital captains.

Ethan Damon, Digital Organizing Associate — Paid Canvass: Joining the campaign during the homestretch and with little time to waste, Ethan quickly had the relational canvassing program up and running — helping our program go everywhere and talk to everyone.

Whitney Dekle, Arizona Deputy Digital Organizing Director — Distributed: Whitney and her team were always looking for ways to help the communities team and her powerhouse text team was responsible for recruiting countless relational volunteers.

Michael Ramirez, Arizona Digital Organizing Director: Michael was a constant advocate for the relational program and was always working to provide more resources to help us grow. He was also responsible for hiring these great folks!

Emma Friend, Biden for President Regional Digital Organizing Director: Our Friend in Biden HQ. Emma was another major advocate for the program and a constant source of ideas and support.

The Biden Digital Organizing Team: Many terrific programs took the opposite approach in several areas of their programs. A lot of credit goes to the Biden Digital Organizing team for giving the states the freedom and resources to run their programs in a way that made sense for them.

Everyone Who Came Before Us: Everything we did was built off the work of countless campaigns and movements that catalyzed change through ordinary people organizing those around them.