At Bettizens we promote the use of collaboration, communication, and event management tools.
Right here, we are specifically focusing on political, volunteer management, and social marketing tools.
Political Tools
Political tools are important not only for electing candidates at all levels, but also for promoting bills, advancing Bettizens’ views, and asserting our opinion.
Relay is a peer-to-peer texting tool that can take your political campaign to the next level! With this political campaign software, you’re able to start real conversations with supporters and boost voter turnout.
Fundly is a robust crowdfunding platform that anyone can use to raise money, including for political campaigns! If your campaign is in need of funds, you set up a fundraising page and share your goal via social media and email.
NGP VAN is a political fundraising tool that can help you raise money for your campaign. With segmentation tools, you can craft the most effective fundraising appeals depending on your supporters’ demographics.
Accepting donations through NGP VAN is easy! Whether you’re collecting donations online or at campaign events, this political tool comes with easy one-click contributions, online progress bars to track your campaign’s progress, and mobile-optimized forms.
At Campaign Data Apps, their main goal is to help campaigns improve their online presence. Their technical team will create a political app where supporters can learn more about your core causes.
When a supporter downloads an application created by Campaign Data Apps, location-based notifications will activate to keep the person in the loop on nearby events. Supporters are also able to make contributions via your political app.
If you’re looking to amp up your constituent data and identify voters, then Camelot is the political campaign tool for you. Camelot offers comprehensive voter profiles and features to help segment your supporters.
Your team will be able to choose from groups of supporters to canvass via online or direct mail. Plus, you’ll receive real-time updates on the data recorded during your canvassing.
Voter Gravity can help you track essential information about voters and supporters. Keep track of voters’ contact information and social media links so that you can build connections with supporters.
What’s more, Voter Gravity is an easy-to-use political tool that comes with a pre-loaded database of voters within your district. This data is updated on a regular basis so you have current information on your voters.
Volunteer Management Tools
Volunteers often help keep the doors open and enable progressive organizations to deliver vital programs and real change. They are at the core of the grassroots actions, lend their expertise on the board of directors, to fundraising campaigns and special events, and often work in direct activism-related roles.
Relay is a peer-to-peer texting tool that can take your political campaign to the next level! With this political campaign software, you’re able to start real conversations with supporters and boost voter turnout.
Get Connected is a comprehensive volunteer management solution perfect for volunteer management leaders who have trouble balancing administrative tasks, promoting programs, and turning volunteers into donors.
Better engage volunteers while also setting up the foundation for an impactful, long-lasting relationship. Volunteers are some of your most valuable supporters, so make sure to invest in a solution that provides easy tools for volunteer management and one that ensures a positive experience for all.
Lumaverse Technologies offers a variety of powerful nonprofit software solutions that can help any organization streamline and simplify supporter management processes—including for donors, members, and, of course, volunteers. This software is perfect for nonprofits, schools, faith groups, and other organizations looking to take a data-informed approach to volunteer management.
One of many reasons why a lot of people love Lumaverse’s volunteer management tools is because it integrates with Double the Donation. Not only can you collect and store critical volunteer management data in your CRM system, but you can also cross-reference that information against Double the Donation’s comprehensive corporate giving database to discover new volunteer grants and matching gift opportunities.
VolunteerLocal is a volunteer management system built for nonprofits, educational institutions, healthcare organizations, festivals, events, and more. This software is a fantastic choice for groups of all shapes and sizes looking to simplify and streamline their volunteer engagement processes.
VolunteerLocal stands out because of its native integration with Double the Donation’s matching gift and volunteer grant automation tool, 360MatchPro.
Volunteer grants are a significantly underutilized form of corporate funding offered by companies whose employees volunteer with charitable organizations. By employing a volunteer grant software solution, VolunteerLocal is helping to close that gap, inform eligible volunteers about grant availability, and secure more dollars for nonprofit causes.
Mobilize is the events management and volunteer recruitment platform that connects mission-driven organizations and supporters. Nonprofit organizations, advocacy groups, labor unions, and political campaigns have all hosted successful events with the platform’s intuitive features and a rapidly growing network of nearly 2 million volunteers.
Organizations that use Mobilize have seen drastic increases in supporter engagement with their events, like 30% increases in attendance from online signups. A bigger audience combined with seamless signup and communication tools makes it easy to supercharge your impact now and over the long run.
Boardable makes organizing and managing volunteer board members a breeze. With their tools on your side, you’ll easily find the best meeting times, securely store all your documents, create discussion threads, and much more.
The intuitive platform will centralize communication, drive productivity, and enhance the volunteer board member experience in no time! These comprehensive tools may be just what your team needs to make snappy decisions and sustain operations.
InitLive is an all-in-one volunteer and event management tool. It helps organizations reduce administrative time and streamline management processes across the board — from volunteer recruitment to retention.
Through its cloud-based web app and native mobile app, this volunteer management solution has helped hundreds of organizations reduce volunteer administration time by up to 70%, decrease volunteer no-shows by 30%, and boost retention year over year.
GivingMail is a direct mail marketing tool used by nonprofits for a variety of purposes, including fundraising, donor relations, and volunteer management. Specifically, this platform can be used to connect with a wide range of supporters, engage volunteers in new opportunities, and retain individuals time and time again.
GivingMail offers a unique and intuitive web-to-print direct mail platform that you can use to send all sorts of physical mailings to your volunteers. For example, mail beautifully crafted event invitations, thank you messages, organization newsletters, mission updates, and more!
POINT is a free all-in-one volunteer management platform for nonprofits. Its collaborative tools help organizations find and manage volunteers using its cloud-based system, as well as partner with businesses or schools to co-host events. POINT also offers an admin dashboard and volunteer iOS and Android app.
POINT offers volunteer tools for both nonprofits and companies. In fact, when a company buys a subscription to POINT, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit receives the platform for free. This means nonprofits can benefit from POINT without breaking the bank and leverage the tech tools they need to succeed.
VolunteerHub offers volunteer and event management tools that help you create a successful volunteer experience. Maximize your efforts to organize and promote your events while using an all-in-one solution for scheduling, recruiting, and engaging your volunteers.
VolunteerHub simplifies each step of the volunteer management process from start to finish.
VolunteerHub offers rewards and recognition tools to engage your volunteers. Add an element of competition and incentives to your volunteer management strategy and show appreciation for your volunteers to boost retention.
TeamKinetic FREE is the basic version of TeamKinetic’s volunteer management software. Designed to cater to organizations that need to advertise up to two opportunities at once, the software provides the essential tools necessary to efficiently manage volunteers.
This software is ideal for organizations who have limited opportunities available, if you have multiple opportunities it is recommended to explore other TeamKinetic software available to fully utilize the potential of your volunteers.
TeamKinetic’s paid versions of volunteer management software unlock unlimited features that will benefit volunteers and their coordinators.
VOMO is an award-winning volunteer engagement platform designed to recruit new volunteers, improve communication, optimize the user experience, and convert volunteers into donors.
Organizations across the world leverage VOMO to help simplify the volunteer experience and provide robust analytics that helps share the story of the impact that their supporters are making.
With the recent merger with Virtuous Software, VOMO offers a holistic generosity tool that tracks donor and volunteer engagement while enabling organizations to build better relationships and increase impact with confidence.
TeamKinetic’s paid versions of volunteer management software unlock unlimited features that will benefit volunteers and their coordinators.
Better Impact, a UK-based company, offers cloud-based volunteer management software.
Their key features help nonprofits recruit and screen volunteers, schedule individual and groups of volunteers, and track and report supporter data.
Nonprofits can also customize their volunteer portal and get in touch with volunteers directly from the software.
DonorSnap’s volunteer management system tracks volunteer hours, activities, dates, and comments.
Nonprofits can also customize supporters’ interests and filter by activities.
DonorSnap also sends out email acknowledgments and easily integrates with QuickBooks.
SignUpGenius makes finding and recruiting volunteers easy and convenient.
Nonprofits can build customized sign-up forms for all kinds of volunteering opportunities.
SignUpGenius offers a feature that allows volunteers to swap dates if they can no longer fulfill their duties for their assigned date. SignUpGenius also works great for schools, clubs and groups, colleges, businesses, and churches.
Social Marketing Tools
We live in a «new era of digital activism«. Progressive leaders and progressive activists need to become experts in «social marketing» learning how to deliver strong messages and how to use social media and other platforms in mobilizing public opinion to support the causes we stand for.
Change.org. Chose a target, make a petition, and send it to your friends. If they get traction, Change.org has staff that can provide support. (They also have org accounts, that allow groups to do branded pages and export contact info of signers.)
Contact Congress – Send emails to members of the US Congress. This was developed by EFF as an open-source project. They use it for their own campaigns internally. There is also a hosted version run by Fight for the Future.
While most popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are owned by big tech, they are still useful tools in growing our progressive movement.
The Activist Handbook, in their guides, explains how to set up your socials to mobilize and engage people for your cause, while being critical of so-called ‘clicktivism’.
They talk about how to use these platforms effectively for outreach and promotion of protest actions. In addition, they give practical advice on how to work around censorship and shadow bans.
With users spread out over so many different platforms, it can be hard to create good content for all, especially for small to medium-sized progressive movements. Social media management tools can help you work more efficiently:
- Facebook Business Suite: A free tool developed to manage your Facebook and Instagram profiles in one dashboard.
- Buffer
- Hootsuite
- Sprout Social
Graphic design: Creating visually attractive imagery is a great way to illustrate your message:
- Pablo by Buffer: it’s the one we prefer. Easy to use and manage.
- Canva: also very friendly and not expensive
- Adobe Illustrator & Adobe Photoshop
- Sketch
- Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo
Making Videos: By publishing promotional videos for your actions on social media and recording your protests, even people who are outside your direct circle will be able to get to know your movement:
- iMovie: very easy to use
- Davinci Resolve (free version is enough)
- Adobe Premier Pro and Final Cut Pro
- Vegas Pro
Podcasts: Publish your audio recordings with one of these tools. Podcasts are a great way to convey your message in a personal way:
- Free: Spotify Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Suncloud
- Premium: Simplecast
- Self hosted: Podlibre
As the world increasingly moves online, more and more progressive activists are using live streaming to reach larger audiences and get their message out. While live streaming can be a great way to connect with supporters, it also comes with its own set of challenges.
Best live streaming platforms:
It’s important to send your newsletter from a secure and professional platform:
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