Community Voices Heard - Mayoral Candidates Accountability Session - May 2nd, 2001

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Using a coordinated outreach strategy that drew upon its technology infrastructure (database, email, fax) one New York City grassroots group contributed to the turn out of 600 low-income community residents and allies for its mayoral candidates forum. The forum was a show of strength for low-income residents adding their voices to the campaign debate and highlighting for the candidates critical issues for low-income voters.

Community Voices Heard (CVH), a member organization of low-income people working to build power for poor people in New York City, was ready to embark on its most ambitious campaign yet. For CVH, the impending election of a new mayor presented an opportunity to advance its campaign to end outgoing Mayor Guiliani's workfare program, known as the Work Experience Program (WEP). CVH joined with New York ACORN, another organization working for justice in low-income communities, to put immediate pressure on the four major Democratic hopefuls for mayor. Through a "Mayoral Candidates' Accountability Session," CVH planned to put forth six demands concerning the city's treatment of low-income communities and the creation of real job opportunities for people.

CVH and its allies understood that for the accountability session to succeed they had to demonstrate that there is a base of people who are concerned about WEP and workfare and who will pressure the candidates on these issues. For this reason, an early goal for the event was to turn out at least 500 low-income people and supporters to show the candidates the organization's base and power. By extension, the more folks present to hold the candidates accountable on these issues, the more likely it would be that the candidates would agree to the organizations' demands.

The Challenge:
Fusing Technology's Power with Traditional Organizing to Build Turnout From the beginning of the planning process, Community Voices Heard realized that technology would be a major tool in what would be a significant mobilizing and organizing campaign. In February 2001 CVH held a public forum on the next phase of welfare reform to analyze the impact of the prior November's elections, which had a diverse turnout of 240 people. CVH was able to identify two technology applications that had contributed to the success of the event: its database and the Internet. Many allies had seen email notices of the event, while many low-income members had come as a result of phone calls and mail notices that were organized and coordinated via the CVH database. This experience was crucial for CVH's strategy in putting together the Mayoral Candidates' Accountability Session. One woman who attended both events received an email notice about the public forum from a friend who thought she might be interested. Because she signed in at the first event, she was marked as a good prospect for the second event. She received several phone calls and mailings about the event and decided to come because CVH was well organized enough to stay in contact her.

CVH has been using an ebase database since January 2001. Ebase is a free database program designed by Tech Rocks for use by non-profit organizations. The version of ebase that CVH uses was customized by the LINC Project of the Welfare Law Center for organizations working in low-income communities. LINC worked closely with CVH staff to customize ebase to track the following info: Constituency -the entry's relationship to the organization (low-income individual, community-based organization, resource organization, foundation/funder, etc.) For CVH members it is possible to indicate "sign-up" (potential member), "active" or "inactive" member, or "leader" The welfare status of members (SSI, TANF, SNA, etc.) so that they can be informed of different campaigns based on issues that affect them Other information organizers need to know (e.g. Spanish speaking) Commitment -has the person committed to attending the event, have they said they will not attend the event, or have they said they will try to attend the event? Type of outreach - how this person was contacted (teach-in, welfare center, shelter, door-knocking, call in or referral) and the type of outreach CVH can do to follow-up with the person (phone numbers, addresses, emails, etc.). New contacts are also given ratings to help identify potential members and how they responded to issues that the organization is currently working on.

LINC also trained CVH organizers to make changes to the database as needed in preparation for an event. This customization was also important in order to track progress towards the goal of having 500 low-income people and supporters participate in the accountability session. As the date for the event grew closer it was easy for organizers to see where they stood on their goals for turnout and where more outreach was needed.

Using the information gathered and organized in the database, CVH was able to coordinate its outreach activities. As part of this planning process, CVH organizers developed strategies utilizing different forms of technology depending on the goals of the outreach.

The Database in Action
As can be expected, organizers have found that face-to-face conversation is still the best way to begin and build relationships with members or potential members. This was the outreach that would be the most crucial in turning out the strong showing necessary to pressure the mayoral candidates. Door-to-door outreach was done in neighborhoods and areas where CVH was hoping to organize and energize existing members as well as build membership. Organizers then used geographical print-outs from the database to assess whether or not there were enough interested people in one area to merit a bus picking them up for the event. In addition, CVH used teach-ins and small gatherings at different locations (shelters, food pantries, workfare sites) in order to recruit membership. This outreach was recorded in the database and interested people were entered as members or potential members.

CVH used tabling at events in addition to email and faxes in outreach to allies and other people who support the work of CVH. While face-to-face interaction is the best way of building relationships, organizers found email and faxes are powerful mediums to convey detailed information and analysis on an issue. Especially through posting to listservs on related issues, CVH was able to do outreach to, and share information with, broad groups of people very easily. Organizers also found that email was an effective way of sending last minute reminders for the event. CVH has decided to be very particular as to when to use email to protect against overly saturating their base and allies with email, understanding that email is only effective if people read it.

Six weeks prior to the accountability session, CVH's database contained 3,500 names. Outreach efforts over a four-week period increased the number of people in the database to 5,000. Organizers and CVH members spent the final two weeks prior to the accountability session calling members and allies to remind them of the event and asking them to commit to attending. Close to 7,000 phone calls were made during those final two weeks. The success of this phone banking was made possible through the information collected in ebase throughout the outreach process, such as best time to call (afternoon, evening, etc.), and which language the individual spoke. At the time organizers were calling to remind folks to attend, it was clear when and how they were originally contacted, who contacted them, and what, if any, commitment they had already made to attending the accountability session. This information was streamlined into the "phone list layout" which made this large amount of information immediately useable and accessible for the people making the last minute phone calls leading up to the event. As outreach was completed, results of commitments given and people contacted were recorded in the database.

The Mayoral Candidates Accountably Session was an overwhelming success, with close to 600 members and allies attending the packed event. Three of the four candidates for mayor attended, and the fourth sent a written response to the organization's demands and met with representatives of CVH a few weeks later. While in typical political fashion the candidates were ambiguous, at best, in responding to the organization's demands, one CVH organizer remarked that it was clear that the large turnout for the event definitely shaped the candidates' generally positive response. One candidate even committed to including members of Community Voices Heard on his transition committee if elected. In addition to energizing their base, building membership and raising awareness among allies, the event clearly placed the issues of ending workfare and WEP on the candidates' agenda of important issues facing the people of New York City.

Learning for the Future
As part of the follow-up to the accountability session, CVH undertook a thorough evaluation process in order to identify what could work better the next time. Even though goals for the event were exceeded, three areas for improvement were identified - Planning, Data-Integrity and Training.

Anticipating Database Needs: Information organizers wanted wasn't always in the database. As can happen over the course of a campaign, new needs for the database developed and these could not always be met. In the future CVH organizers will articulate more precisely the possible uses for the database as part of the initial project planning and strategy, recognizing it is important to know how the database will be used during the project to know how the database should be organized (what information will need to be put in) in preparation for the project. As organizers from CVH made clear you can only get out of the database what you put in, so planning is very important.

One example of this, which came up during the outreach for the event, was that two different databases were used in an effort to share information with an allied organization, the organization's ebase database and a Microsoft Access database. This situation had not been anticipated from the beginning so it was unclear what information should go where and how the two databases could be coordinated. This resulted in gaps in the information and incomplete data being collected. CVH organizers now believe this could have been avoided if this need had been identified and a strategy developed at the beginning of the information gathering. This type of planning is especially important as the number of people accessing and entering information grows, which is definitely the case when working in coalition.

Data-Integrity. As noted above, the more people working on the database the greater the variation in how information is entered. With this in mind, CVH organizers believe that customizing the database with drop down menus and check off boxes will work better than text boxes for recording information in the future. For example, instead of having a text box labeled "Commitment" for people doing data entry to fill in, there would be five boxes each with a different task a member could be responsible for (door-to-door outreach, registration, phone calls, faxing, mailing) and a check mark can be placed in each box according to what the individual has agreed to do. This will cut down on confusion, as people won't have to decipher the shorthand written in the text box.

A related issue that arose during outreach was that of regularly scheduled computer backups. Two weeks before the accountability session there was a hardware problem with the CVH server and it appeared that the database might be lost. The last backup had been done three weeks prior to this, which meant during this period of intensive information collection and input, this new, crucial data had not been backed up and potentially was lost. Luckily this was not the case but this incident served as an important reminder for the need for a regular back up schedule for the organizational server.

Training: CVH organizers discovered useful functions for the database too late to be used for the outreach for this event. Coming out of this campaign there has been a recommitment within the organization to training staff and members on the ebase database. This training focuses on more complex functions and possibilities for the database so that next time organizers will be aware of the full potential for the database when doing initial planning and strategizing.

In addition to evaluation and upcoming database training for members and staff, there has been much other activity coming out of the accountability session. In the ongoing campaign to pressure the candidates to end the WEP program, CVH has been able to take audio clips of the event and make them accessible over its website (www.cvhaction.org) in an effort to both keep the candidates accountable to their commitments and publicize where the candidates stand on these important issues. One CVH organizer believes this site will become an important reference for reporters looking for quotes and positions on these issues as the campaign moves towards next falls election. CVH also plans to produce a newsletter to continue momentum found through the outreach and event as well as to educate new members and allies in the ongoing work of CVH and the struggle for economic justice in New York City.

Conclusion
Community Voices Heard's experience serves as an important example of how an organization with limited resources can use technology to develop and carry out an event and ongoing campaign that challenges people in power and raises the voice of communities often left voiceless in debates which effect their lives. Although it will never replace the face-to-face interaction necessary to build relationships and trust, different forms of technology do offer possibilities for organizing the large amounts of information needed to orchestrate a campaign, and the ability to communicate to the wide breadth of people necessary to build a movement.

This case study was compiled by Adam Horowitz, intern for the LINC Project. Special thanks to the staff and membership of Community Voices Heard, for taking the time out to be interviewed for this case study. Also, thanks to the LINC Project Advisory Groups for their suggestions on how the information in the case study should be presented.