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Empowering Grassroots Movements with CivicSpace Technology

Learn how the Dean Campaign's grassroots efforts transformed him into a frontrunner, broke fundraising records, and engaged thousands of activists. Explore the potential of CivicSpace software to connect, organize, and mobilize communities effectively in the digital age.

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Empowering Grassroots Movements with CivicSpace Technology

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  1. What the Dean Campaign Looked Like • 500,000 volunteers self organizing in every state • Web real-estate spread over hundreds of mostly unofficial web-sites. • Most of ideas and innovation on how to leverage the community came from the bottom up What they did • Turned an asterisk into a front runner • Broke Primary fundraising records with small dollar donations • Created a lasting network of new activists

  2. DeanSpace Started as an all volunteer effort by a bunch of kids Created Free / Open Source Software based on the Drupal platform Over a hundred grassroots sites Official state web sites Main constituency sites

  3. Draft Clark • No campaign, no marching orders • ~60 day effort • All self-organized innovation: DigitalClark.com, General Fund, Clark Bars, XX4Clark.com network of local sites based on Zope/Plone • 100s of new local organizers nationwide, ~100,000 person lists, most of whom newly in politics– let people find their niche • Clark decides to run, leads polls immediately

  4. Where This Could be Going - South Korea • 4X U.S. Broadband Penetration • 2/5 most trafficked websites on the net with 1/5 the population of U.S. • Biggest Internet News Source in South Korea • Almost all their news reporting comes from “Citizen Reporters” President Roh - Hand Picked by OhMyNews

  5. Building a New Network • The “progressive movement” is granulated and diffuse. Top-down organizations, non-partisan advocacy groups, civic organizations, political campaigns. • Solutions Technology Can Help With: • Connect organizations & groups into a network • Power bottom-up grassroots organization to complement traditional organization

  6. Why a Network? • Create a network to share organizational intelligence, data • Every effort builds assets for next effort- don’t have to shut down after election day when the budget goes away • Short-Term Organizations, Thematically Focused Organizations become both feasible and long-term relevant • Cake and Eat It Too: 1000s of flowers blooming-- distributed – grassroots --- but also coordination & federation

  7. Why Bottom-Up? 1) Reduce the time and money costs of organizing people 2) Get more people involved More Power, Control, Resources Less Power, Control, Resources Paid Staff Volunteer Coordinators Volunteers Voters

  8. How Bottom-Up? 1)Move People Up The Pyramid By Pushing Power Down 2) Network People in Each Tier to Each Other Power Paid Staff Volunteer Coordinators Volunteers Voters People

  9. CivicSpace • Software for building online communities: content management, member management, events, donations, mail, information sharing– and anything else you want to build-- add your own features • Free / open source software built by a community • When you’re ready to graduate from Yahoo! Groups or Meetup; when you don’t want to be locked in to Kintera, GetActive, or Convio • Vendor and community verticals for Artists, Bands, Community Groups as well as Issue & Candidate Campaigns, etc • Powers over 300 sites

  10. CivicSpace Sites: Music for America • Organizes 5-15 political events a night at concerts across the country • One year or organizing: outreach at 2,132 concerts attended by over 2 million people • 40,000 members • Full time staff of 7 • $700 spent on advertising (blog adds) • All messaging and organizing done through their website

  11. Community Organizing Technologies for Politics Andrew Hoppin andrew@civicspacelabs.org

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