How We Help Get Democrats Elected
Essentially, Sister District volunteers act as an extension of a campaign’s field and fundraising operations. That means raising money (mostly in small-dollar donations), and making direct contact with voters through phone calls, knocking on doors, text messages, and postcards. Depending on the size of your team, there may also be opportunities in team leadership, event management, email marketing, social media, and other aspects of organizing.
But most importantly, we have fun! Our volunteers build meaningful relationships with each other, and that’s what keeps all of us going even when the news cycle feels exhausting.
Take action now!
Whether you have just a few hours or a few dollars, we need you!
Don’t wait on the sidelines – the time is now. We’ll help you every step of the way.
Phonebanking
Making Phone Calls to Voters
Person-to-person interactions are proven to be the most effective way to increase voter turnout and enthusiasm. Outside of knocking on doors, your phone calls will do the most to ensure the Democrats get back in charge. If you’ve never phonebanked before, don’t worry! We’ll help you ever step of the way. As many of our volunteers have learned, phonebanking isn’t hard – and makes a huge difference.
When phonebanking is live, the correct links can be accessed from each candidate’s page.
Postcarding
Writing Postcards to Voters
Sending postcards to voters in swing districts has become a popular way to support campaigns from afar. It’s fun, easy, and you can do it right at home.
We work directly with each campaign to develop postcard drives, including a script or talking points, voter addresses, postcard design, goals and timeline for the drive, and so forth. Then, we deliver a package with specific directions and materials to our volunteer leaders, who coordinate postcarding efforts for their teams.
Are postcards effective?
We’ve been wondering the same thing! So, we’ve conducted extensive research on postcards, including a randomized control trial to determine if postcards increased voter turnout. The results weren’t conclusive, but one thing is for sure – postcards are a fantastic way to get new volunteers involved!
Check out more of our research around sending postcards to voters:
SDAN+VPC VR Voting Pipeline Postcard Study
People who received a handwritten postcard along with a pre-filled voter registration form did not vote at higher rates than people who did not receive the postcard.
2018 GOTV Postcarding Results
In both our Pennsylvania and Michigan samples, receiving a handwritten postcard during GOTV did not significantly increase the odds that a person would vote.
Voter Registration Postcarding 2: A Replication with VPC + SDAN
The postcard chaser appears to work particularly well among people who had been registered before and just recently moved to their new address (“Movers”).
VPC+SDAN Postcarding Experiment Results
This experiment tested the use of postcards to boost voter registration.
Canvassing
Knocking Doors for Candidates
Canvassing (knocking on doors) is the most effective way to identify supporters, persuade those on the fence, and make sure voters get to the polls. Unfortunately, in person canvassing has been largely suspended during the coronavirus pandemic. But the good news is that more people are home, and more people are answering their phones! That makes virtual canvassing (aka “phonebanking”) even more effective!
Textbanking
Sending Text Messages to Voters
It’s no surprise that most of us spend a lot of time on our cell phones. That’s why text messaging voters is an increasingly popular way to start conversations, persuade voters, and get out the vote. It’s not hard, and you don’t have to use your personal phone – special textbanking platforms help us send and receive hundreds of texts per session.
Read stories, tips, tricks, and lessons learned from our volunteers:
By the Numbers: What We've Done (So far!)
621,704 phone calls made
96,493 doors knocked
754,324postcards written
748,726text messages sent
Volunteer Events
Small-dollar fundraisers go a long way!
Our local teams are creative and fun-loving, and throw all kinds of events, from small-dollar fundraisers to big-ticket events. Pizza party fundraiser? Volunteer education night? Tabling at the Strolling of the Heifers? (Yeah, it’s a thing!) Whatever your event is, we can help with logistics and fundraising technology like text-to-donate.
If the event is big enough, one of the Sister District co-founders or even your candidate might be able to attend! If you’ve had a great event recently and want to write about it for our blog, please contact your District Captain to get in touch with our communications team.
And since no party is complete without some great outfits, grab a couple Sister District t-shirts to show off your passion for getting Democrats elected to state legislatures!
Other Ways to Volunteer
Data and Research
Although we have a small number of paid staff at Sister District, we couldn’t do our work without a wide variety of highly skilled volunteers who are willing to contribute their time in other ways.
Our volunteer researchers are working on a number of exciting projects, including 2020 race targeting and vetting, Sister District alumni legislative accomplishments tracking, and other internal projects. If you’d like to get involved, please sign up here!
Civic Engagement with Sister District Action Network
Sister District Action Network (SDAN) is our affiliated 501(c)(4) organization. SDAN also provides non-partisan opportunities to the Sister District community, including:
- Educating voters on the importance of state and local elections,
- Engaging in discussions about state policies, gerrymandering, politics and leadership through the quarterly Book Club,
- Training new leaders interested in becoming community activists,
- Conducting research in partnership with nonprofit, academic, and other partners to test new methods to increase civic engagement and voter participation, and
- Disseminating best practices for voter engagement and civic participation.