ControlShift Blog
Ten #Resistance Tech startups I’m following
Nathan Woodhull
on June 25, 2018
Photo Credit, Kelly Bell, cc-attributionThe political tech ecosystem in the United States usually follows a predictable cadence. Every four years, Presidential campaigns make huge investments in organizing, outreach and data to win. They act as a pressure cooker that brings together brilliant and passionate staff from around the country. Each cycle spawns a new generation of companies and consultancies that seek to replicate, commercialize and sustain the innovations that campaign staff hacked together during the campaign.
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What we learned from TakeCharge.io
Back in 2014 several of our ControlShift customers came to us with the same problem: They were global advocacy organizations working for progressive social change but struggled to accept donations in all of the currencies and across all of the payment platforms in the countries where they operated. At the time, no fundraising tools were truly global so each organization raising funds globally needed to either cobble together their own in house software or assemble dozens of vendors to accept funds everywhere they had supporters.
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From Complaint Box to Organizing Hub
Nathan Woodhull
on October 27, 2017
So much of what ControlShift is about is not really software tools at all, but a cultural shift in how advocacy organizations and campaigns should operate. We see ourselves as instigating cultural change, helping to shift advocacy organizations from a centralized, broadcast mentality to a distributed, organizing-focused approach.
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Uplift Ireland and the National Maternity Hospital
In April of 2017, Denise Kiernan saw a news story about a decision to move the National Maternity Hospital in Dublin to a new site — one that was owned by the Sisters of Charity, a congregation of Catholic nuns. This was alarming because a government commission had identified the Sisters as an organization involved in child abuse and other scandals around the health and welfare of women and children throughout the 20th century.
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New Feature: RSVP for Town Halls
As the congressional August Recess continues, VisitThem.org is excited to announce new features that will better support your in-person organizing around town hall events.
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ActionStation’s Collaborative Campaign Cultivation
In New Zealand, ActionStation uses the ControlShift platform to power their member-led campaigning site, OurActionStation. As with any distributed organizing program, building a community of member leaders and strategic campaigns takes plenty of intentional cultivation. However, rather than centering moderation and approval of new campaigns just with their paid staff, ActionStation has developed a system that engages some of their most dedicated volunteer members.
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On Higher Ground
Nathan Woodhull
on August 2, 2017
I couldn’t be more pleased that the Higher Ground Labs team has launched a new early-stage accelerator to help founders bring new products for progressive campaigns to market.
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Win the August Recess: 6 Strategies for Offline Action
August Recess is around the corner, and Members of Congress will be leaving Washington. As they return to their districts, the recess presents an important opportunity to pressure MOCs on your organization’s legislative agenda. Already we’ve seen the power that committed activists can have on legislative priorities, and we all know that there’s no substitute for in-person action. Regardless of the issue your organization is working on, using the upcoming recess to encourage your members to take in-person action at district offices and town halls should be a key tenet of your recess plan.
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Five ways to use the VisitThem.org API
The VisitThem.org API builds on top of open-data provided by the unitedstates project on Github and extends it with congressional district office and town hall event data. There are lots of game… The VisitThem.org API builds on top of open-data provided by the unitedstates project on Github and extends it with congressional district office and town hall event data.
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Protecting Healthcare in the UK
Our friends at 38 Degrees just shared an inspiring story about a local campaign to save hospital services, launched and run by their members on the Campaigns By You ControlShift platform. From their email:
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