FAQ Page

1. What is Grassroots PhoneBank™?

   Grassroots PhoneBank™ is a custom, web-based application that allows your volunteers to make phone calls against your list or public voter lists.

   Grassroots PhoneBank™ breaks down lists into chunks that individual volunteers can access, one chunk at a time, to make outgoing phone calls from wherever they have access to a phone and the Internet.

   Candidates or initiative sponsors can set up separate, scripted campaigns, and direct all or selected volunteers to execute those campaigns and record the results.

   Individual volunteers can view summaries of their results. Candidates or initiative sponsors can view overall results by campaign.

2. How much does it cost to use Grassroots PhoneBank™?

   Costs are reasonable. Even though there are many cost factors, Grassroots PhoneBank™ is priced so that even small local campaigns can take advantage of the power of volunteer phone banks.

   The major cost factors are the costs of acquiring or building the lists (discussed below), the costs of loading the data into the database, the costs associated with each campaign (your message), and the costs of exporting the data to common data formats, should you desire that.

   All these costs are based on the nature of the data, the size of the lists and the amount of storage required, the length of time the lists are available for use, and bandwidth costs associated with actual usage.

   Whether the telephone information comes from public voter lists or custom built candidate or initiative sponsor lists, the total costs of acquiring the lists are born exclusively by the licensee. Lists, even public lists, change over time, so lists are never pooled.

   Grassroots PhoneBank™ can also provide custom consulting services and training in connection with the use of the lists, scripting, and building and executing effective telephone campaigns, for which additional fees may be charged.

3. Will my opponents be able to use Grassroots PhoneBank™?

   No.

   Once a candidate or initiative sponsor has established a relationship with Grassroots PhoneBank™, we will license no other party on the same ballot for the same office or initiative to use the application.

   However, when a ballot allows more than one choice for an elected office, then other candidates may license the application up to the number of choices permitted on the ballot.

   For example, if a local ballot permits the voter to vote for up to three choices for the identical office, then we may grant up to three licenses for that office.

4. Are there any criteria for choosing which candidates may receive licenses?

   Grassroots PhoneBank™ may license the application to any candidate or initiative sponsor regardless of party affiliation or ideology.

   However, any licensee must agree to a set of strict ethical rules about how the application is used.

   In addition, every volunteer must subscribe to a similarly strict set of ethical rules.

   At the very minimum, the rules of the Federal Elections Commission, the Secretary of State or chief election overseer for the State, and the Clerk or Voter Registrar for the county or other local district are incorporated into the agreement, as applicable for the candidate or initiative sponsor.

5. Who owns the data?

   You do!

   You provide the lists.

   You provide the volunteers that make the calls and maintain the lists.

   You own their work product.

   Your lists are not shared with anyone else.

   At the end of a campaign, or at any time, you can ask for an export of all the data. One standard export is always free with any paid license.

6. What do I need to get started?

   You need a list, either your own (minimum 100 individual voting-age persons in the geographical boundary for the office or initiative) or a public voter list that you have purchased.

7. Does Grassroots PhoneBank™ work with surveys.

   Absolutely.

   Surveys, when done correctly, are very effective to gauge the views of the electorate. Surveys done early in your campaign can help you focus on the things that are important to the voters.

   In addition to regular scripts which push information to the public, you may also create survey scripts. Each survey script builds a custom response database. The responses are summarized by standard demographic categories to the extent that the criteria are contained in your list. For example, public voter lists typically contain gender, age, party, and ethnicity information, so the results can be summarized by these demographic criteria.

   We can help you create effective surveys to suit your circumstances.

8. Is it easy for volunteers to use?

   Yes.

   Volunteers have one focus -- to make phone calls.

   Depending on the settings you choose, volunteers may be able to choose where or to whom to make calls based on information in the underlying voter list. If you choose to allow volunteers to make selections by precinct, by party affiliation, by ethnicity, etc., then they can. You can also choose to control the sequence in which voters are contacted and disable all selection criteria for volunteers.

   Volunteers control when they are ready to make calls. Calls are not pushed to them.

   Each voter household is presented as each call is ready to be made. Along with the information from the voter list, volunteers get a choice of two variations of the script -- one for reading to an answering machine and one for interacting with a live person. The interactive script can be driven by voter responses to prompts or questions. And any of the variable information about the campaign and the voter household can be embedded into the script so volunteers never have to fill in blanks.

   When a call ends, for whatever reason, volunteers enter that result into a short form. If follow-up is needed, codes for the type of follow-up indicated can be entered as well, along with a free-form note in which volunteers can further clarify the call.

   After logging the call, volunteers are presented with the next voter to call in the batch that has been allocated.

   Volunteers also have access to a report showing the calls they have made. In addition, if you choose to allow it, volunteers can also access a summary report showing calls made by all the volunteers participating in the phone bank.

9. Is there a way to push late breaking news and other information to the volunteers while they are making calls?

   Yes.

   When volunteers are engaged in phone call activity, a Talking Points and News button appears on the same page as the voter information and script. You can update the content of this page as often as you wish using the template provided to apprise volunteers of what's going on and to provide them additional information about issues and positions should the voter ask questions that are off-script.

10. Does the system provide access for administrators and supervisors?

    In addition to the Volunteer role, there are two additional access roles in the system -- Candidate and Office Manager.

    The Candidate role provides access to everything in the system, including reporting. The Office Manager role is a custom role, if you wish to use it, that allows more access than the Volunteer role, but less access than the Candidate role.

11. Do volunteers get feedback on the degree to which they are helping the voter contact effort?

    Yes.

    A simple list report allows volunteers to see a history of personal call activity. The list shows the name of the voter and the results that the volunteer logged, without the ability to drill down for more detail.

    In addition, phone bank settings allow you to show the volunteer two summary reports. The first summary shows all phone bank calls summarized by date. The second summary shows all phone bank calls summarized by the volunteers' residence state. These optional volunteer reports can enhance the volunteer experience by showing their effect on the phone bank totals. When calls are being made by volunteers in multiple states, it can also engender a competitive spirit.

12. What kinds of management reporting does the system provide?

    The Candidate role provides a variety of ad hoc reports that show different aspects of the logged phone call data. Some of the reports are simple lists and others are cross-tabulated or summarized.

    For the list-style reports, you can drill down to see further detail about the voter and the call history.

    All of the reports permit you to select based on appropriate criteria such as call result codes, call follow-up codes, call agent (volunteer), date and time ranges, and voter demographic data.