Using CiviCRM as an Organizing Tool

As a group fighting for construction workers’ rights in Texas, we are up against one of the most profitable industries in the state. Construction in Texas is a $60 billion industry, and employs nearly one million workers. Even though Workers Defense Project does not equal the industry’s financial power, we are winning better protections for workers by building people power.

We have been in this struggle for over a decade, and as we’ve grown, we’ve discovered the importance of developing a database that works for us. CiviCRM has helped us become more strategic as we fight to build a fair economy.

Part of our strategy for creating good, dignified jobs and building power for workers is engaging a diverse body of supporters in the political process. We use Civi to help us organize and reach out to our supporters, track their participation, and stay in touch with the ones who don’t live in Texas.

Just last week, we used call lists we made in Civi to invite over 400 people to come to Austin City Council to register their support of a bill being heard. We established a simple protocol for recruiting people for this meeting:

• Create an event in CiviEvent with all the details of the City Council meeting

• Add our “Austin Action Call List” group to the event as “Not yet called”

• Assign sections of the call list to specific staff, interns, and volunteers

• Update registration status for each person called to come to the event as “Confirmed,” “Maybe,” “No,” “Left Message,” or “Call Back”, using CiviEvent’s Participant Status features

• Use sign-in sheets from the event to confirm attendance, and update statuses in Civi to “Attended” for those people

• Go back into the event and e-mail guests that attended, thanking them for all of their hard work that made our landmark victory possible

In the end, it was the testimonies of dozens workers and their allies that got this new economic development policy passed. The huge swell of supporters we were able to mobilize through Civi showed our city officials and anyone hoping to develop in Austin that we’re a community that supports our lowest-paid workers, and they need to answer to those workers.

This system for recruiting supporters allows us to keep track of the people that we invite to our actions, and guides our next steps for follow up and confirmation as the date of the meeting got closer. This means fewer invitees fall through the cracks. As a community-based organization, Workers Defense Project depends on its ability to stay in touch with its supporters and keep them engaged in our work. CiviCRM has been a very useful organizing tool for WDP. It is helping us strengthen communication with our allies, keep our supporters more involved, and overall, makes us better organizers.