During and following Katrina, the LOMCSA office was without power for several days. Officials were helpless to check email, receive phone calls, or access the LOMCSA membership database – until they realized they could use VoterVoice from their homes.

“Without VoterVoice, LOMCSA would have been unable to easily serve our members, and many fuel needs may have gone un-served,” said Anne Gauthier, LOMCSA Membership Manager. “We were grateful that VoterVoice was still operational and could service such fundamental communications needs, especially when so many essential communication avenues were inhibited.”

Accessible from anywhere on the World Wide Web, VoterVoice services are housed at the secure Tier IV data center located at the Louisiana Technology Park in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. This high tech venue never lost power although many locations did during and after Katrina’s wake.

LOMCSA staff accessed VoterVoice from home, staying in contact with their statewide membership – fuel companies, grocery wholesalers, insurance companies, and more. Online access provided a means of getting help to where it was most needed, eventually providing the communications that resulted in getting fuel to hospitals, emergency personnel, government agencies, as well as general consumers.

VoterVoice software helps organization implement a smart, proactive approach to grassroots lobbying and political advocacy, overcoming the misconception that those types of activities have to be costly, difficult, and staff intensive. Using proven internet-based technologies, VoterVoice clients easily and affordably manage governmental affairs by automatically matching constituents to their public officials at the local, state and national levels.

The presentation focused on tactical ideas that simplify the advocacy process and improve grassroots participation. Association action items include: removing hurdles to participation, applying political force strategically, securing emergency response capabilities, recruiting additional support, leveraging other association investments, and engaging supporters throughout the year.

“We learn a lot from workshops like this and appreciate the notion that one or two small changes can have a big impact,” said Jessica Ward, Director of Government Affairs for Associated Builders and Contractors of Western Washington. “For example, we anticipate that by automatically matching our members to their local elected officials and emphasizing our easy-to-use Tell a Friend capabilities, political participation for our group will increase dramatically.”

During the three-day conference, governmental affairs professionals and ABC members also visited with members of their congressional delegations in addition to attending educational lectures and conference workshops.

“We’re delighted to support this event,” said Neal Fuller, CEO for voterVOICE. “We have a number of association clients in the building and construction industry and this conference lets us hear firsthand about the issues that are important to them.”

voterVOICE software helps organizations implement a smart, proactive approach to grassroots lobbying and political advocacy, overcoming the misconception that those types of activities have to be costly, difficult, and staff intensive. Using proven internet-based technologies, voterVOICE clients easily and affordably manage governmental affairs by automatically matching constituents to their public officials at the local, state, and national levels.

Communications filtering is not new to Congress, but these programs imply a new motivation toward technology. Advocacy groups claim authentication programs discourage political participation by confusing or frustrating legitimate grassroots message-senders.

Congressional offices began using web forms several years ago as a means of collecting information beyond the content of a sender’s email message – such as requiring a home address to help identify constituency or classifying the subject of interest so as to assign follow-up by specific staffers.

Logic puzzles require a person to manually read and respond to a simple question, like “4 minus 3 equals what?” or view and comment on an image that is unreadable by machine.

“So far, we’re managing the process by virtually passing the puzzle to the supporter for a response. This unfortunately adds a couple extra steps to the message sending process” said Neal Fuller, CEO for voterVOICE. “And if we encounter a new web form puzzle, we’ll queue the message temporarily so that voterVOICE staff can manually read and answer the question on behalf of the supporter; then we send the message on as originally requested.”

Some online advocacy vendors have had to rely on alternative delivery methods such as fax or hand delivery, resulting in slower communications between constituents and their elected officials. These alternatives are politically dangerous on time critical votes because “hard copy” messages must be manually processed by Congressional staffers.

voterVOICE software helps organizations implement a smart, proactive approach to grassroots lobbying and political advocacy, overcoming the misconception that those types of activities have to be costly, difficult, and staff intensive. Using proven internet-based technologies, voterVOICE clients easily and affordably manage governmental affairs by automatically matching constituents to their public officials at the local, state, and national levels.

voterVOICE has the enhanced reporting you need. The Forward to Friend Report allows you to evaluate the level of interaction between existing contacts and their propensity to forward calls to action to their own social networks.

You can filter by various options to evaluate how well your advocates get their friends involved in your campaign. The reports allow you to drill down to a detailed level for each sender, seeing how effective they were at getting their friends involved. Reports can be downloaded in a pdf document. Pie charts display the number of successful forwards by advocates as well as  the number of confirmed opened forwards

Two bar graphs display the counts of each type of activity:

• Number of messages forwarded from one person to another
• Number of messages confirmed opened
• Number of advocates who visited the site after receiving the forward
• Number of advocates who registered from the forward
• Number of advocates who responded to the issue from the forward

The details of each category are just a click away including the Sender’s Name, the Recipient’s Name, Action taken as well as the date and time of the forward. The content of each forwarded message is also available. You can easily see how the number of forwards in your system has progressed over a period in another chart.

voterVOICE software helps organizations implement a smart, proactive approach to grassroots lobbying and political advocacy, overcoming the misconception that those types of activities have to be costly, difficult, and staff intensive. Using proven internet-based technologies, voterVOICE clients easily and affordably manage governmental affairs by automatically matching constituents to their public officials at the local, state, and national levels.