On days when news breaks and your volunteers need to act as soon as possible, there isn’t much room for error. You need to have your email and social copy distributed and your action centers live within hours to capture the momentum of the moment.
Accomplishing this means having both the right processes and the right tech in place. If you have either one without the other, your advocacy efforts will probably lag. But when processes and tech work together, you have everything you need to respond to news with agility.
Here are some process and tech tips to help you launch campaigns quickly.
Prepare Ahead of Time
Nothing beats preparedness for improving efficiency. Even when you don’t know what the news cycle will bring, there are still plenty of ways you can be prepared.
For example, you can create email or action center templates that are ready to be filled with copy before going live. This drastically cuts down on the time it takes to launch a campaign.
Having your supporter lists pre-segmented is important as well. You don’t want to be sitting around debating which demographics to target while an important piece of legislation leaves the news cycle. It’s best to have your supporters thoroughly tagged and your list segmentation process set up well beforehand, ideally in a software solution that does much of this work automatically.
On the more strategic side, it can’t be overstated how important it is to watch legislative developments and generally be aware of what’s happening in your field. “Most of the campaigns you run, especially at the state level, are in many ways pretty predictable…Oftentimes, you can plan ahead before a session even starts,” says Brian Rubenstein, founder of Rubenstein Impact Group. “Think about what you can prepare for in advance. That way, you’ve got 90 percent of that work done for you.”
Use Time-Saving Software
When you’ve properly planned for a campaign, all you have to do after news breaks is select the right parameters in your software of choice.
Selecting the right parameters can sometimes be time-consuming on its own, but good software minimizes the time commitment. Adam Campbell, client success team lead at VoterVoice, explains, “When you create a campaign in a lot of systems, there’s just pages upon pages of all these little settings you have to go through…But at VoterVoice, we already default all the options to best practice. So if you have the language written out, you can create a campaign in three minutes.”
Similarly, you can use prepared email templates to broadcast a call to action whenever there are news developments that might fire up your supporters. These broadcasts are set up to direct supporters to an existing campaign action center, and they can be configured in minutes.
Best Practices for Writing Messaging Fast
In some cases, the hardest part of spinning up a campaign can be crafting the copy. But here, too, you can be prepared by drafting copy ahead of time whenever possible, tweaking it as needed when news develops.
When speed is of the essence, Rubenstein says, “I’m a huge fan of using AI to help generate advocacy content. You can create an effective advocacy email and all of its accompanying social media and text message that you need within minutes using AI — if you get good at prompting. So I recommend to start using AI now. Practice, become comfortable with it, and build up your prompts.”
Campbell also advocates for trying AI, saying, “PolicyNote’s AI assistant will give you the messaging. And with natural language search, you can just say, for example, ‘Show me bills that would affect carpenters at the federal level.’ And then when you find one that looks important, prompt PolicyNote to write a message in opposition to it. It’s going to save so much time.”
You’ll also be able to finalize your copy quicker — regardless of whether it’s drafted by AI — by keeping some core best communication practices in mind. For instance, when explaining breaking news to followers, Rubenstein says, “Less is more. Shorter is better. Don’t feel like you have to tell them everything that happened. Just let them know the impact of what’s going to take place as a result of what happened. And that’s typically a much faster and easier communication to write.”
If you need supporters to act fast, don’t hesitate to appeal to emotion — even negative ones. “When it comes to grassroots, bad news can often be more powerful than good news. So if you have a loss or a setback, communicate it to your audience, and leverage it to drive increased action,” Rubenstein says. In many nonprofit sectors, “people have a very strong emotional connection to your issue, typically much more so than a factual connection. So make sure when you’re communicating to them, you are leveraging those emotions.”
Finally, different messaging will appeal to different segments of your supporters. Use analytics to refine your list segmentation and make sure everyone’s getting the message that will drive them to action.
Cut Down Campaign Prep Time
With how quickly the news cycle moves, the pressure is on to make your advocacy just as rapid. But panicking or rushing is never the answer. Instead, focus on refining your processes and preparing your copy and templates.
Request a demo to see how VoterVoice’s features can reduce the amount of work you need to do to set up a campaign, making it possible to get your message in front of supporters in minutes.
