About Canvassing

Canvassing is designed to facilitate door to door canvassing (door knocking) activities. This type of activity is done if you want to meet in person with potential voters or supporters.

The Canvassing tool is available with certain paid subscriptions. Additionally, to canvass, a canvasser must have one of the paid subscriptions to Sparkswell. These paid subscriptions allow users to run their own campaigns and/or work on the campaigns of other users.

For example, this is the most common scenario:

  1. A campaign signs up for a premium tier subscription that allows them to run canvassing programs
  2. A campaign emails their contacts to volunteer to canvass on behalf of the campaign, and directs the users to create supporter account on Sparkswell and click on volunteer to canvas. The campaign notes in this email that in order to canvas, a paid Sparkswell account is required and a canvasser need to have one of these if they are approved to canvass and want to canvass.
  3. Contacts get the email, create a Sparkswell Supporter account and sign up on the campaign’s volunteer to canvass page
  4. Campaign approves canvassers and sends them an email about the canvassing times and dates and reminds them to sign up for a basic paid Sparkswell account (Starter Account) before the canvassing date.
  5. Canvassers sign up for a paid account and meet at the appropriate location the day of the event.

The canvassing tool enables Campaigns to:

  1. Add unlimited numbers of canvassers from a list of people who have volunteered to canvass
  2. Approve and dismiss canvassers at any time
  3. Upload scripts for all canvassers to use
  4. Use information on Contacts collected on Sparkswell for your canvassing programs
  5. Use information you have acquired, and uploaded to your Supporter Database, for canvassing
  6. Record the answers to questions canvassers ask people
  7. Tie Canvassing activity reporting to other reporting, such as donation history, within the Supporter Database.
  8. Report on Canvassing activity individually or all interactions that have been made with contacts.
  9. Turn canvassing off after a set time period or left as always on.
  10. Update and/or remove questions and scripts at any time.

The canvassing tool enables Canvassers to:

  1. Pull up basic information on Contacts, such as address information, and plot this on a map
  2. Get directions to a Contact’s address
  3. Update a Contact’s information from the Canvassing tool
  4. Enter in answers to Canvassing specific questions to a Contact’s record
  5. Access and read scripts prepared by the Campaign
  6. Notate that you have visited a contact and when you visited that contact
  7. Enter in notes about each interaction the has made with a Contact
  8. Canvass for as many Campaigns as you want to (assuming these campaigns approve you to canvass)

 

Supporter Database & Canvassing

The tool is built as an extension of the Supporter Database, meaning the data that populates the Canvassing tool comes from the Supporter database and any data entered through Canvassing ends up in the Supporter database. Additionally, any this means that any canvassing reporting is done through the Supporter Database reporting module.