CompleteCampaigns™ software-as-a-service (SaaS) is part of Campaign Manager™, Aristotle’s award-winning, cloud-based campaign relationship management platform (CRM) designed by campaign veterans for political and non-profit fundraisers and treasurers. It’s the only campaign three-in-one product for compliance, fundraising, and preparing and submitting accounting and other business reports — eliminating the need to maintain different databases or migrate […]
Filing campaign statements with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) or any government agency can be a nerve racking and mentally exhausting experience. Having to itemize nearly every transaction, complete complicated forms and follow obscure rules make reporting a challenging job.
In the same way that high school football players can learn a lot about the game by watching the pros play in the Super Bowl, local political activists should be able to learn a lot about campaigns by watching the players in the presidential race.
While some politicos still cling doggedly to their well-loved clipboards and broken pencils, those items deserve a more appropriate interment in the Museum of Campaigns Past. Today, you simply must use a database system. It is the lifeblood of your campaign, the one place (ideally) where you will plan events, track fundraising, catalog volunteers, and manage your budget.
Web 2.0 is a term that gets thrown around a lot. It refers to many different aspects of new technology, although it isn’t always clear which pieces of technology are and aren’t Web 2.0. In fact, if you have a conversation with different technology advocates, you’ll probably get competing definitions and applications.
The budget is the least glamorous, yet most important part of any campaign. We hear constantly about who’s raised how much but we rarely hear about fundraising’s mirror image – who’s spent how much on what?
Incumbents always have held an advantage in elections, but that advantage has now become practically insurmountable. Over 90 percent of incumbent Congressional candidates are re-elected every two years. Percentages among incumbents farther down on the ballot sometimes are even higher, as often nobody even bothers to run against incumbent State Senators, State Representatives, and City Councilmen.
Results of two national studies among political consultants and American voters revealed that candidate web sites are almost as effective for reaching loyal base voters as network and cable television ads. In the survey of political experts, 25% of respondents said the candidate’s own web site was effective for communicating with base voters while 26% rated television and cable ads useful. Nearly half of all consultants (46%), reported that the best ways to reach loyal base voters is email, followed by traditional means such as direct mail, events and telephone.
Gone are the days where a campaign was run off an ever-expanding collection of spreadsheets and business card catalogues. Like any other high-intensity collaborative effort in our interconnected, “always-on” world, today’s modern political campaign must be supported by a relational database, with online and multi-channels accessibility (via web-browser, mobile-optimized web application, or a native smart-phone app) an absolute must.
Politics & the Internet in 2004:
In the 2004 election cycle, websites, email and online fundraising assumed a growing prominence. In each of these areas, new high marks were established in both volume and audience-reach.
