Choosing the Right Contact Management System: From spreadsheets to CRMs

Posted by jfrant

Pyramid chart depicting four tiers of contact management tools.

Editor’s Note: If you like this blog, you’ll like How DemTech Supports Digital Organizing Around the World.

Managing and organizing contact information is a vital task for any organization, and it can be a rewarding challenge. Whether you’re a political party managing membership lists or an advocacy group organizing campaigns, maintaining lists of contacts, tracking interactions, and conducting outreach are essential activities that can drive your mission forward. In particular, moving from a siloed approach – individual staff are responsible for their own contacts – to teams – collaborating on a shared online database – can pay huge dividends.

The array of available cloud-based databases is vast, but every organization has different sets of needs, levels of expertise, and financial resources that will determine the right tool for the context. This blog post aims to provide essential guidance to help you identify the perfect cloud-based database tool to meet your goals and technical requirements, turning this challenge into an opportunity for growth and efficiency.

Different Tiers of Contact Management Tools

Contact management tools range from simple spreadsheets to feature-rich contact relationship management systems (CRMs). We’ve broken down these tools into four tiers based on complexity and specialization. By understanding the capabilities and limitations of each tier, you can choose the contact management tool that best fits your project’s needs and resources. The examples below are not exhaustive and were chosen to illustrate solutions that are available at little or no direct cost. Generally, as the tools become more complex, they tend to become more expensive.

Tier One: Cloud-Based Spreadsheets

Example: Google Sheets is a versatile and accessible tool for basic contact management. It allows users to create, share, and collaborate on spreadsheets in real-time. With features like data validation, conditional formatting, and integration with other Google Workspace apps, it’s a great starting point for small teams or projects with straightforward needs.

Tier Two: Message Boards or Groups

Example: Google Groups focuses on communication and collaboration rather than just contact management. It allows you to create and manage groups of contacts for email communication and collaboration. Unlike most other systems, it allows members to speak with each other, and it is ideal for multi-stream communication. While it doesn’t offer the advanced contact management features of a CRM or the flexibility of a spreadsheet, it provides a simple way to communicate with and manage groups of people, making it a great fit for teams or projects that need a straightforward collaboration tool.

Tier Three: Specialized Marketing Tool

Example: MailChimp is a specialized marketing tool designed for email marketing and constituent engagement. It offers features like automated email campaigns, audience segmentation, and detailed analytics. MailChimp is ideal for organizations looking to enhance their marketing efforts without the complexity of a full CRM system.

Tier Four: Full-Featured CRM

Example: CiviCRM is a comprehensive CRM platform that supports extensive contact management, communication, event management, casework, and campaign planning. It allows users to store, track, and segment large volumes of contact data, and engage with contacts via email, SMS, and social media. CiviCRM is suitable for organizations that need robust features for managing relationships and coordinating large-scale activities. DemTech supports the use of CiviCRM through its DemCloud hosting service, providing a cost-effective solution for partners with limited resources, though organizations will need to dedicate significant staff time to make the most of using this tool.

Selecting the Right Tool for Your Needs

Step One: Define Your Requirements

Start by clearly defining what you need from the tool. Your key needs will depend on the problem you’re trying to address and may include:

Language Requirements: Does the tool need to support multiple languages?

Offline Capability: Will you need to access the tool without an internet connection?

Security Requirements: How critical is data privacy and security for your project?

Specific Features: Do you need features like email marketing, customer segmentation, case management, or detailed analytics?

Step Two: Prioritize Your Requirements

Once you’ve defined your requirements, prioritize them. Use a Human-Centered Design (HCD) process to ensure that the tool meets the needs of your users. Always consider the context in which the tool will be used. In addition to the functional requirements (the features of the tool), you should also consider your organization’s needs and assets with regard to privacy, capacity, and sustainability.

Privacy: Since contact management systems inherently manage information about individuals, privacy should always be a priority. Consider your risk profile in determining the steps you need to take to ensure the security of the information you are collecting.

Capacity: Assess whether you and your target audience have the skills, resources, and availability to use the technology as intended. Consider how technology gaps might reinforce the exclusion of marginalized populations.

Sustainability: Determine if you will need to use the tool long-term. Do you have the ability to sustain funding, training, and skills to maintain it without creating security risks?

Step Three: Define Your Assets

Identify the technical, monetary, time, and partnership assets you have at your disposal. If you can collaborate with a partner, consider their technical expertise and financial resources. Ensure alignment with partners on the timeframe for sustaining the approach and consensus on the project’s objectives.

Selecting the right contact management system is not just about choosing the most advanced or popular tool, but about finding the one that aligns with your organization’s unique needs and resources. By carefully defining and prioritizing your requirements, and considering factors such as privacy, capacity, and sustainability, you can transform the challenge of contact management into an opportunity. Remember, the right tool can empower your team to collaborate more effectively, engage more meaningfully with your contacts, and ultimately, drive your mission forward. As you embark on this journey, keep in mind that the perfect solution is one that evolves with your organization, adapting to new challenges and opportunities along the way.

This blog was originally posted to on the Dem.Tools blog.

Democracy Games for Democracy Gains: How DemTech uses games for good to support democracy programs

Posted by jfrant

A photo from the main page of the Digital Organizing SOS: Stories of Security game shows the leaders of civil society organizations that you, as a digital security trainer, are asked to help as part of the game.

NDI’s Democracy and Technology (DemTech) team has a long history of experimenting with different types of games for good. We have even tried our hand at developing our own gaming platforms with varying levels of success.

For example, the defunct DemGames Debate app was a Drupal-based app intended to reinforce learning through fun practice quizzes. Originally designed to gamify NDI’s youth debates programs, it became evident that there was not sufficient demand to justify the expense of maintaining the platform and it was deprecated.

DemTech’s more recent efforts to gamify learning have favored the narrative fiction style. Narrative fiction games are online games that use narrative storytelling to guide players through fun fictitious scenarios where they can choose their own adventure. These games are pretty simple to develop, and there are a variety of options of tools that can be used to build them. DemTech has experimented with Google Forms and Powerpoint, but has favored the more broadly-adopted open-source narrative fiction tool called Twine. Besides having a more rich, user-friendly, and flexible game development framework, Twine games are also simple HTML files that can be hosted at almost no cost and there is no need for software patches or updates for the game to live on indefinitely. So far, DemTech has created four Twine games:

Alissa for Olania! – In this cybersecurity game, players take on the role of first-time presidential hopeful Alissa Orme’s campaign manager in the fictional country of Olania. They have to boost Alissa’s popularity and raise funds to help her win the election, while preventing cybersecurity incidents from derailing the campaign. (related blog post)
Digital Organizing SOS: Stories of Security – You play the role of a cybersecurity trainer to help leaders of civil society organizations more safely and effectively organize virtual workshops, fundraise online, use social media, and collect and store data.
Human Centered Design – In this game, players take on the role of program lead tasked with designing a transparency and communication app. They have to test their knowledge of how to apply the principles of Human Centered Design effectively.
Leading Change – In this game, players are a youth leader seeking to boost the voices and needs of young people in a city’s COVID pandemic response. They have to learn about Adaptive Leadership, while exploring how this concept could play out in a realistic scenario.

NDI has also experimented with offline tabletop exercises (TTX). TTX are discussion-based sessions in which players are grouped into teams, assigned roles in a fictitious scenario, and called on to solve a series of challenges. These games give players a sense of what it’s like to work as a team to confront a realistic scenario, like a natural disaster or cybersecurity incident.

DemTech developed a TTX game called CyberSim that simulates risks for a political party in a campaign environment and helps players assess their readiness and implement better digital security practices. To mirror the chaos of a typical campaign environment, the events of the game are rapid-fire and overwhelming. The immersive experience not only teaches lessons about cybersecurity, but also gives players a better sense of the high-stress and high-stakes environment in which decisions about cybersecurity incidents are often made.

Because the game is so rapid-fire, the pace can make the job of the facilitator difficult. To address this tension between creating a realistic–yet still functional–gameplay environment, DemTech developed an app to help CyberSim facilitators manage events and provide a summary of the actions taken. Crucially, the app enables facilitators to moderate an after-action review – a “post-game” exercise that allows players to reflect on what they learned. While originally designed to be played in person, DemTech recently developed an online version of the TTX that can be played using the Discord app. The team is also actively developing new versions of CyberSim tailored to civil society organizations and parliaments to join the current campaign-focused iteration.

Games for good are an innovative and effective way to educate, empower, and inspire people to take action on issues that matter to them. Whether it is online or offline, narrative fiction or tabletop exercise, games can create immersive and interactive experiences that challenge players to think critically, collaborate with others, and learn from their mistakes. DemTech has experimented with implementing “serious games” in various contexts and regions, with a focus on democracy, governance, and human rights. We invite you to explore our games, share your feedback, and join us in creating more games for good in the future. Together, we can make learning fun and meaningful. If you are interested in learning more about our games for good or playing them yourself, please visit our website or contact us.

This blog was originally published on dem.tools.

How DemTech Supports Digital Organizing Around the World

Posted by jfrant

DALL-E generated image of a women sitting at a desk doing a water color in front of her computer.

Digital organizing is a key component of any successful political campaign. It involves using technology to mobilize supporters, raise funds, communicate messages, and get out the vote. It can also be a powerful tool for governing. Digital tools enable members of parliament to manage constituent correspondence or even manage interactions with citizens. However, not all digital organizing tools are created equal. Some are tailored to specific contexts, while others are better suited to business or sales applications.

That’s why the National Democratic Institute’s (NDI) Democracy for Technology (DemTech) team, decided to invest in developing and supporting the open-source platform CiviCRM. CiviCRM is a constituent relationship management (CRM) system that can be used to conduct many democracy activities, including conducting surveys and running campaigns, as well as basic CRM activities like managing contacts and sending emails. CiviCRM is a good fit for our partners that don’t have a lot of money to spend on digital campaigning tools, which is most of them. For partners with little experience with digital organizing, CiviCRM also provides a hands-on opportunity to introduce the concept. Partners who complete the training have the option to continue to use CiviCRM at no cost through DemTech’s DemCloud hosting service. They can also migrate their CiviCRM site off DemCloud to their own hosting environment, decide to use another CRM solution or simply choose not to use a CRM system at all.

For DemTech, one of the biggest advantages of CiviCRM is that it can be easily localized to a new country. It has been translated into dozens of languages, including Catalan, Dutch, French, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Serbian, Spanish, and Turkish. Not only can our partners use the tool in their own language, but they can adapt it to their specific needs and challenges. For example, CiviCampaign is a component of CiviCRM that allows users to create and manage advocacy campaigns, and it can be tailored to suit different electoral systems, voter registration processes, and campaign strategies.

DemTech has supported the use of CiviCRM across a wide variety of contexts. For example, a group of organizations in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) used Civi to survey key target audiences about their policy priorities as they prepared to launch broad advocacy campaigns in the runup to 2023 elections.

DemTech also maintains relationships with technology vendors that specialize in supporting the tool such as iXiam and CoopSymbiotic.

CiviCRM is not always the right digital organizing tool. NDI looks at a wide array of tools available such as MailChimp, NGP VAN, NationBuilder and Salesforce, and makes recommendations based on the ease of localization of the tool, how the tool has been used by democratic organizations, ease of use and cost. We are always exploring new contact management tools or opportunities to partner with companies that support digital organizing.

DemTech’s mission is to provide tailored support and advice on topics related to the impacts of technology on democracy, the use of technology in democratic development, and applying human-centered design approaches to democracy programming. We believe that digital organizing is a powerful way to empower citizens and strengthen democracy around the world. That’s why we support CiviCRM and other contact management tools that can help our partners achieve their goals.

This blog was originally posted on dem.tools.

Defeating Zoom Fatigue with Open edX

Posted by jfrant

A pen drawing of a woman sitting at a computer looking tired.

Editor’s Note: This post was co-authored with Caitlyn Ramsey and edited with Microsoft Bing Chat.

It’s September 28, 2020 and COVID deaths have just surpassed one million worldwide. And as you watch the news, your boss sends you an email. You’ve been stuck inside for months watching the pandemic, political unrest, and natural disasters unfold with little to no interaction with anyone outside your bubble, and you’re expected to keep working as normal. And as all of your activities, including work, were forced online, you find yourself realizing something you never would’ve imagined: you are fed up with the internet. You have, as it turns out, a severe case of Zoom fatigue.

Zoom Fatigue has been an unexpected side effect of the pandemic. Individuals are experiencing exhaustion and burnout due to the excessive use of video conferencing calls. To address this issue, innovative platforms are being utilized by promoting engaging interactions and enhancing the overall experience of remote learning and communication. One such platform is Open edX, an open-source learning management system, which supplies a ready-built framework for mitigating Zoom fatigue for programs that deliver training online. Instead of relying solely on video conferences, Open edX enables engaging educational methodologies designed for the internet. Since its founding in 2012, OpenEdX has been used by a wide range of organizations, from institutions of higher education to major corporations, and even national governments. The platform uses a combination of video lectures, interactive exercises, quizzes, and other tools to deliver course content. The open-source nature of Open edX means that anyone can access and use the software, and modify and improve it as needed, without software licenses or subscription costs.

While the pandemic has abated in most regions (or at least been accepted as the new normal), the pre-pandemic “business as usual” where programming is delivered almost exclusively in-person has shifted permanently. In the post-pandemic world, there is a greater reliance on online training as in-person events are not always feasible and are more expensive. Moreover, air travel is a large contributor to climate change putting pressure on organizations to rethink the sustainability of programming that requires frequent international travel. This shift toward convening online has also contributed to the rise in Zoom fatigue as programs attempted to move their programs out of meeting rooms and into Zoom meetings, without fundamentally rethinking program delivery or design.

Well before the pandemic, NDI hosted its own instance of Open edX (ed.ndi.org) to offer a wide range of courses aimed at strengthening democratic institutions and promoting citizen participation. These courses cover various topics such as cybersecurity for democracy activists, combatting information manipulation, digital rights advocacy, and best practices for leveraging technology to support democratic development. Some of the courses are self-paced and can be accessed anytime, while others are delivered through virtual classrooms accompanied by live instructors. Additionally, NDI offers customized training programs tailored to specific organizations and contexts. The courses are designed for individuals and groups interested in enhancing their knowledge and skills to effectively engage in democratic processes and advance democratic values.

Recent adopters of Open edX at NDI have used it to turn toolkits or guides, that would historically have been published in PDF format, into engaging multimedia online courses with integrated features that track learner progress and evaluate learning outcomes.

Edx courses enable engaging online approaches that yield real learning. This, we’ve found, is something that even the most expertly-facilitated Zoom call cannot provide. Courses can have videos, slide shows, text, audio, live broadcasts, or a range of other methods of sharing information. The platform also can facilitate quizzes and evaluations, provide discussion boards and interactive games, and even integrate surveys for post-class feedback. Many people value the credentials that can come with education so NDI worked to improve the open-source OpenEdX software to provide elegant certificates personalized with their information for those who successfully completed a course.

Interest in the online learning platform has recently spiked. Ironically, just as the pandemic is easing, new programs are coming online that are making online methodologies for program delivery central to their approach. This includes the House Democracy Partnership – an initiative of the U.S. Congress supported by the National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute – which is turning their Legislative Oversight Guide into a series of mini-courses, and NDI’s Movement-Based Parties initiative which is using Open edX to deliver engaging online training at scale.

These new online courses are a positive sign that NDI is moving beyond attempting to deliver via Zoom programs designed to be done in-person. Almost any program that has some educational component can emulate this approach and consider using Open edX to improve their program delivery and learning outcomes. Exceptions may exist in cases where intended learners have high security risk or do not have access to quality internet connections. Any online approach could further the marginalization of groups with limited or no access to the internet. If you’re interested in exploring the possibilities of Open edX for your own programs or want to learn more about NDI’s use of the platform, I encourage you to visit ed.ndi.org to see what courses NDI is currently offering and try Open edX for yourself.

This blog was originally posted on dem.tools.

“Youth Bulge” is Making Waves In Nigerian Politics

Posted by jfrant

This article was originally posted on DemWorks.org.

Nigeria’s population pyramid shows a population heavily weighted toward youth. Youth account for 60 percent of the Nigerian population and 55.4 percent of the voting-age population.

Margaret Mead is quoted as saying, “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” In late February, I traveled to Abuja, Nigeria to meet with one such group of thoughtful, committed citizens.

The Youth Initiative for Advocacy Growth and Advancement (YIAGA) is one of Nigeria’s preeminent youth organizations. YIAGA, along with the Youngstars Development Initiative (YDI), has conducted a very successful advocacy effort to lower the eligibility age to run for elected office in Nigeria. From humble beginnings, the #NotTooYoungToRun campaign has grown into a national movement.

Nigerians become eligible to vote at 18. Once eligible to vote, politically-motivated youth must wait another 12 to 22 years to be eligible to run for elected office. This policy seems foolhardy in a country where youth account for 60 percent of the population and 55.4 percent of the voting-age population. This “youth buldge” is both an opportunity and a potential challenge. By marginalizing young people from full participation in the political process, Nigeria is missing a huge opportunity to harness their creativity, energy and inspiration for national development. On a darker note, violence may ultimately be the cost of their political exclusion. Noting the mass violence unleashed by Boko Haram, one YIAGA member pointed out, “the ruling elite in the north have not come to terms with the resentment of young people about their exclusion.”

The #NotTooYoungToRun bill seeks to take on one barrier to youth representation in political leadership. The bill seeks to amend the constitution, reducing the eligibility age for President from 40 years to 30 years; Governor 35 to 30; Senate 35 to 30; House of Representatives 30 to 25; and State House of Assembly 30 to 25. Through YIAGA’s tireless efforts, the amendment seems poised to pass the National Assembly and move on to ratification by the states.

So why has the #NotTooYoungToRun campaign been so successful? Samson Itodo, the executive director of YIAGA, said that while the campaign had started in 2009 it didn’t begin to gain traction until 2015 when previous efforts consolidated on increasing political will and compelling campaign branding. The full answer is complicated and will be a main focus of YIAGA’s forthcoming toolkit for youth activists, but they identified a few key lessons:

Narrative is powerful – “We didn’t have a campaign until we came up with the hashtag.”
Build a movement – “It’s not about one organization.”
Focus on partnerships that work – “Legislative-civil society collaboration was key.”
Stop agonizing and organize!

Even as the national #NotTooYoungToRun campaign continues to gain momentum, the African Union and the United Nations have shown interest in replicating YIAGA’s success. The UN launched its own global Not Too Young To Run campaign, and the AU has expressed interest in working with YIAGA to provide guidance to enable other youth groups across sub-Saharan Africa to achieve greater youth representation in the political leadership of their own countries.

While the tide is moving in YIAGA’s favor, there is still a lot of work to do. They will need all of their creativity and fortitude to see this amendment through to full passage.