This is my first diary post on Kos. I have a small personal blog that my friends read to keep track of my daily annoyances and action alerts but I wanted my posts on Kos to be more than updates on my view of current political happenings. I wanted to incorporate my work (Online Strategy & Communications for
Grassroots Democrats, [
http://www.grassrootsdemocrats.com] ) and my passion, really the passion of pretty much everyone on this site - to build a stronger Democratic party that can win - and focus the posts around real success in the states and how to build on them.
Having thought about this for a bit, I approached the management of our organization with an idea: post diaries on the political and online success of the state parties we worked with on one of the few sites where most of the people who would care about our not-so-sexy-organizational-mantra `stronger infrastructure for stronger state parties' are. As you can probably guess, they liked the idea...
There is information at the end of the post that gives more background on who we are but I thought it would be a great idea to start the diaries with one of our most successful online initiatives.
Earlier this year, Grassroots Democrats conducted an online survey of our supporters to find out why they would visit their state party website and what types of applications they wanted to find there. Once they filled out a short survey that focused on general website preferences, they were given the opportunity to evaluate three state party websites. The first round of surveys was so successful we are doing it again. Since this is the first time you guys are probably hearing about our organization, I wanted to give you an opportunity to participate in this program and tell us what you think about state party websites.
Use this link to tell us what you think about state party websites:
[http://www.surveymonkey.com/...]
Once you finish the first survey you will be able to register to evaluate three, specific state parties. You will then receive an email within one business day with your assigned state party websites to evaluate. Currently we are in the process of evaluating 9 state party websites. They were grouped together based on a variety of conditions. Each group of three includes three different types of widely used website templates. Other conditions included a wide rage of factors including the size of the state, population and region of the country.
The state parties are incredibly excited about this program and many have asked us to include their websites for evaluation. The information gathered in the first round has been used by many states to re-evaluate the effectiveness of their websites and drive the direction of their online plans. Here is an excerpt of the Executive Summary of the first Grassroots Democrats State Party Website Survey:
"In addition to examining the influence of a website's design, we examined the relationship between the reasons a user seeks out the state party website and the applications the state party offers on its site in converting simple users to members - meaning they have 'gotten involved' by signing up for email or as a volunteer.
Taken together, this information can help state parties build online programs that will meet the needs of their users while building a relationship with them that will allow state parties to turn out volunteers when needed.
Findings indicated that the level of sophistication people are looking for goes beyond the site's layout and usability and includes how effectively the site meets the user's needs. When those needs are met, an increased number of users want to `get involved' with the party.
The ability to encourage the transition from the user's motivation for visiting the site to driving the user to become a committed party member is critical to an effective online program. Once the needs of the user have been met, it is much easier to encourage the user to take additional actions, such as signing up for email, contributing funds and participating in field actions with organizers."
You can find more information on the Executive Summary on our website in "The Latest" section: [http://www.grassrootsdemocrats.com/...]
A little background on us: Grassroots Democrats (not to be confused with Grassroots Solutions, Grassroots Campaigns, Grassroots Politics or any one of the many other unrelated organizations that begin with `Grassroots') is committed to building stronger state parties so they can more effectively work with activists on the ground as well as candidates and incumbents, influence debate on state or national legislation, and ensure Democrats have a voice in the next redistricting process in 2010. In addition to raising non-federal money for state parties, we work with all 50 Democratic state parties in four main areas:
- Compliance (so they don't break laws and waste precious resources paying fines)
- Fundraising (so they can become self-sustaining and maintain year-round staff and offices that can win elections up and down the ticket)
- Political (so they make the national and regional connections to ensure success)
- Online Strategy and Communications (so they can get the best practices of online organizing and build a strong online program with minimal resources)
I won't bore you with the details but feel free to check out our website: http://www.grassrootsdemocrats.com