Community Change Action is a leading national organization that empowers low-income people, especially people of color, to mobilize for a better future. The organization, alongside grassroots partners nationwide, builds power by organizing on the ground, advocating for policy change, and engaging voters.
For the 2022 midterm election, Community Change Action was focused on mobilizing voters of color and connecting to voters’ values around just and equitable immigration, housing, and economic policies. The organization aimed to use relational organizing, in concert with peer-to-peer texting and phone banking, to build a nationwide network of volunteers and conduct large-scale voter outreach. Community Change Action itself used Impactive, and also provided the tech to its network of affiliate grassroots organizations nationwide.
This relational organizing program was immensely successful. Using Impactive, Community Change Action and its affiliate partners reached over 2 million people, sent over 6 million peer-to-peer text messages, and made nearly 30,000 phone calls.
There’s no better way to build power from the ground up than relational organizing — this concept is the basis of the advocacy group’s organizing work. In 2019, Community Change Action became one of Impactive’s earliest partners when it adopted our best-in-class relational organizing suite for its nationwide program.
This partnership was so successful that Community Change Action and Impactive later partnered with the Analyst Institute to demonstrate the effectiveness of relational outreach. Results of the study showed that relational outreach via Impactive makes a contact 6.5x more likely to sign a petition and 8x more likely to opt-in to an organizing event.
After using Impactive to unite nearly 100 local organizations ahead of the 2020 election, Community Change Action had ambitious plans for 2022. The organization committed to providing Impactive licenses to any of its partner organizations, along with dedicated staff and training time, to allow each affiliate to amplify relational organizing efforts within their communities.
The organization’s network of advocacy partners quickly got to work organizing their communities with Impactive; each organization used Impactive to meet its own needs. Some organizations focused on relational organizing, while others combined relational with Impactive’s full range of digital outreach and engagement tools. When certain affiliates needed more hands-on support, Community Change Action leveraged Impactive’s Coordinated Campaigns feature to create templated actions and scripts that could then be shared with partner campaigns.
One of these organizations was Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA), which supports Arizona’s working families. Within just a few days before Election Day, the organization reached over 1,000 voters using relational organizing via Impactive. Some of those contacted even expressed that outreach from their friend or family member was the sole reason they voted.
Center for Racial and Gender Equity WI, which works to empower Black women, also mobilized impressively on Impactive. Volunteers and organizers from this grassroots group used Impactive's Phone Banking tool to hold regular phone banks; they made 26,125 calls to voters leading up to Election Day. Along with its broadcast messaging and peer-to-peer texting efforts, the organization reached over 16,000 Wisconsinites via Impactive.
Additionally, Michigan Liberation, an organization that strives to end mass incarceration and transform the criminal justice system, became a power user of Peer-to-Peer Texting. Members of this organization sent nearly 2 million peer-to-peer texts, urging Michiganders to cast their vote and providing ballot and polling location information.
Community Change Action used Impactive to drive supporter growth. The organization spread awareness about volunteer opportunities using digital ads, then used Peer-to-Peer Texting and Broadcast Texting to engage these volunteer leads immediately. This tactic of texting newly interested supporters right away ensured that the organization could begin pushing volunteers up the ladder of engagement.
The organization also used Broadcast Texting to boost ongoing volunteer engagement. In 2022, it held weekly organizing meetings that gathered volunteers invested in creating change. Although these meetings were held at the same time every week, meeting organizers realized that volunteers could easily forget to attend. To boost volunteer participation, they used Broadcast Texting to send regular reminders at the start of every meeting. Volunteers began to rely on these reminders to attend weekly, and even those that couldn’t join regularly began attending whenever they could.
Organizations like Community Change Action and its impressive network of grassroots partners are crucial for building power in historically overlooked communities. There’s no doubt that the organization and its partners’ efforts to educate and mobilize voters made a significant impact on the results of the 2022 midterm election. In 2023, Community Change Action plans to continue using Impactive to deepen civic engagement, educate voters on issues that impact their lives, and drive legislative wins. Impactive is grateful for our longstanding partnership with Community Change Action, and we look forward to continuing to innovate together to sustain volunteer engagement.
%205.png)
The Iowa Senate Majority Fund used Impactive to boost voter mobilization and drive a 3x return on their fundraising texts ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
Powered by Impactive's Custom Voter Registration tool, HeadCount partnered with top celebrities like Harry Styles to drive over half a million voter registration checks.
Supported by Peer-to-Peer Texting and Phone Banking, LCV ran its largest national member mobilization program ever ahead of the 2022 elections.
