100 Best Campaign Tools

Whether you’re running for offi ce, trying to get a ballot measure approved or growing your nonprofi t, campaigns and issue advocacy work are complicated, multi-person endeavors with many moving parts. From fundraising efforts to social media posts, we know every campaign has a lot of tasks to complete on the way to victory. We’ve compiled a list of 100+ digital tools to streamline your efforts and help every campaign team collaborate better. Launching a petition? Want to send mass texts that will actually get read? Need a sleek website? We’ve vetted countless campaign and advocacy tools to fi nd options that solve all of these problems and many, many more. We look forward to hearing your feedback in the comments or by emailing us at: [email protected].

Action Network Amicus A fantastic petition tool for your site, with Amicus is a peer-to-peer calling and postcard a growing suite of other campaign tools tool to help get your membership more engaged (think mass emails and surveys) built for through personalized phone calls and direct progressive organizations and campaigns. mail. Great for collaborative, coalition-based efforts, Cost: Paid Action Network is also embeddable, so you can Type: Field keep your branding consistent. Cost: Freemium Asana Type: Petitions Asana is an easy-to-use campaign tool for teams to track work, plan ahead, and have fun ActionSprout along the way with gamifi cation. ActionSprout is a great tool that allows you to Cost: Paid host an action within your Facebook page. It Type: Organization also provides a great set of metrics to measure your post performance and lets you invite people to like your page when they have liked a ASMP post but not your page. Cost: Freemium Looking to hire a photographer in a new town or fi nd some custom stock photography? This Type: Petitions is a great site to fi nd quality photographers, wherever you need one. AddText Cost: Free Not the most complicated campaign tool, but Type: Photos sometimes simple is what you need. The title says it all: AddText allows you to quickly and easily add text to all of your photos. Cost: Freemium Type: Photos

1660 L Street, NW | Suite 506 | Washington, DC 20036 202-223-8884 | www.TheCampaignWorkshop.com 1 100 Best Campaign Tools

Assistant.to CallFire This handy Gmail plugin eliminates the endless A rock-solid campaign tool that puts the power back-and-forth when scheduling meetings. of a call center in the hands of your volunteers Cost: Free (and their cell phones). Type: Organization Cost: Paid Type: Call/SMS Attentive.ly Call Hub Want to do a deep dive into who is on your list and what they care about? Look no further than Two birds with one stone, Call Hub allows Attentive.ly, which, through social listening and you to integrate CRM’s like Salesforce and search, will help you to make sure you get the Nationbuilder, with political and advocacy tools. right message to the right list segment. What’s Track and monitor every call and SMS you and more, Attentive.ly connects with most major your volunteers make during a campaign. Get CRMs. detailed reports and insights. Cost: Freemium Cost: Paid Type: Email Type: Call/SMS

Blab Camtasia An interactive interview tool to create live video Looking to create video for your campaign or content and discussion. organization? Camtasia helps you create and Cost: Free edit professional videos. Type: Content Cost: Paid Type: Video

Boomerang Emailing late at night, but Canva don’t want to ping people with a 3 a.m. Canva is a web-based platform that helps you message? This tool allows you to write create great custom graphics, even if you don’t whenever you’re free and then schedule have any design experience. Export the slides emails to go out when you actually want and use them in place of PowerPoint, or as people to see them. compelling images for social media updates. Cost: Freemium Cost: Freemium Type: Email Type: Content

Brigade Care2.org Find family members, friends or folks in your area who agree on your issues. Plus, poll people The original petition site. Care2 offers free and to see why they agree (or don’t) with your sponsored petition options to help you infl uence views. decision makers and grow your list. Cost: Paid Cost: Freemium Type: Field Type: Petitions

1660 L Street, NW | Suite 506 | Washington, DC 20036 202-223-8884 | www.TheCampaignWorkshop.com 2 100 Best Campaign Tools

Catalist Civis Media Optimizer Need to pull a data fi le for your targeted Fine-tuned targeting is an integral part of communications program? Through a paid any modern communications strategy, but subscription service, Catalist provides access TV buy targeting hasn’t kept pace. Using an to a wealth of voter and other data so that you anonymous, privacy-protected third party to can be sure your message is reaching identify the exact shows your target viewers the best possible audience. watch, Civis Media Optimizer matches your Cost: Paid target with what they’re watching, helping you to Type: Data optimize your media dollars. Cost: Paid Type: Media Change.org Change.org is a great place to launch a petition and grow your base. Direct your petition ClickToTweet at a politician, corporation, organization or Promote, share and track your content on person, and share it on social media and other Twitter to fi nd out what works and what doesn’t platforms to grow your list of supporters. Just on your social feed. as inspiring as seeing your signatures grow? Cost: Free Tuning in to Change.org’s list of victories, which Type: Social Media illustrate once again how powerful our voices can be when they come together. Cost: Freemium CMAG Type: Petitions Sadly, you can’t be everywhere at all times. CMAG will monitor media buys placed by independent expenditures and your opposition, Cision so you can learn where they’re airing their Want more earned media? Cision is a way to messages and what they’re saying. grow your press list by area or topic, so you can Cost: Paid get your message out to more media outlets. Type: Research Cost: Paid Type: Press Confluence Need help keeping your staff organized? Civis Data Platform Confl uence can help you create and discuss An analytics platform that will help you to better work with your team. organize and understand your organization’s Cost: Paid data and harness its power. Type: Organization Cost: Paid Type: Data

1660 L Street, NW | Suite 506 | Washington, DC 20036 202-223-8884 | www.TheCampaignWorkshop.com 3 100 Best Campaign Tools

Contactually Democracy.com Quirky CRM that uses gamifi cation to sort your Get your voice heard on the web with this contacts by buckets, and provides tools to platform for creating websites for candidates ensure those buckets of past clients or potential and causes. leads don’t fall off your radar. Cost: Free Cost: Paid Type: Research Type: Organization Democracy Engine CoSchedule Democracy Engine provides you with the tools If you’re creating content, you need an editorial to fi nd, engage with, and donate to campaigns calendar to keep you and your team on track. and organizations. CoSchedule has a calendar tool, and also gives Cost: Paid you space to plot and organize your social Type: Fundraising media strategy. Cost: Paid Doodle Type: Content Yes, it’s possible to never say, “What day works for you?” again. Doodle makes schedule ping- Crowdpac pong a thing of the past, as each person who’s Kickstarter, but for politics. slated to attend a meeting can fi ll in what time Let your supporters know exactly works best. what you need to meet your goals. Cost: Free Cost: Paid Type: Organization Type: Fundraising Ecanvasser CrowdTangle Who covered their turf? Ecanvasser allows you Track and analyze social media engagement for to map territory, sync walk lists and more. your own organization or campaign... and track Cost: Paid your competitors while you’re at it. Type: Canvass Cost: Paid Type: Social Media EveryAction A site that organizes many aspects of nonprofi t Defonic management, including emails, web-based Need to block out noise to focus? Try this donations and donor management. ambient noise generator, with sounds from Cost: Paid nature or urban life. We’re fond of “Oceanica,” Type: Website though it occasionally makes us wish we were staring at the sea and not the screen. Cost: Free Type: Organization

1660 L Street, NW | Suite 506 | Washington, DC 20036 202-223-8884 | www.TheCampaignWorkshop.com 4 100 Best Campaign Tools

Expensify Google Analytics When the end of the month rolls around, are you Want to see how your website is performing? scrambling to fi nd your receipts? This expense Use Google Analytic’ metrics to inform your tool will help make reporting what you spent strategic decisions about your web presence. (and where) less of a hassle. Cost: Free Cost: Paid Type: Website Type: Organization GoToMeeting feedly Whether your team is in multiple locations or Keep everything you love to read in one place. you have a vendor demo call, GoToMeeting is feedly is a versatile RSS feed that lets you one system we rely on for video conferencing. centralize all the publications in your life and Cost: Paid keep them up-to-date. Type: Organization Cost: Paid Type: Research Grammarly Freesound Better than spell-check, Grammarly helps sniff out typos, corrects your grammar, and Boom! Freesound is a collaborative database even suggests synonyms to make you sound of Creative Commons licensed sounds that you smarter. It works in all text fi elds, so you can can use to add sounds to your website, short rest assured that your emails, blogs and social fi lm, etc. media posts are getting a solid once-over. Cost: Free Cost: Free Type: Video Type: Content

Function Point Grassroots Unwired Function Point is a productivity software for Keep track of your canvassers in the fi eld and creative agencies, internal marketing teams collect real-time contact information. This and professional service fi rms. Stay connected real-time campaign tool helps provide voter at every stage of project management while feedback, contribution information, canvasser gaining deeper knowledge of your company. accountability and real results. Cost: Paid Cost: Paid Type: Organization Type: Canvass

Glympse Want to know where your candidate is at all times? This handy app helps you track them. Cost: Free Type: Organization

1660 L Street, NW | Suite 506 | Washington, DC 20036 202-223-8884 | www.TheCampaignWorkshop.com 5 100 Best Campaign Tools

Ground Game Hemingway Editor Changing the canvassing game one canvasser Papa Hemingway was known for his concise at a time. Use Ground Game to organize prose. This namesake program will highlight canvassers with walking lists, satellite maps, sentences that are too long or confusing. Try it surveys, and even view voter information for out, and watch your writing become clearer. the neighborhoods canvassers are walking. Cost: Freemium It’s a powerful mobile canvassing tool that’s Type: Content affordable regardless of the size of your campaign. Cost: Paid Hightail Type: Canvass Hightail allows you to store projects on the cloud and collaborate on big GroupMe fi les with your colleagues. The end goal? Eliminating all those back-and-forth emails Text your entire team at once with GroupMe. as projects go from the idea stage to the fi nal Cost: Free product. Type: SMS Cost: Freemium Type: Organization Handstack If only we could text Hootsuite everyone. It’s possible This campaign tool allows you to manage all to text your entire list with of your social media accounts in one visual this campaign tool, which dashboard, and eliminates the time spent allows you to reach large toggling between tabs and re-logging into your audiences for persuasion, accounts. fundraising and organizing via SMS. As a bonus, Cost: Free the communication is two-way, so you can Type: Social Media actually get feedback from your supporters in real time. Cost: Paid HotelTonight Type: SMS Traveling and need a hotel at the last minute? Use this app, which gets you great rates on HARO rooms. Procrastinators, we won’t tell if you use it in more than just those emergency moments. Reporters need experts and sources, and you Cost: Free just might be the person they want to talk to. Type: Travel Sign up with Help A Reporter Out (HARO), and get some good, free press in the process. Cost: Free Type: Press

1660 L Street, NW | Suite 506 | Washington, DC 20036 202-223-8884 | www.TheCampaignWorkshop.com 6 100 Best Campaign Tools

HubSpot Sales Keeper There’s nothing worse than hitting “send” and This self-proclaimed “digital vault” will keep all feeling like your email has disappeared into the your passwords safe. ether. HubSpot Sales sets a time for delivery, Cost: Freemium tracks your email and lets you know when the Type: Organization recipient opens it – all from one handy app. Cost: Paid Type: Email Kindful It’s a streamlined, user-friendly CRM for nonprofi t fundraising. Easy to use with good Hustle functionality, but not overwhelming. It’s no secret that we’re fans of GOTV calls, Cost: Paid especially with certain demographics. But Type: Website texting is also becoming an essential part of campaigns as well. This peer-to-peer SMS tool allows you to quickly expand your reach. Klaviyo Cost: Paid Harness the power of email marketing, Type: SMS fundraising and automation for your campaign. Cost: Paid Type: Email IFTTT IFTTT links all the devices in your life and allows you to control all of them from your phone. Klout Cost: Free Determine your digital infl uence, and check out Type: Organization how you rank as compared to your competitors or other campaigns. Cost: Free Influence Explorer Type: Social Media Find the campaign fi nance and lobbying information you’re looking for, all in one place and in real time. Leadin Cost: Free Create easy lead pages Type: Research for your website fo free. Cost: Free IQtell Type: Website The ultimate productivity tool. IQ Tell turns your emails into actions. It is the next step in LexisNexis the evolution of productivity tools, letting you Traditionally thought of as a law tool, LexisNexis organize emails into tasks. Task categories is a powerful search device that can help you include next actions, watch lists, upcoming fi nd background information on anyone. events, and more. Cost: Paid Cost: Paid Type: Research Type: Email/Organization

1660 L Street, NW | Suite 506 | Washington, DC 20036 202-223-8884 | www.TheCampaignWorkshop.com 7 100 Best Campaign Tools

Lynda Netfirms Expand your skill set infi nitely with this hub of A reliable platform for researching and buying online classes. Master an app or develop a skill domain names, once you’re ready to commit. through Lynda’s thousands of different trainings Cost: Paid and courses. Type: Website Cost: Paid Type: Research NGP VAN MailTrack The long-standing fundraising back end for most Democratic campaigns, which allows you to do Find out who read your email and when they did, everything from raising money to organizing without them knowing that you’re keeping track. better. Cost: Free Cost: Paid Type: Email Type: Fundraising

Mentionmapp OmniFocus This campaign tool allows you to map A tool made for Apple fans, OmniFocus lets you connections between Twitter users and see your work in a variety of ways. Stay on top visualize what they’re saying so you can keep of projects, goals, prioritize tasks at hand, and track of your brand, and make sure you’re handle all your priorities on an iPhone, iPad, monitoring your social media traffi c. Mac, or even, Apple watch. Cost: Free Cost: Paid Type: Social Media Type: Organization

My Minutes Open Live Writer Feeling those minutes slip away? From Compose your blog posts online or offl ine, add managing call time to time with your family to images and then seamlessly post them from time spent at the gym, this campaign tool will this site. allow you to set goals for how you use all the Cost: Free hours in your day. Type: Content Cost: Paid Type: Organization Organizer NationBuilder An easy-to-use canvassing app with a clean design. It provides real time results An all-in-one platform for political campaigns for canvassing and cuts down on countless – it helps with websites, fundraising, email hours of data entry. blasting and more. Cost: Paid Cost: Paid Type: Canvass Type: CRM

1660 L Street, NW | Suite 506 | Washington, DC 20036 202-223-8884 | www.TheCampaignWorkshop.com 8 100 Best Campaign Tools

Periscope Really Good Emails Getting into video can be as simple as holding Want to spice up your emails up your phone and recording what you see. or newsletters with a sleek new To start recording and sharing, check out design? Check out Really Good Periscope, a social platform that lets you create Emails for inspiration. a conversation and have others join in. Cost: Paid Cost: Free Type: Email Type: Social Media RescueTime PersoniFind RescueTime runs in the background on See what decision makers and infl uential your laptop and tells you how productive folks are really talking about. This innovative you really are. campaign tool helps you fi nd infl uencers on Cost: Paid Twitter and analyze conversations by issue. Type: Organization Cost: Paid Type: Social Media Revere A suite of tools to get the word out on your Phonto campaign, from patch-through calling and SMS Phonto lets you add text to images. to ad buying and site design. Cost: Free Cost: Paid Type: Photos Type: Call/SMS

Political Party Time Roost Need to fi nd out where politicians are holding Looking for fundraisers? Try out this cool tracker to locate storage for your your coffee klatch or cocktail party. campaign materials while you go on the road? Meet the Airbnb of Cost: Free storage and parking spaces. Just don’t forget Type: Research that you left your bike in Iowa. Cost: Free Rapportive Type: Travel Get more info on your contacts, fast. This email plugin loads a contact’s LinkedIn page, right Sales Rabbit alongside the message they sent you. A tool to help you keep all your leads in one Cost: Freemium place. Tracking and managing leads to help Type: Email you do one thing: close more leads. With Sales Rabbit, you’ll never forget a lead again! Cost: Paid Type: Organization

1660 L Street, NW | Suite 506 | Washington, DC 20036 202-223-8884 | www.TheCampaignWorkshop.com 9 100 Best Campaign Tools

Salsa ShareProgress No tortillas here. Salsa is all about a cloud- Got a progressive cause that wants to build based fundraising software for nonprofi ts and its list? ShareProgress allows you to grow campaigns. There’s also a marketing tool, which your base of supporters through data-driven will help target your supporters the right way. technology and testing. Cost: Paid Cost: Paid Type: Website Type: Data

Sanebox Slack Sanebox is an email streamlining service that An incredible organizational tool that allows analyzes your past behavior (which emails you you to give colleagues tasks, keep up with what open, which you respond to, how quickly, how your team is doing, chat and send documents. often, etc.) and determines the importance of Cost: Freemium your incoming emails through their headers. Type: Organization Your most important emails are prioritized and less important emails are pulled into a separate folder and summarized in a digest. It SmartVAN also includes a snooze function for non-urgent Another favorite of The Campaign Workshop, emails, unsubscribing with one-click, reminders SmartVAN is a core source for voter data. You when people don’t reply to you and more. can research voter universes, pull lists and Cost: Paid assemble walk packets for volunteers, among Type: Email many other things. Cost: Paid SEMrush Type: Data Get intelligence on your competition, including what type of ads they’re buying and the SparkInfluence keywords they’re using. A Wordpress and mobile friendly platform to help Cost: Paid you get the most out of advocacy and grassroot Type: Content efforts. Educate, engage, and empower your campaign all while collecting useful data. Cost: Paid Sendible Type: Website If you’re looking for a campaign tool to boost your social media presence, check out Sendible. Its sleek dashboard makes it simple to see SpeakUp! WordPress how your posts are performing and write new Petition Plugin messages to followers. A free plugin for WordPress Cost: Free sites, SpeakUp! allows you Type: Social Media to post your email petitions directly to your website. Cost: Free Type: Petitions

1660 L Street, NW | Suite 506 | Washington, DC 20036 202-223-8884 | www.TheCampaignWorkshop.com 10 100 Best Campaign Tools

Speek Storify Get the team on the same page with conference Storify lets you search through multiple social calling and screen sharing on one simple media platforms, and create a report and/or platform. blog post based on content that matters to your Cost: Freemium team and community. Show your team what Type: Call/SMS #issues people are really discussing or how a news story unfolded online. Cost: Freemium Sprout Social Type: Content Are you being heard? Promote your content and reach your audience with this one-stop campaign tool for social media engagement and analytics. StratDriver Cost: Paid Call us biased, but the new app StratDriver Type: Social Media (created by TCW’s Joe Fuld) is a way to help campaigns set goals and measure their efforts. Cost: Paid SpyFu Type: Field Discover what your competitors are buying as far as keywords and what they organically rank for. SurveyMonkey Cost: Freemium A survey platform that can Type: Website help you create and keep track of simple surveys. Use it to interact with your base, Squakr and fi nd out what toppings your staff prefers on A Google Alert here. A screenshot of a tweet their pizza. there. Streamline how you track your opponent Cost: Freemium with Squakr, a content and social media tracking Type: Research tool that keeps you informed about what your opponent is doing and saying. Cost: Paid SweetProcess Type: Social Media Winning campaigns are built with systems. Get your knowledge of repetitive tasks out of your Squarespace head, and let your team take over some of the things you’ve been handling solo. SweetProcess Launching your web presence doesn’t have to is an organizational campaign tool that allows be a huge headache. Squarespace helps mere you to create systems for your team, assign mortals create professional-looking websites. tasks, and track their progress until they’re Cost: Freemium done. Type: Website Cost: Paid Type: Organization

1660 L Street, NW | Suite 506 | Washington, DC 20036 202-223-8884 | www.TheCampaignWorkshop.com 11 100 Best Campaign Tools

Talkwalker Todoist A social media analytics tool that helps you Your to-do list on steroids. monitor what’s going on in the world by Enough said. focusing on keywords or names. Cost: Freemium Cost: Paid Type: Organization Type: Social Media Toodledo Taskworld A project management tool to keep your ideas, A tool to help you focus on what’s important. notes, and tasks organized at work and at Prioritize and manage your team’s tasks, home. Get your ideas out of your head and into set due dates, and monitor progress with the hands of your team. Taskworld’s interactive visual task boards. Cost: Free Cost: Paid Type: Organization Type: Organization TripIt Teamup Calendar Streamline all of your travel plans and Welcome to your new calendar. An awesome create a single itinerary, alongside way to synchronize events and content across a a map. We like that it’s available team. offl ine, making it accessible in the Cost: Paid air or on the subway. Type: Organization Cost: Free Type: Travel

Things Things is a delightful and easy to use task Trello manager. It’s the perfect companion for Trello is a productivity visualization tool everything you want to achieve in life, offering that allows for better collaboration among a great balance between ease of use and team mates. You can add comments and powerful features. With it, you can organize attachments to each project board, and it every aspect of your life—from your daily synchs to all devices and to all your favorites: routine to your long-term goals—and fi nd the Slack, Google Drive, Evernote and more. Dive clarity that only comes from knowing what to into the details and stay on track with Trello. do next. You can set it up to sync across your Cost: Freemium devices, to easily keep track of everything no Type: Organization matter where you are. Cost: Paid Type: Organization

1660 L Street, NW | Suite 506 | Washington, DC 20036 202-223-8884 | www.TheCampaignWorkshop.com 12 100 Best Campaign Tools

TubeChop VoilaNorbert A fast campaign tool to quickly edit a clip from Can’t fi nd someone’s email address? a YouTube video, and create a short, watchable VoilaNorbert is a service that fi nds the email bite. address based on the URL of the company and Cost: Free the name of the person whose email you lost. Type: Video Cost: Freemium Type: Email Tweepi Voter Circle Organize your Twitter followers, and get a better sense of who follows you (and who doesn’t). VoterCircle is a grassroots digital advocacy Cost: Freemium tool that elevates friend-to-friend contact over traditional campaign-to-voter contact to make Type: Social Media messaging effective on any budget. The point of the platform is to leverage the power of Twitter Analytics personal networks by getting friends to mobilize one another to action. You likely use Twitter, but have you really dug Cost: Paid into the back-end of its analytics dashboard? It is a great place to get true insight into who is Type: Social Media connecting with you and what tweets are driving interaction. Waze Cost: Free Type: Social Media Now you really don’t have an excuse to be late for that campaign meeting. Waze is a crowd- sourced traffi c app. Ubersuggest Cost: Free Researching keywords has never been easier. Type: Travel Ubersugest is a great tool to fi nd the best keyword for the web, images, youtube, or even the news, for your next content marketing Wistia campaign. It even offers a google chrome or Everyone loves a good video. fi refox extension- KeywordEveryhwere. Wistia is a video hosting service that lets you Cost: Free embed video on your site and capture potential Type: Research leads from the people who view your content. Cost: Freemium Unsplash Type: Video Stock photos don’t have to be pricy or boring. Unsplash is a spot to fi nd beautiful, free high- Word Swag defi nition photos. You don’t need graphic design or Photoshop Cost: Free experience to add text to your photos. Word Type: Photos Swag allows you to create clean, high-impact images for your blog or Instagram. Cost: Paid Type: Content 1660 L Street, NW | Suite 506 | Washington, DC 20036 202-223-8884 | www.TheCampaignWorkshop.com 13 100 Best Campaign Tools

WorkFlowy Zamzar WorkFlowy makes list-making more interactive We’ve all been there: You need to convert a PDF and accessible than ever. Use this paid tool to a Word fi le and aren’t sure which site is best to organize your schedule, keep track of your or what program you should download. Zamzar ideas, and prioritize your to-do’s in a digital converts video, mp3, ebook, PDFs, Excel, Word, notebook. You can even fi lter your lists by etc., without requiring you to download new hashtags to quickly fi nd specifi c items. Try software. a free demo to see how you can start better Cost: Free organizing your brain. Type: Video Cost: Freemium Type: Organization Zapier Make your apps work harder for you. Zapier Wrike allows all of your new apps to communicate For small teams are large teams, Wrike helps and share information. you organize your projects and increase Cost: Freemium productivity. Manage project portfolios, track Type: Data documents, use performance metrics and see instant progress. Cost: Freemium Type: Organization

Yoast We love Yoast. It’s an essential SEO plugin for WordPress and Drupal that will help you to optimize your website so it shows up in web searches (and climbs the rankings). Cost: Paid Type: Website

1660 L Street, NW | Suite 506 | Washington, DC 20036 202-223-8884 | www.TheCampaignWorkshop.com 14