Campaigns are the heart of Rally Congress. A Campaign page engages supporters and urges them to take action. (See details on Campaign Page Elements) A Campaign can have many different actions:
The Rally Congress service allows your account managers to create calls-to-action to Congress and all 50 state legislators through an easy-to-use online control panel.
For each supporter taking action, Rally Congress validates the incoming data, determines the district and elected officials, and stores all of that information in your supporter database. This data, and related activity reports, are accessible real-time through your secure online control panel.
Every Congressional office has their own unique system and internal processes and policies for handling incoming constituent communications. In our experience the time to respond to a constituent email can be within hours, or may take as long as six or eight weeks. Some offices send written postal letters and others respond by email. Depending on the issue and its perceived urgency, as well as the overall office workload and other staff priorities, some offices will not respond at all.
The vast majority of members of Congress now have official Twitter accounts, so the public messaging platform is another great way to connect with lawmakers. Twitter sharing is built in across all pages on Rally Congress, and you can also set up standalone actions that let users look up and tweet at specific lawmakers. We maintain a current list of official Twitter handles for Congress and state legislators.
For many people, Facebook IS the Internet, and most lawmakers maintain some presence on the social network. Facebook sharing is deeply integrated across all Rally Congress pages, and you can also set up standalone actions to drive supporters to connect with lawmakers on Facebook. We maintain a list of all Facebook pages for lawmakers, although the different actions your supporter can take will depend on the setup of a given lawmaker's Facebook page. Some lawmakers allow public posts on their timeline, and others will accept private messages, and other lawmakers have all interaction on Facebook turned off.
Sometimes, such as when a vote is imminent, you will want to escalate beyond electronic message communications. That's why Rally Congress also supports phone call campaigns that give These click-to-calls are organized online through the Rally Congress petition system. Supporters use the site to look up their officials and their phone numbers, and provides a simple way to report the success of the call.
Going beyond the phone action is the click-to-call, where Rally Congress actually connects your supporters to Congress via telephone.
The call can include a custom message with talking points of your choosing, or our default message, and then patches the user through to the target official.
This feature is completely optional, and the charge for each call is pay-as-you-go airtime at 5 cents a minute, rounding up to the minute. The system will also capture the caller phone information and will be able to view reports on the activists, targets, and duration of each call.
Some campaigns may not need to connect directly with lawmakers. For this situation, you can create an online petition where supporter data and actions are stored in Rally Congress, but no messages are delivered to officials.
This type of action could be a general pledge (i.e. "I Stand with Mike") or a petition to a non-political but public figure or institution, like a university or company.