Indivisible meets electoral, legislative and fundraising goals with TextOut

Background

Indivisible is a grassroots organization that works to resist the GOP agenda, elect local champions, and fight for progressive policies.

The Indivisible movement is a progressive grassroots movement of millions of activists nationwide. With a combination of local groups and a national team, Indivisible fights to defeat the rightwing takeover of the American government and build an inclusive democracy.

Indivisible Action, the organization’s PAC, has worked with Civitech’s SMS/MMS platform, TextOut, since 2019 on various outreach activities to voters and activists.

Challenge

In 2019, the team at Indivisible Action was looking for a tool to communicate with its members easily and mobilize them into action. The group also wanted a convenient way to meet their external and internal goals by reaching activists, donors, and volunteers.

Solution

By partnering with TextOut, Indivisible could add another tactic to help meet the organization’s electoral, legislative, activist, and internal goals. As a grassroots organization, Indivisible had several goals: help mobilize voters to elect progressive representatives, pass legislation and advocate for fair government, engage volunteers, and fundraise for the organization.

TextOut is a flexible tool that is an ideal fit for each goal. TextOut’s features make it easy to use for all types of programs.

We’ll share all the types of programs that Indivisible ran with TextOut, and we’ve broken them down by electoral wins, legislative victories, and meeting organizational goals.

Programs

Electoral

Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman and Representative Matt Cartwright win in 2022

Challenge: In 2022, Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman faced a fierce battle for the open Pennsylvania Senate seat against TV personality Mehmet Oz. Also, several Democrats running for the House of Representatives were in close races. 

Solution: Indivisible wanted to encourage voters to support progressive candidates in Pennsylvania in 2022, so the group chose TextOut to communicate with and mobilize voters. 

Program: Indivisible sent targeted Get-out-the-vote (GOTV) texts to key districts, encouraging voters to cast a ballot for both Fetterman and their endorsed House candidate using pro-choice messaging. 

Results: Indivisible sent more than 1.1 million texts in Pennsylvania for Sen. Fetterman and Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives. Fetterman won the Senate election, flipping it from Republican control and helping maintain Democratic control of the Senate. In one of the key House races, Matt Cartwright (PA-08) won re-election. 

The 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court race and a victory for Judge Janet Protasiewicz

Challenge: Indivisible utilized TextOut to help encourage progressives to vote during the Wisconsin state Supreme Court race in 2023. At the time, conservative-leaning justices held the majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, with important potential rulings on abortion and election integrity in the future. 

Solution: Indivisible wanted to help the liberal leaning candidate Judge Janet Protasiewicz win and flip the Supreme Court in Wisconsin, so the organization developed a texting program using TextOut to persuade and turn out voters during the primary and general elections. 

Program: Indivisible ran a multi-step texting campaign that included messages focused on persuasion, GOTV, and household reminders. These texts included information on Judge Janet, polling place location and hours, sample ballots, and encouraged folks to remind their housemates to vote. 

Results: Indivisible Action sent more than 500,000 text messages to Wisconsin voters in the spring of 2023. This includes 140,000 texts in the primary election, followed by 420,000 in the general election, with an impressive 7.9% response rate. Protasiewicz won the Wisconsin Supreme Court seat, which could help secure protection for abortion rights and election integrity in the Badger state. 

Legislative

Engaging with Virginia voters on Confederate monument legislation in 2020

Challenge: In 2020, the Virginia legislature had an opportunity to pass a bill to allow cities and counties to remove Confederate statues and monuments.

Solution: Indivisible wanted to reach voters to inform them of the opportunity to contact legislators about the monuments bill, so the organization created a program where volunteers contacted Virginians using TextOut. 

Program: The organization sent a series of texts informing voters about the bill in the Virginia legislature and encouraged them to contact their legislators to support it. 

Results: Indivisible’s texts had an outstanding 18.2% response rate. Of those who responded, nearly 70% said they would call their representatives on the issue. The outreach was successful, as the Virginia House and the Senate passed the bill in fall 2020. The bill helped local communities take control of their public spaces and set the stage for future movements to remove symbols of past wrongs.

Helping encourage civic engagement for Trump’s first impeachment trial in 2020

Challenge: With intense political focus on Trump’s impeachment in 2020, progressives knew that removing Trump from office was the best way to protect democracy.  Indivisible was founded in response to Donald Trump’s election in 2016, so holding him accountable for his corruption was important to the organization’s goals. 

Solution: Indivisible wanted to ensure U.S. Senators felt pressure from constituents to vote to convict in the impeachment trial. Indivisible decided to contact voters in key swing states via texting. 

Program: The organization ran texting programs with TextOut and encouraged voters to contact their Senators and ask them to convict Trump. 

Results: Indivisible sent 762,000 texts about impeachment to voters in 2020, which helped pressure certain Senators to vote to convict. While Trump was ultimately acquitted in three states where Indivisible targeted Senators (Colorado, Arizona, and Georgia), those seats flipped from Republican to Democratic control in the 2020 elections. 

Fundraising and volunteer engagement

Indivisible uses TextOut to engage inactive donor audience in 2023

Challenge: Donors are extremely valuable to nonprofit organizations, yet when donors drop off from regular giving, the organization can miss out on essential funding to run programs. Indivisible had a group of donors who hadn’t given to the organization in a year. 

Solution: Indivisible wanted to re-engage the inactive donor audience to raise money that could power future programs. 

Program: Using the TextOut integration with ActBlue, Indivisible contacted 10,000 people who had donated in the past but had yet to donate in the past year. Indivisible’s fundraising campaign highlighted abortion rights in Arizona. The organization created a specific ask for donations: to fund the electoral work to get abortion rights on the ballot in the state and hire a full-time organizer. The key was to keep the message direct and have a specific ask. 

Results: Indivisible sent more than 16,000 texts to their audience of 10,000 people and raised $4,000 with the campaign. Plus, the organization re-engaged many previous donors who had dropped off the radar. 

Engaging Indivisible volunteers with texting campaigns

Challenge: Volunteers are the lifeblood of nonprofit organizations, but it can be tough to keep people engaged in volunteer activities. Indivisible wanted a way to keep their volunteer base excited and motivated. 

Solution: Indivisible found that empowering volunteers to do texting programs helped increase engagement and satisfaction with the organization.

Program: Indivisible used TextOut to run mobilization programs, and the organization’s volunteer base acts as the texting group. The outreach efforts successfully engaged volunteers who value democracy and progressive values, and Indivisible harnessed the volunteers’ energy to reach voters. 

TextOut’s features make it easy for volunteers to manage replies. With TextOut’s PowerSend feature, staff members can send out the initial texts in large batches, and then volunteers can request replies to text, saving staff and volunteer time. 

TextOut’s data features also allow volunteers to respond to conversations without worrying about manually recording data tags. Then, the organization can export files from the programs and analyze the data based on the automatic tags. 

Results: The organization works with 2,800 volunteers regularly to run their texting programs, which helps increase volunteer satisfaction and maintain long-term relationships between Indivisible and the volunteer base. 

By the Numbers

• Indivisible sent more than 1.1 million texts to Pennsylvania voters in 2022 in support of Sen. Fetterman and House candidates

• The organization sent more than 500,000 texts during the Wisconsin Supreme Court race in 2023 using TextOut, with a 7.9% response rate

• Indivisible sent 762,000 texts about impeachment to voters in key swing states

• During Indivisible’s program for the Virginia bill about Confederate monuments, the texts had an outstanding 18.2% response rate. Of those who responded to the texts, nearly 70% said they would call their representatives on the issue

• For a recent fundraising campaign, Indivisible sent more than 16,000 texts to their audience of 10,000 people and raised $4,000

• Indivisible has engaged 2,800 regular volunteers on texting programs

• Indivisible has sent more than 36 million texts using TextOut since 2019, which includes 392 individual programs

“There's really no other texting platform besides TextOut that would enable us to do the kind of texting we want to do, with dynamic scripts, experimental texting approaches, and volunteer moderation and local group texting that is truly peer-to-peer. TextOut helped us to navigate the many changes of 10DLC registration and is always improving the platform even more with features like power sending. All of it to have rich conversations with voters and our own members that aren't possible any other way! TextOut was essential to moving our voter contact program entirely digital during COVID and helped us win a 2021 Reed Award for Best No-Contact Field Program."