2023 Pennsylvania Supreme Court Program
In the fall of 2023, Empower Project ran a statewide paid relational organizing program in Pennsylvania on behalf of our 501(c)(3) partner, Organizing Empowerment Fund. Called “PA Neighbor Network,” this non-partisan program had a modest goal of generating 80,000 relational conversations ahead of the November 7, 2023 election.
In Pennsylvania, we wanted to test if improving organizer follow-up with our Community Mobilizers had a positive impact on the program. We hypothesized that by focusing on improving this part of the organizing workflow would consequently result in a more efficient program overall. We found it did.
Our partners at One PA, Rock the Vote, Sunrise Movement, One Fair Wage, 1 Vote Counts, Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania and NextGen America were instrumental in our collective success. Overall, we were able to track 14% of our mobilizers back to our partners. They were responsible for adding 16k contacts to our network.
In Pennsylvania (Fall 2023), we achieved double the efficiency of Wisconsin (Spring 2023), spending less than $2 per conversation.
Over the course of 7 weeks, we ask Community Mobilizers to complete 5 Calls to Actions after building a list of 75+ people in their network that they believe are eligible to vote. Call To Action included a reminder about the voter registration deadline, sharing a sample ballot to educate folks on what they could expect to see on their ballot, making a plan to vote, and an election day reminder.
In Pennsylvania, one of our goals was to improve the action rate of our Community Mobilizers. We focused in on our organizer’s relationships with the Community Mobilizers and asked what is the best way to keep them engaged? In order to accomplish our goals, we utilized a new feature in our Empower App, called ‘Organizer Calls to Action’ or Organizer CTAs for short. These allowed us to hyperfocus organizers on which mobilizers they should be calling and what the best ask was for the interaction.
Pennsylvania was our first program in a state with a firm registration deadline. In past programs, our first call to action has been: “check and see if your friends are registered to vote.” Therefore, we saw this as an opportunity to see what we could learn about the effect of relational organizing on voter registration. We know paid relational programs are efficient in identifying people who need to register and this is extremely valuable especially in BIPOC communities, where Black, Indigenous, and people of color are missing from the voterfile at higher rates than other communities. In total, we were able to register 208 people and we spent $150 in mobilizer payments for each registrant. This program largely registered younger BIPOC voters.
Workflow Improvements
Yielded Significant Results:
Cost reduced to less than $2 per conversation
239,866 relational conversations in 47 days
1,196 community mobilizers recruited
2x efficiency of earlier program
Expanding Beyond Pennsylvania: Broader 2023 Learnings
In fall 2023, Empower engaged in paid relational organizing programs in both Kentucky and Pennsylvania. The overall net increase from the field-only program was 0.3pp, but the more interesting story is what happened when we looked at turnout by ideology score.
Across both states, results showed a turnout differential of up to 2pp—with higher positive impact among modeled progressives and a demobilizing effect among modeled conservatives. We believe this pattern reflects a hidden persuasive effect of homophily.
