COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
TOOLS & RESOURCES

Vote.org is a nonpartisan voting registration and get-out-the-vote (GOTV) technology platform. They offer a suite of digital tools that allow users to register to vote, check registration status, request a mail ballot, pre-register for those under 18, receive election reminders, and pledge to vote.

Cost: Basic tools are free, various pricing options available to acquire data

TurboVote helps voters participate in every election—from school board to President—and streamlines voter engagement. Their tools, which easily integrate with organizations’ websites, allow voters to check their registration status, receive election reminders, learn about what’s on their ballot, and more.

Cost: Basic tools are free, cost varies for customized tools for organization websites

All In To Vote’s Out of State College Student Voting Guide succinctly explains voting registrations rules and options for college students attending school in a different state than their permanent address.

Cost: Free

ActiVote’s easy to use, nonpartisan app educates voters on important issues, when and where they can cast their vote, connects them with their elected officials, and allows them to make their voice heard by quickly answering key polling questions.

Cost: Free

Rock the Vote offers civic tech tools that partner organizations can link to for free on their websites. Tools include an Online Voter Registration platform available in 13 languages, a Pledge to Vote tool with election reminders, a Voter Status Lookup tool, and an Absentee Ballot Request tool.

Cost: Basic Civic Tech tools are free, cost varies for Premium tools

The TargetSmart Voter Registration Dashboard shows voter registration data from the 2020, 2022, and 2024 election cycles, comparing current data with past election cycles. It is updated twice a week and includes a wealth of demographic data including age, gender, race, and partisanship, as well as whether voters live in urban, suburban, or rural areas.

Cost: Free

guides.vote produces nonpartisan voter guides that show where candidates stand on issues, including abortion access, climate change, criminal justice, student financial aid, healthcare and immigration. guides.vote will supply free printed nonpartisan guides (as well as free digital versions) for nonpartisan outreach efforts in certain states.

Cost: Free

VOTE411 from the League of Women Voters Education Fund is a “one-stop-shop” for election information. It provides nonpartisan state-specific information in all 50 states on how and where to vote, including registration deadlines. Voters can enter their address to see a personalized voter guide for their ballot, and get links to detailed voter guides from their local LWV chapters.

Cost: Free

ASO Communications provides in-depth Messaging Guides on issues ranging from immigrant rights to voting to climate justice, as well as a continually updated Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit. Their research-backed approach to messaging emphasizes leading with shared values and persuading the middle while also energizing the base.

Cost: Free

Antonia Scatton’s Reframing America on Substack regularly publishes articles with specific and clear advice for messaging and narrative framing of the current political situation, including how to avoid inadvertently amplifying MAGA talking points and how to articulate a positive way forward.

Cost: Free

You and the 34%: How to Have Meaningful Conversations with High-Potential Voters is a training video that teaches canvassers how to engage reluctant voters through listening and speaking skills. Based on Motivational Interviewing techniques, You and the 34% teaches canvassers to use openness and curiosity to encourage non-voters to talk about their reasons for staying away from the polls, to imagine what might be better if they did vote, and to reconsider their disengagement.

Cost: Free

This collection of resources about deep canvassing from The Commons Social Change Library includes script examples and ideas, video trainings, and podcasts. Deep canvassing is a non-judgemental approach to conversations that invites people to open up about their real conflicted feelings on an issue.

Cost: Free

Deep Canvass Institute offers free trainings to organizations and volunteers on the fundamentals and techniques of deep canvassing. Their offerings include an introduction to deep canvassing, a three-day in-depth foundational skills training, a training on how to build your own deep canvass program, and more.

Cost: Free

Students Learn Students Vote has an extensive, searchable Resources Library with guides and toolkits on topics from student voter engagement to countering disinformation to keeping GOTV messaging nonpartisan and more.

Cost: Free

ActionNetwork offers a variety of tools to engage and grow your base of supporters through event registrations, petitions, sending letters to elected officials, grassroots fundraising campaigns, and email outreach. This short video from Andrea Miller, Executive Director of Center for Common Ground, walks you through the platform and some of the tools ActionNetworks offers.

Cost: Basic tools are free, pricing is based on usage defined by monthly email volume

CaPA Cohort: CaPA can connect you with personalized support in signing up and getting on-boarded using ActionNetwork. Email emilia@cleanprosperousamerica.org

Feel Good Action trains individuals and groups in digital activism on topics including social media and influencer campaigns that drive specific positive actions and data tracking to measure the impact of your messengers and campaigns. Feel Good Action also helps qualified 501(c)(3) partners apply for free Google ad grants.

Cost: Free for most services

Empower Project offers a free relational organizing app and free training, tech, and data support for non-profit organizations. Empower can be your volunteer action hub to stay connected with volunteers, ask volunteers to reach out to friends and family or to take action on their own, send updates quickly with mass texting, and expand your program with canvassing.

Cost: Free

OutreachCircle is a relational organizing platform that makes it easy for volunteers to reach out to friends via email, text, or social media. You can choose to have supporters contact anyone in their network or use real-time mapping to match their friends against a targeted list, voter file, or membership database.

Cost: Free for volunteer organizations, $30-$50 per month for larger organizations

With Impactive, volunteers can reach their personal contacts via text, email, call, and social DM. You can send messaging actions to volunteers based on where they live, what language they speak, or whether or not they have contacts in a certain district or zip code and sync volunteer contact reports directly voter files.

Cost: $50 – $1,000 per month

CallHub Relational Organizing is a free app enables volunteers to reach out to their contacts through texts, calls, and social media, collect survey responses, and do follow ups all from one platform. Volunteers can use the app in English, Spanish and French.

Cost: Free

SwipeBlue is an app that matches activists’ friends to the voter file to show who is registered (or not), their party, and their political districts. The app makes it easy for progressives to send messages to friends to encourage them to register, vote, donate, volunteer, or to take other important actions. Visit swipeblue.org/partner.

Cost: Free to create one campaign, pricing is tiered by district size

Access Now offers real-time, direct technical assistance and advice to civil society groups and activists to keep them safe online. Their Digital Security Helpline is available 24/7 to provide rapid-response emergency assistance in nine languages.

Cost: Free

Democracy Security Project offers Cyber Security Trainings that empower participants with practical and pragmatic solutions to cyber vulnerabilities and threats and resources on cyber security and other safety best practices.

Cost: Free

Democracy Protection Network coordinates crisis-response and resilience-building assistance including cybersecurity, physical security, crisis communications, and legal assistance for organizations working to protect and strengthen American democracy. Apply for assistance.

Cost: Free in most cases, cost may vary

GetThru is a peer-to-peer texting and calling tool. Their ThruText software enables texters to send over 200 messages per minute and have thousands of simultaneous text message conversations through a centralized, trackable system. ThruTalk software allows users to import lists and survey questions, make calls with branching script tools, and reach speeds of 250 dials/hour per caller.

Cost: 1.5¢ per SMS, 3.5¢ per MMS and video, 3.5¢ per dial

Impactive’s platform includes tools for broadcast and peer-to-peer texting, phone banking, relational organizing, voter registration, custom form building, and more. Impactive’s predictive dialer allows you to host high-impact phone banks on web or mobile with easy-to-use interactive scripts. Their Peer-to-Peer Texting tool allows you to filter contacts, reach thousands of contacts per hour, and manage text conversations on a streamlined inbox.

Cost: $50 – $1,000 per month

Center for Common Ground trains and provides supplies, addresses, and tailored scripts for volunteers to handwrite colorful and informative postcards to voters of color in targeted voter suppression states.

Cost: Postcard cost varies by volume

Markers for Democracy is a group of grassroots activists working to elect Democrats up and down the ballot by writing get-out-the-vote postcards to Democratic voters. Offers postcards, targeted address lists, and Zoom events where volunteers write postcards together, talk politics, and listen to speakers.

Cost: Postcard cost varies by volume, can request financial assistance for stamps

Vote Run Lead’s Campaign Safety resources offer practical guidance on de-escalation, knowing your rights, and keeping yourself and your team and volunteers safe doing voter outreach in person and online.

Staying Safe While Door-Knocking by Vote Run Lead Action in partnership with Oregon Future Labs

Guide to Creating a Safety Plan for Your Campaign Team by Vote Run Lead Action

Know Your Rights in Police Interactions by Vote Run Lead Action in partnership with Oregon Future Labs

Cost: Free

Call or text 866-OUR-VOTE (866-687-8683) (available in multiple languages) to speak with a trained Election Protection volunteer about registration, absentee and early voting, casting a vote at the polls, or overcoming obstacles to participation. The Election Protection coalition is made up of more than 300 local, state and national partners to protect, advance and defend the right to vote.

Cost: Free

The ACLU’s Know Your Voting Rights guide provides information about how to exercise your voting rights, resist voter intimidation efforts, and access disability-related accommodations and language assistance at the polls.

Cost: Free

The Brennan Center’s Guide to Laws Against Intimidation of Voters and Election Workers identifies the kinds of voter intimidation that are most likely to arise and outlines legal tools to deter, mitigate, and respond to such tactics.

Cost: Free

NALEO’s year-round 1-888-VE-Y-VOTA (1-888-839-8682) bilingual national hotline provides Latino voters with vital information on every aspect of the electoral process, from registering to vote, to deciding between options to vote early, by mail, or on Election Day. The hotline is staffed by live bilingual operators trained to assist callers with any voting questions or issues.

Cost: Free

JustFund is a two-sided marketplace with a common grant application allowing organizations that are advancing social and racial justice to apply for multiple funding opportunities with one application. Organizations fill out a common application profile once and can access hundreds of funding opportunities in perpetuity.

Cost: Free

Impala is a platform that provides access to the profiles of any nonprofit and foundation in the U.S. including details on grants given and received, impact, people, and financials. Impala includes tools to analyze nonprofit ecosystems and funding trends and build prospect lists of funders who give to the same nonprofits and causes as your existing funders and to organizations similar to yours.

Cost: Free for basic access, cost varies for advanced access levels

Candid provides a suite of resources for nonprofit fundraisers, including open requests for proposals, a foundation directory to search grantmaker profiles, free trainings, APIs, and more. Their Guidestar platform serves as a database of US-based non-profits and allows you to research basic information about organizations and find contact information.

Cost: Free for most basic tools, Foundation Directory cost varies

Association of Fundraising Professionals is a global organization that provides resources for fundraising professionals, membership opportunities, and local chapters to create a professional community for sharing information, tools, and opportunities. Their guides and resources include articles, webinars, podcasts, and trainings covering a wide range of fundraising topics.

Cost: Free to access resources and guides, cost varies for membership

OneCause is a CRM and event management platform that has a number of useful tools and resources on their website to support successful fundraising through events, live auctions, and more.

Cost: Free

Butter Blog by Givebutter: Givebutter is a CRM and event management platform that has valuable information on industry trends, insights, and resources on their Butter Blog. This resource also includes links to webinars, articles, and as well as strategy recommendations for non-profit fundraising and marketing.

Cost: Free

The Climate Philanthropy Catalyst Coalition is a coalition of professionals from foundations, philanthropic advisory firms, and philanthropy networks who work together to catalyze more effective climate philanthropy. Their resources library includes articles, event information, podcasts, videos, online courses, reports, and more.

Cost: Free

Active Philanthropy’s Climate Philanthropy Guide: Active Philanthropy is a team of advisors, climate specialists, and philanthropy professionals working to support impactful climate philanthropy. Their guide provides an extensive overview of the climate philanthropy landscape and can be downloaded as a free PDF.

Cost: Free