MobilizeAmerica is the go-to events management and volunteer recruitment platform that connects mission-driven organizations and Democratic campaigns, and their supporters.

Compare to: NGP VAN Events, WeVolunteer by Open Progress

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Tool type: Events tool
Meant for: Organizers, Digital Directors, Organizing Management

Problem it tries to solve:

Saving organizers time through easy-to-use tools, automation, Mobilize Messaging, and more
Bridging the gap between digital recruitment and field organizing
Optimizing conversion and volunteer engagement online, making it easier to volunteer
Lack of easy tools built with collaboration across entities

Use case:

There are multiple use cases that Mobilize helps our partners address:

Running best-in-class organizing and/or digital organizing programs
Distributed organizing programs
Cross-promoting events with coalition partners &/or endorsed campaigns
Running large events and rallies

Biggest drawback:

MobilizeAmerica can get expensive when scaled.

If you are not yet running an organizing program, Mobilize may not be worth the ROI.

Does it sync to NGP VAN?

Yes – read and write.

Pricing

$-$$$$

Prices start at $100 per month, and scale based on program size and complexity of needs.

To learn more about MobilizeAmerica, click here.

Testimonials

“So many pros!! We got so many shifts off this too, and in particular the promotion feature was a game changer. During GOTV we had our event feed promoted by national organizations like Daily Kos, Swing Left, OFA, etc that really boosted our profile.

“Overall [Mobilize America] is a huge asset to any field team that uses it. It brings in online sign ups and both the front end and the back end are relatively easy to use. The van sync component is an absolute life savior. The only pain point exists in creating recurring events. It’s a little more tedious in mobilize than it is in VAN, but it’s nothing significant that all the pros don’t already make up for.”

“Pros: A lot of attention has been given to event promotions, which allowed outside groups to share our events to their supporters. However, the thing I think was most useful was the event format: multi-shift and single location. This allowed supporters to see specifically where they needed to go for their event in simple terms and then decide when they would volunteer. Not to mention the simple but friendly UI design.

Cons: It’s only a platform for collecting signups, not managing the event or taking the event in broader context. This made the stats provided not very useful.

Pain Points: VAN Sync was a nightmare. Ideally we would generate the events in VAN then Mobilize would display them, but that wasn’t the case. This created a million events/shifts in VAN that were clutter and sometimes defunct and we had to do all these separate workarounds to include mobilize signups to our VAN event signups.”

The Basics: Mobilize America is an online events platform that allows campaigns to create recurring or single event pages online, host them on their website or send them out via email, and get all the sign up data back into VAN.

User Flow:

A user creates an event in Mobilize, which is posted on your campaign/organization’s public events feed (and then synced to your CRM, e.g. NGP VAN)
The event(s) can be included in a range of distribution channels, like organizing emails (BSD, ActionKit; or with systems like Movable Ink), SMS (Mobile Commons, P2P tools like GetThru and Hustle)
A volunteer lands on your Mobilize feed. If they have signed up through Mobilize before, some of their experience will be personalized (e.g. prefilled forms, and more coming soon)
After signing up, they will immediately be prompted to bring their friends, sign up for more events, and/or complete a donation through ActBlue (this can be configured).
A volunteer receives automated email/SMS for confirmations, post-shift surveys, and automated re-engagement to get them to sign up for your events
Organizers can message attendees through Mobilize Messaging
Volunteers can also be asked to create their own events through Distributed Organizing, which can either go through an approval flow or be automatically approved

Pros:

All event and shift data syncs to VAN. No duplicate VAN profiles are created (Mobilize will match new volunteer sign-ups to existing profiles).

Automated email reminders and day-before text confirmations are sent to volunteers to help reduce flake rate. Additionally, SMS opt ins collected via event sign ups can be added to a campaign’s opt in list.

Volunteers can sign up for multiple shifts at once.

The platform can be used as a bridge between any partner and a campaign. Once a campaign creates an event and hosts it online, a partner can take the event, put it in its own branding, and recruit volunteers into it — with the data syncing into both organization’s CRMs.

Organizer-facing training materials exist so large and small programs can easily train and deploy the tool at scale.
There is an existing base of volunteers in the millions that use the platform for distributed actions.
Thousands of organizers have used and are familiar with Mobilize. It’s also intuitive to learn.
Mobilize is constantly optimizing conversion and launching new features. Social optimization: a large percentage of all volunteer shifts on Mobilize are driven through the nudges for volunteers to bring their friends. They are leaning a lot into this social aspect.

Drawbacks:

The SMS functionality currently only exists as a blast text (non-peer to peer) the day before an event as a confirmation.

There are currently no custom email templates. All automatic emails follow a standard template.

Pricing:

Prices range from free to around $4500 per month depending on the level of the campaign, when you sign a contract, and access level. Bulk and bundled discounts are also available.

VAN Sync:

Mobilize America has a robust VAN and EveryAction integration, as well as integrations with BSD, ActionKit, Mobile Commons, Intercom, Moveable Ink, Outvote, Amplify.ai, Civis, PDI, ActBlue, Phone2Action, and a full open API and SQL mirror.

Who we would recommend this tool to:

Anyone running a distributed organizing program. Mobilize has built a best-in-class distributed organizing toolset used by large scale Presidential and other campaigns, and advocacy organizations.
Anyone running a robust digital organizing program. Mobilize is conversion-optimized for engaging large volumes of people online, and getting people to sign-up and show up at the highest rates. Integrations with major digital channels (e.g. Mobile Commons, Movable Ink, BSD, ActionKit) enable particularly targeted recruitment online.

Who we wouldn’t recommend this tool to:

Small programs. In our opinion, spending money on this type of tool is not worth it for smaller races where the organizers will know every volunteer personally.