2021 Tools and Resources for Grantees
In addition to funding, CaPA aims to provide our partners with resources, guides, mentorship, and connections behind the scenes so they can focus more of their energy on the work. We encourage new grantees to self-identify non-financial resources that could help them be more successful and then develop appropriate offerings as able. Below are some suggested resources for new grantees to consider requesting.
- Relational organizing (training volunteers to reach out to their friends and family instead of cold calling/texting strangers about issues and actions)
- Help from our team to determine if relational organizing is right for your organization
- Get connected and set up with the free relational organizing Empower app and their training and support services
- Support with writing and editing outreach scripts, emails, etc.
- Information about research and polling on effective messaging strategies
- Legislative advocacy
- Coaching on how to develop and advocate for policy in your state legislature
- Resources and examples of bills
- Development assistance
- Raising awareness and offering assistance with applications to non-CaPA grants
- Introduction to donor tables, and other major donors
- Public Relations
- Assistance developing press releases highlighting your individual organization and efforts
- Help with identifying strategic and competitive local elections in your state(s)
- Locating and mapping early voting and polling locations
- Web development assistance
- Help integrating voter registration widgets or new functionality into your website
- Engagement guides
- Our team researches and publishes guides based on our partners’ needs and requests. Past guides include strategies for safe and effective protesting, sample Covid safety policies, and voter education guides
- Connections to partners
- Connections with other CaPA partner and grantee organizations to explore opportunities for collaborations and share ideas and knowledge
- Regular partner coalition calls to connect all grantee organizations together
- Organizational mentorship
- Strategic consulting for any questions you have about growing and sustaining your organization or determining your goals and tactics
- Enhanced tracking
- Develop protocols and resources to better track your organization’s actions and outcomes
Organizing and Engagement Guides
Our team researches and publishes guides based on our partners’ needs and requests. Please let us know if you have an idea for a new guide.
Street protests are powerful tools for change and an essential part of our democracy, but it’s vital to know how to keep yourself and your people as safe as possible. CaPA has prepared this guide of steps to take and resources to use to protest safely and effectively.
2020 Relational Organizing Tools and Coaching
OutreachCircle enables organizations to use texting and calling to reach their supporters and turn them into activists. With COVID-19 limiting opportunities for in-person organizing, it’s more important than ever that organizations take advantage of OutreachCircle. The relational organizing tool lets your supporters text, email, and post on social media to reach their own personal networks quickly and easily. Email email@example.com to learn more about joining CaPA’s OutreachCircle network.
Watch this short informational video about how to use OutreachCircle to message your friends from our grassroots specialist, Ben Silesky.
Interactive GA Maps
We highly recommend that you use this map, which provides early voting locations in Georgia with the address and open times for each dot. You can also embed this map on your own website for free; for more information, go to The Democracy Labs. Our partner Vote.org also created three useful tools: Georgia Polling Place Locator, Early Voting Location Locator, Dropbox Locator.
Voter Information Guides
We encourage grantees to distribute this collection of voter information guides to relevant demographics in your Georgia area. Our first resource, the Spanish Voter Information Guide, provides Spanish speakers with required identification information as well as important registration and voting deadlines. Vote.org also provides a useful guide to voting in the special elections. Each of these guides are available to download and distribute.
There are plenty of opportunities for folks in Georgia and out of state to help get out the vote for the Senate runoff election. We’ve created a brief guide of some of our recommendations for how young people, bilingual folks, and everybody else can get involved.
Environmental Record Research
Clean & Prosperous America is dedicated to advancing environmental action in the United States and replacing candidates not dedicated to that cause. Senator Perdue and Loeffler have greatly profited by loosening environmental regulations for the coal and oil industry while blocking tax credits for renewable energy, not to mention their recent insider trading scandals.
The organization also just launched their “Georgia on My Mind” social media campaign, which you can contribute to here.
Messaging Guide for Youth Voters in Rural and Suburban Areas
More than 30 million youth (ages 18–39) live in rural and suburban areas. These voters can make all the difference in close elections, but they have lower voting rates and are often ignored by politicians and campaigns.
CaPA has completed extensive research into the undecided and infrequent young voters, who live in small towns and suburbs. Though they lean “green,” this segment of young voters are less sure about voting and are less partisan than youth in urban areas. We call this segment the “Ambivalent Young Voters.” We’ve tested a bunch of messages and strategies for getting this group of young voters motivated to take action and packaged up our findings into two helpful guides. The Youth Messaging Guidebook provides an in-depth explanation of the messages and strategies that we found work best on Ambivalent Young Voters, and the Youth BattleCard condenses key themes into a mobile-format, perfect for advocates to operationalize in the field.
Use this GIS map produced by a CaPA volunteer Joseph Elfelt to understand in detail the districts that voted for Democrats in the General Election; including the option to add zip code overlays to aid list prioritization. Click on Map Tips in the upper left-hand corner for a tutorial.
Access a complete list of the zipcodes contained within these blue state legislative districts here.
For a district breakdown that includes Republican votes, reference these scatter plot maps to better understand party affiliations by district in Georgia.
CEEP’s Plethora of Free Georgia Resources
The national nonpartisan Campus Election Engagement Project provides a collection of Georgia Runoff resources, including two non-partisan voter guides for the Senate races between Jon Ossoff and David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler and Raphael Warnock. They also provide a helpful summary of key information in their key logistical info guide.
This video on how to participate in the GA special election covers how to register to vote, obtain an absentee ballot, vote early, and vote day-of.
District Specific Climate Messaging Resources
Climate Cabinet knows that climate change will be a defining issue for the policymakers competing in Georgia’s runoff elections. Climate Cabinet’s Activism Toolkit provides grassroots organizations and candidates with climate talking points, messaging, and platforms tailored to every Congressional district in Georgia.
The Abrams Playbook
For on the ground organizing strategies and tactics specific to Georgia – We recommend that you check out Stacey Abrams’ playbook on winning Georgia, which she and Fair Fight used to register an estimated 800,000 new voters since 2018.
Send us your engaging social media content and we will post it to this toolkit resource. We also love to receive photos from field activities which can be posted to this Georgia Google Photos Drive. Please add your contact information within the title of the image so a press contact can quickly get a hold of you if they want to learn more about the photo. Additionally, check out Vote.org’s video PSA scripts and social media toolkit.
We have also generated a useful Georgia Runoff Social Media kit, which you can access here.