DC Vote
Online Outreach Leads to Real World Action
Sometimes emails, faxes and phone calls aren't enough. Sometimes you have put "feet on the street" to take your campaign to the next level. We help do just that with our social media and blog strategies.
On April 16th, 2007, despite a cold and driving rain, thousands of people marched to the Capitol demanding a vote in Congress for the District of Columbia -- and Grassroots Enterprise helped fill the streets. Working with DC Vote, a non-profit organization dedicated to ending the "taxation without representation" status of the citizens of the District of Columbia with were able to use online communication and outreach strategies to deliver real world results.
Our blog advertising strategy was specifically designed to target both people who would show up for the march, and influential people who would promote the march online. The advertising alone exposed the event to hundreds of thousands of activists in the greater DC area. By advertising on a mix of both key local blogs and prominent national political blogs with a high concentration of DC-based readers, we ensured the message was heard locally and nationally.
We also tapped into Facebook.com, a leading social networking site. Working within this environment, we promoted the voting rights march by creating relevant groups, setting up a page for the event, and leveraging the existing activists on the issue within these environments. We also generated thousands of "Facebook Flyers" which were served to colleges and university students in Washington, DC encouraging them to come to the march.
In an attempt to make sure local neighborhood activists had a role to play in this march, we also made incorporated every local neighborhood email list in the District of Columbia into our outreach activities.
Working with DC Vote, and their coalition partners, we played a key role in assembling the largest demonstration ever on the DC voting rights issue. More importantly, we helped increase the pressure on the U.S. House of Representatives to pass the D.C. Voting Rights act a few weeks later.
Featured Project
2004
A Fair Deal for Newfoundland
GRE makes Canadian history.
In 2004, a GRE campaign to pressure the Canadian federal government to fairly share revenue from off-shore oil drilling with the province of Newfoundland and Labrador resulted in a landmark agreement and became the most effective online movement in Canadian history.
