Did you know that in South Korea, every one of the five political parties currently in the legislative assembly was founded in the last 10 years? Three of the five were founded in the last 3 years.
New parties are on the rise. Sometimes it’s a re-invention of the old. Sometimes it’s genuinely new. But always, there’s an awareness that something needs to be done differently.
One of the hallmarks of a modern political party is digitisation, and it’s a key factor in success. Whether it’s building, managing and expanding membership, planning events, engaging the public with policy platforms, or bringing in donations to keep the ship afloat — there’s work to be done and efficiency is key.
That’s where a new generation of applications and digital platforms marketed towards political parties step into play.
Here’s a brief look at some of the options.
Nation Builder
Although now known as a general purpose communications and campaign management tool, Nation Builder was originally marketed as a political tool and its feature set was designed around the needs of political parties. Combining voter data with a raft of other sources, its main promise is to help users expand and manage a supporter base, while centralising outreach, communications and fundraising and streamlining newsletter and even website creation.
Ecanvasser
The pitch from Ecanvasser is that if you want to gather data from supporters and constituents, then they can probably help. The platform has been built around the idea of managing the canvassing process from beginning to end. Ie, forming teams, running campaigns, interacting with the canvassers themselves and managing them from a centralised platform. There are also tools to create databases and view analytics.
CamBuilder
Cambuildr claims to be an all-in-one digital movement management platform, with the ability to organise data and optimise communications. As a result, the feature set caters to a range of different needs. There’s the usual communication tools, templates, automation and data analysis, as well as a built-in tool for generating campaign pages as well as other bits and pieces for managing people and raising money.
Raklet
Raklet is intended, first and foremost, to help you grow your audience. Everything is geared around that goal. So along with the basic communications and management functionalities, it allows you to do things like create branded applications — the idea being that your name should be on everything. Essentially it’s about that audience pipeline. Turning first contacts, into members, or into paying subscribers, with other ways to monetise such as donations and online stores.
And More…
At the end of the day, these are just a few of the many platforms that can help with political campaigns and party management.
At Democracy-Technologies.org we’ve compiled a database, not just of applications for political parties, but democratic processes more generally, many of which could also be used for democratic decision making within parties.
Have a look. See if there’s something that sounds like it might help. And maybe, give it a go.
