Charged with promoting fair elections in a pivotal election cycle, Fair Fight needed a software solution to match its drive for equity.
The Background
Fair Fight was founded by former Georgia State Representative Stacey Abrams, who ran as the Democratic nominee for Governor of Georgia in 2018. After her narrow loss in the gubernatorial election, Abrams launched Fair Fight “to ensure every American has a voice in our election system.” Fair Fight brings awareness to voter suppression, encourages voter education and engagement, and advocates for voter protection programs and election reform at all levels.
The Goal
Reduce the amount of time spent on reviewing legislation so that more time is invested in community engagement.
Mobilizing voter turnout requires a combination of policy management and deep grassroots engagement. Detangling complex legislation and policies for the average voter is critical for the movement and can mean the difference between inspiring a new generation of voters or voter apathy.
For advocacy organizations like Fair Fight, this work requires understanding the policy matters at stake, the positions of the stakeholders involved, and strategizing on a coordinated community engagement effort.
Better than ever before, technology can give advocacy organizations a leg up in understanding legislation and policy. Through a combination of rapid bill analysis, tracking and collaboration, policy professionals can ensure that they never miss a policy update. This means less time spent with keeping up with legislation and more time can be spent crafting messaging and engaging with stakeholders.
Workflow Transformation with Plural
“To achieve structural change, grassroots engagement plays a critical role in policy formation. Working from the bottom up ensures consistency between the needs of the people and policy direction.”
— Andre Field, political director
Andre Fields, Fair Fight’s political director, was no stranger to grassroots political engagement. With over a decade of state and national political experience, he served as senior advisor to Stacy Abram’s gubernatorial run before joining Fair Fight. We spoke to him about how he’s been able to use Plural to directly address one of their biggest challenges.
The Problem
The 2020 presidential election is top of mind for Fair Fight and its partners. The organization has assembled a team of organizers, advocates, lobbyists and policy experts to help ensure a fair count for all voters. Their mission is to neutralize any efforts to suppress votes.
In order to do so, however, it’s crucial that their group identify and review every piece of proposed legislation that could possibly inhibit voter turnout. Being able to track quickly changing legislation in real time is critical to gaining clarity about priorities and driving consensus around strategy.
Without a legislative tracking tool, it was a manual process to access legislation, monitor bill updates, save memos and notes, and keep other collaborators up to date. Such a workflow left Fair Fight and its partners at a significant disadvantage and risked their ability to execute on their mission. “I wanted to have a system that made us more efficient. Last year we spent a lot of time on extraneous processes leaving us with little time for community engagement.”
The Results
After beginning to use Plural, Fair Fight’s team saw a 75% reduction in time spent reviewing legislation. Their team can now access a robust library of proposed legislation, focus on its key policy concerns, and collaborate on messaging to its communities. With the bill identification and review process powered by artificial intelligence (or what we like to call “legislative intelligence”), Fair Fight can now leverage their core strength of crafting informative and inspirational campaigns that inspire voter turnout.
Empowered with Plural’s legislative intelligence tools, Fair Fight has increased efficiency, reach, and cost savings. The result is reduced overhead and time sifting through millions of pages of legislation.
Looking forward, Plural is proud to help Fair Fight continue to achieve their mission critical work to maximize voter turnout and ensure integrity within our democratic process.
Plural helps government affairs teams and lobbying groups increase productivity, work remotely, enhance communication, and improves access to legislation across the country.
