About NARAL

With reproductive rights under assault, NARAL’s membership has rapidly grown in the past two years to 2.5 million supporters at the national level. The national office, state affiliates, and chapters work in every state to fight for reproductive rights, by organizing, educating, and working with allies to ensure leaders at all levels know that 7 in 10 Americans support legal abortion and to elect champions of reproductive freedom.

The challenge

In 2018, NARAL needed an integrated approach to supporter mobilization:

“In 2018, we were facing fights on every front. We had people knocking at our door wanting to do the work, and we were stretched thin. We didn’t want to lose that energy, or lose the ability to build that supporter base. So, we needed a way to absorb that capacity, get people working immediately, and identify and track these supporters—with a small team, and without a lot of time getting pulled into recruitment calls and spending time in VAN. We didn’t have an events or action platform that would allow us to achieve that.”
— Brittany Vock, Associate Organizing Director

The solution

Hours saved

NARAL began by centralizing all event management in Mobilize. Their feed became supporters’ one-stop shop for getting involved in electoral and voter contact, advocacy work, member meetings, trainings, virtual actions, and volunteer-hosted events.

“Our organizers live in Mobilize. Each organizer probably saves a few hours hours a week because of the automation and how easy it is to use.”

Mobilize’s automated confirmation emails and texts and post-shift surveys provided NARAL with invaluable insight. 45% of their shifts were confirmed automatically!

“We do a lot of rallies, protests, you usually have no idea if people show up. The after-action texts help give us that visibility. That’s a hot lead and identified supporter that we wouldn’t have otherwise.”

Streamlined recruitment and data

They were able to easily recruit volunteers across their full digital stack: their site, email list, social feeds, and SMS programs (through Hustle). They even used Mobilize’s API to build a map of upcoming events on their website. And with Mobilize’s integrations with EveryAction and NGP VAN, they were able to store and analyze supporter data.

Using their Mobilize feed in a multichannel recruitment strategy led to 8,500 shifts from 5,100 supporters in 14 months.

“We used to schedule an average of 600 shifts a month, and now are closer to 1,900. This massive increase in shifts scheduled and completed shifts that would absolutely not have been possible without Mobilize.”

Volunteer hosts expand reach

NARAL leveraged Mobilize’s distributed organizing capabilities, enabling 136 volunteers to host events on the organization’s behalf, effortlessly expanding their reach.

“The distributed functionality is really incredible. We’ve had hundreds of events created by our volunteers, something we could never do at that scale before.”

Benefitting from the network

NARAL used some of Mobilize’s earliest network features, including bring-a-friend prompts and cross-promotion between organizations. They saw a 10% increase in unique volunteers from bring-a-friend signups!

“One of the biggest value adds of Mobilize is that it’s not just a tool, it’s a network. We’ve gotten over 2,000 shifts from other organizations and people bringing their friends.”

Mobilize also made it simple for NARAL to collaborate with other organizations, cross-promoting each other’s opportunities to new audiences. They gained over 1,000 new shifts from allies promoting their events!

“As a national organization, there are a lot of places we can’t have a physical presence. Being able to promote allies’ events allows us to engage our list and identify supporters and hot leads, even where we don’t have organizers.”