Mfarhanonline Social Media News: With NationBuilder, the local candidate for president of the school board can take advantage of the same digital organizing technology used by President Obama and Mitt Romney. NationBuilder is a new online tool that aims to bring the organizing technology used by major political campaigns to any local candidate, non-profit or other group that’s trying to unite a group of people around a common purpose. For $20 a month, the site’s customers are able to build “nations,” which bring together all of a group’s supporters in one place on the web. In what the site’s organizers call the first “Community Organizing System,” nations are given web sites, social media accounts, volunteer recruitment pages, petition platforms, donation pages and — perhaps most importantly — a database of voter data and confirmed supporters, which tracks information about every interaction between a campaign and each of its potential supporters. Here’s an example of a forward-facing NationBuilder website for a theoretical “ Abe Lincoln 2012 ” campaign: These powerful tools let campaigns recruit volunteers, spread their message and keep track of their supporters’ activity. Previously, they were only available to major campaigns because of their cost. NationBuilder is trying to get them into the hands of the masses. The platform is intended for anyone — from a candidate for a school board to the U.S. Senate. “When you try to organize online, you're stuck with a technical problem that's messy to deal with — it takes money,” says founder Jim Gilliam. “The Obama Campaign can do it, the McCain campaign can do it, but the average person can't. Our mission is to make it as affordable and accessible as possible.” NationBuilder’s similar! ity to t he software used by presidential campaigns is no accident. Joe Green, who invented Facebook’s “Causes” app and worked as a field director for John Kerry’s 2004 run, is the company’s president. Green says that the platform could be “revolutionary” in local politics. “Most of the ink spilled about social media in politics in the media has been spilled at the presidential level,” says Green. “But I think it'll be revolutionary on the local level. When you're looking at a board of education election, people haven't made up their mind at all. If we can get the tools of field organizing into local candidates’ hands — we're the first to provide voter data to everyone at no extra charge with our system — we’ll change how this is done.” Some very influential people happen to agree with Green. In early March, NationBuilder got a huge boost — a $6.25 million investment from Andreessen Horowitz. Former Facebook executive Sean Parker was involved in that deal, and he now sits on the company’s board along with Ben Horowitz. Who’s adopting the platform? More than 1,800 people have already organized more than 500 nations on the site. South Orange village president Alex Torpey , Ron Robinson and Newt Gingrich’s New Hampshire primary campaign and Cheryl Aichele of “Occupy Fights Foreclosures” are just a few of NationBuilder’s clients. “Our early adopters were guys in their 20s who use social media already,” says Gilliam. “They fundamentally 'got’ the products and took to them immediately. Now, we're seeing people of all ages use it.” Gilliam realized the power of organizing people online when he nearly lost his own life. He needed a double lung transplant to live, and he turned to social media for help setting up the surgery. “It got personal for me,” says Gilliam. “The process of doing the surgery would be hard, I had to work hard t! o get on the list. It was like I was applying for college again. Finally, a doctor said “I never saw your file, but I did get your email — it’s going to be a difficult surgery, which is why I need to be the one that does it.” Gilliam, a filmmaker by trade, has made very successful documentaries: One about the Iraq war, another an expose about Walmart. For the latter, Gillian says he had to get “really creative” with how he got the word out about the film. “We asked volunteers over social media to host thousands of screens a week before Black Friday,” says Gilliam. Gilliam realized that same ethos could be applied to politics, and NationBuilder was born. “The Internet has brought democracy to all these different industries, so why can't it bring democracy to democracy?” asked Gilliam. Do you think NationBuilder is an effective way to get organizing tools in the hands of the masses? Sound off in the comments below. Thumbnail image courtesy of iStockphoto , pagadesign More About: nationbuilder , Politics , US Social Media reviews series maintain by Mayya
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