David All Group

Launched in 2009, the David All Group's software platform, act.ivi.st, is built around findings All made when heading a working group on technology for the RNC. It won two Reed Awards in 2009.

"I kept finding examples of the stay-at-home mom who dedicated 10 minutes a day to her online activism and she was hosting a chat session about conservative books in a Yahoo group," says All. "Or it was these, the dad who'd pick his kids up from the school who would wait in the carpool line and he'd have 10 minutes and he'd like to call people from his phone somehow for the cause. Or these folks who want to make a difference every day but they want to do it in a way that makes sense, but there really is no tool that empowers them to do that."

From a user experience standpoint, act.ivi.st is centered around a leaderboard of people who have logged into the web-based application and taken any of the actions listed on a menu of options. The log-ins are done via Facebook Connect, so users do not have to create another profile, and All says he has a wide variety of actions to build into the platform — clients pick and choose while the David All Group is building their site. Each action earns the constituent a specific number of points, and the points determine placing on the leaderboard.

Campaigns can also offer prizes for top activists.

Users can be rewarded for anything from contacting their member of Congress via Twitter to posting a review of a candidate's book on Amazon or recruiting friends on Facebook. The software plugs into another conservatives-only application, the get-out-the-vote phone-banking tool VoterFetch, to track calls made, too, says All. (Act.ivi.st counts after-call reports from the callers as they are entered into VoterFetch, All says.) A new product, CongressConnect — designed to allow a client multiple ways to contact a member of Congress or senator — can also be linked into the platform. He added that there's an aspect of the administrative portal in act.ivi.st itself that should make it easy to see when people treat it as a game and cheat, and to make necessary changes.

"If there are known Democrats that are in the system, for example ... you can just ban 'em and keep them off of the leaderboard."

"People could sorta lie, but the analytics in the backend are such in act.ivi.st that you can really track things," he said. "So one of the early problems in one of the beta versions of the site called Operation Waiting Game was the ability for people to game the system. They would figure out the easiest way for people to get a lot of points and do it over and over and over again."

Act.ivi.st makes sense if you have an "end zone of some sort," says All, and the resources to dedicate an online campaign manager to work with the site — and the supporters it helps to cultivate — every day.

"What act.ivi.st is, is it's really flexible, but all of the data and all of the information is obviously captured in a CRM. Heritage for example is launching two more platforms focused on niche issues. The notion is having satellites that are focusing on the niche issues."