Getting Started: All About Campaigns

This article will walk you through what Campaigns are, how they work, and their relationship with Organizations. 

What is a campaign?

A Campaign is an initiative created by an Organization. A Campaign has a Campaign Ladder (a ladder of engagement or support that measures progress towards your goal), Actions (tasks for mobilizers to do, like talking with their contacts about an issue, asking them questions, or sharing resources), and a dedicated dashboard within Rally Admin. 

Here’s how it works: 

Organization

Imagine an Organization called The Lost Boys of Neverland. It’s run by Peter Pan, and has a constituency of committed Lost Boys who can be activated to take action. Peter Pan would be the admin, and the Lost Boys would be the mobilizers. 

Campaign

The Lost Boys of Neverland might have a specific goal of recruiting new Lost Boys to join them. The admin would create a Campaign in Rally specifically for that goal, called “Lost Boys” – short and simple. That Campaign would organize current Lost Boys (mobilizers) to recruit people they know in the “real” world (contacts) to join them in Neverland. 

Campaign Ladder

The Lost Boys campaign would have a Campaign Ladder with a Key Question and a set of responses. The Campaign Ladder would measure people’s willingness to become Lost Boys. The Key Question that mobilizers would answer about their contacts would be “Will they join us in Neverland?” The responses would range from “Definitely” to “Definitely Not”.

Actions

The Lost Boys campaign would have Actions for mobilizers to take once they had gotten their contacts’ baseline answer to the Key Question. These actions would be different depending on how the contact responded. For example, contacts who said they were “Maybe” willing to become Lost Boys need to be persuaded, so the admin would create a Rally Action designed to do that – for example, a Free Response Prompt that prompted mobilizers to sing the contact the song Never Never Land, and then record notes about how they reacted. Another action might be a Task, prompting mobilizers to use fairy dust to show the contact what flying is like. A third action might be a multiple choice survey question, asking contacts what their biggest reason was for being undecided about becoming a Lost Boy. 

Hopefully, once the mobilizers have completed one or a few of these actions, the contact would become more willing to become a Lost Boy, and the mobilizer could update their answer to the Key Question from “Maybe” to “Probably”. Then, the mobilizer would get a new set of actions to do in order to seal the deal and move the contact from “Probably” to “Definitely”. 

Multiple Campaigns

The Lost Boys of Neverland Organization might have another goal in addition to recruiting more lost boys. For example, electing Peter Pan to be President of Neverland. To achieve this goal, they would create a separate Rally Campaign called “Peter Pan for President”. In this case, the mobilizers would include both Lost Boys and anyone else in Neverland (like mermaids and pirates) who support Peter for President, and they would have the goal of convincing other residents of Neverland to vote for Peter. The Key Question would be “Will they vote for Peter?”, and the actions would be designed to convince undecided Neverland residents to vote for Peter, and to get residents who do support Peter to volunteer to support Peter’s campaign. 

Organization Dashboard

Peter, the admin of the Organization could see a list of all campaigns within the Organization; and could click on a Campaign to see analytics and program details for that particular Campaign. Peter could also invite other Organization Admins to join the Lost Boys of Neverland Organization.

Now that you understand campaigns, their component parts, and their relationship with Organizations, you’re ready to make one! Visit Step-by-Step: Creating Your Rally Campaign