Own Your Supporter List

When the campaign ends, the signs come down and the posts go quiet. The one thing that can carry forward is the list of people who raised their hand to help. Whether it is still yours afterward depends on where you kept it.

Quick answer: Keep your supporter list on a system you control, collect it with clear consent, and make sure you can export it at any time. A list stuck inside a tool you stop paying for, or inside a social platform, is not really yours.

Where lists get trapped

• Form builders and free CRMs. Your sign-ups sit on their servers, under their terms, and may be hard to export or gone when a free plan ends.
• Social followers. A following belongs to the platform, which can change reach or rules at any time.
• A volunteer's personal spreadsheet. It leaves with the volunteer.

See Own Your Voter Data for how we think about it.

What a good list captures

• Name and a way to contact the person.
• What they offered: volunteer, yard sign, host an event, stay informed.
• A simple status, so nobody who raised a hand is forgotten.
• Notes from each contact, so the next conversation starts where the last one ended.

Consent and privacy

• Say plainly what people are signing up for, and only use the list for that.
• Do not sell or share the list.
• Keep it somewhere private, with access limited to the people who need it.
• Honor requests to be removed.

After Election Day

Winners need that list to stay in touch with the people who got them there. Candidates who plan to run again need it to start the next race with a head start. Either way, the question to settle on day one is the same: if this tool disappeared tomorrow, would I still have my list? If you want it set up that way from the start, tell us about your race.