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Admin QuickStart: Non-Profit Organizations

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Ketan M.
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Hey there, Admin!

While everyone using Hustle does some pretty incredible work, it seems everyone uses the tool just a bit differently. The reason for this is often internal practices, organizational structure, and agent-bases who do the text messaging that you set up.

We’ve broken down the best practices by the general categories Hustle typically works with. While none of these are holy-grails, they certainly had input from each area’s Client Success team to get you up and running as soon as possible, and keep you going for the long haul.

Education
Labor
Politics

 

As a Non-Profit admin, you’re working with large networks and communities of people to connect with in order to further your organization’s efforts, increase participation, and often up patronage to your cause. Here’s some gentle guidelines to get your efforts in focus!

 

NPO: Groups
NPO: Orgs
NPO: Tags
NPO: Custom Fields
NPO: Assignment Strategy

 

Groups:

  • Create groups to organize your universe of contacts into smaller communities of people for Agents to connect with. Group Admins can continue to upload lists of contacts and add agents/organizers to those groups if this option is left turned on.

  • With Organizing, you’re looking to have conversations with contacts over a period of time from the same phone number, your Contacts should remain in one group, rather than being added to multiple groups.
    • If fundraising, specific Agents own relationships (ex. P2P Fundraising), so each Agent can have their own group as long as there isn’t overlap of contacts across groups.
    • Regional groups can work here when teams share a region.
    • If you’re running a specific campaign that is time-bound, and you don’t mind if future outreach is from a different phone number, you can create a group specific to the Contacts of that campaign.

  • Consider a naming structure that is scalable (ex. CO — West Slope Region)

  • Make sure to add a group description in Group Settings to explain further who is in that group.


Orgs:

  • Org creation is not something that you should need to do often. There are a few considerations for NPOs here:

    • Integrations
      • If you are using the Salesforce integration, you can only link one Salesforce instance to one Hustle Organization.
      • If you are using VAN, you should use one Hustle Organization per VAN Committee for optimal use of the VAN integration.
      • If you use the Blackbaud Luminate Online integration, you can sync multiple Hustle Organizations to one BBLO instance.

    • Teams
      • Nonprofits usually have on Organization that separately houses the work of their Development team. This is because the valued donors data is relative and usually differs from that of field teams, so it’s important to those doing outreach for development purposes to have a unique setup.
      • The only information about contacts that is shared across Orgs (if you choose), is opt out info. Tags and custom fields are specific to orgs.

 

  • A new Org should be created when either a new team at the organization wants to start using Hustle (ex. Development, Field, Volunteer Services, etc), or for Accounts with federated models or state tables. When a new organization/affiliate comes onto the platform, they would get their own Hustle organization.

 

Tags:

  • Tags are most commonly used to collect information from Contacts that Agents are texting with (ex. Language or Opt Out reason), targeting based on time-bound/specific information that exists outside of Hustle (ex. Someone who registered for a specific event and needs follow-up or to be excluded from a particular goal), or information that cannot by added as a custom field through an integration.

  • Removing tags in bulk from a specific subset of your lists is time intensive, so if you have info that may change often (like donation amount or city) do not use tags for that -- use Custom Fields.

  • For tags that you want to use temporarily for targeting (ex. pledged), give them a name that is unique to the campaign/event (ex. Pledge_sustainer_2/6 or Registered_Event_3/6)

  • Tags that may be helpful to consider:
    • Language preference
    • Volunteer Prospect
    • VIP
    • Board Member
    • Moved
    • Wrong Number (opt out tag)

 

Custom Fields:

  • Custom Fields are used to fill in donor data or voter info in scripts for personalization, legislator and districts info for calls, and for geographic targeting.

  • Custom Fields that may be helpful to consider:
    • Development:
      • member_id
      • highest_contribution_amount
      • last_donation_amount
      • last_donation_date
      • donor_type
      • city
      • state
      • zip
      • county
    • Organizing:
      • city
      • state
      • zip
      • County
      • congressional_district
      • LegislativeDistrict_CD
      • LegislativeDistrict_HD
      • LegislativeDistrict_SD
      • PollingLocation
      • PollingAddress
      • HD_Legislator
      • HD_LegislatorPhone
      • SD_LegislatorPhone
      • SD_Legislator

 

Assignment Strategy:

  • Assignment strategy varies wildly on your individual setup as well as whether you work in fundraising or organizing.
    • Assigned Messaging Strategy
      • Agents are expected to continue the conversation with contacts.
      • If you reassign contacts, that does not reassign an existing conversation with that contact -- the conversation does not get passed on too. This simply allows for a different agent to send the initial message in a goal and continue the conversation from there.
      • A new agent = a new phone number. If one agent is assigned to a contact on one goal, then a different agent is assigned for the next one, the contact will get texts from 2 different numbers.

    • Anyone Messaging Strategy -- First Come, First Serve Goals
      • Contacts within that group will always get texts from one number regardless of which agent is texting them.
      • Within a group, the conversation thread is transferred to whoever is talking to the contact at that time.
      • You can set the amount of time you want unread messages to stay with an agent before the conversation is available for another agent in the group to pick up.

 

  • Generally, text banks use “Anyone” assignment strategy to make sure that contacts aren’t left hanging after the text bank is over. Team Outreach uses “Anyone” when it doesn’t matter who is speaking to contacts, allowing them to add teammates as agents and they can share the work.

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