Rapid-response advocacy tools for progressive campaigners

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[dogoodbetter]

Two days left to speak out! Why we need to stop the silencing of Aussie environmental protection groups

The Australian government is inviting comment on proposed plans that would pressure environmental protection groups to stay silent on the critical issues that impact their work.

It’s hard to believe but Treasury is actually debating whether environmental groups should have to allocate 25%, or even up to 50%, of their funds into remediation activities, to be eligible for Deductible Gift Recipient (DGR) status. DGR status is of course critical to a charity’s fundraising success, as it enables donors to claim their donations as a tax deduction.

If the proposed changes go ahead, charities who want to retain DGR would have to re-direct resources and energy away from vital advocacy and education efforts. And some may become fearful about speaking out at all.

This is clearly an attempt by the Australian government, pandering to their mates in the mining industry, to intimidate environmental protection groups into staying quiet.

In a world where industry groups already out-spend civil society and have far too much influence over our government’s environmental policy making (chunk of clean coal anyone?), this is a radical and unnecessary move. We’re all for a strong and autonomous civil society, where government not only stands up to industry but leads it.

Over the past 6 years at Do Gooder, we’ve witnessed the importance of civil society voicing its opinions through the campaigns of trusted NGOs. We’ve seen how important it is for people to have a voice, and recent national polling by the Australia Institute backs that up - 68% of Australians support their NGOs conducting advocacy activities with tax deductible donations.

Shutting these voices down would be disastrous for the country, which is why we launched a campaign to keep environmental groups loud and proud.

Already over 500 people have let treasury know this is not on. Join them and help fight this flagrant attempt at silencing the voice of the people by the mining industry  – check it out and take action.

[dogoodbetter]

Victory! SBS advertising Bill kicked to the curb

Whether it’s the provocative documentaries, insightful news, or the fact they have more languages than the Vatican – Australians love their SBS and for their own unique reasons. Given such affection for the special broadcaster, it’s no surprise so many Australians were up in arms when a Bill to double the amount of ads per hour made it to parliament.

As well as concern for the disrupted viewing experience, fears justifiably focused on the risk commercialisation could bring to the iconic broadcaster’s core values. Management’s devotion to focus on content that can lead to a more inclusive and cohesive society would be under threat.

SBS shows like First Contact, spark internal questioning, public controversy and ultimately start conversations. Conversations that lead to action and, importantly, change.

First Contact may not have made the cut under a more commercial paradigm.

Unsurprisingly, the reaction to a push for commercial increase, saw a ground swell of backlash and a stellar campaign launched by former SBS World News Australia presenter, Mary Kostakidis and the crew at Save Our SBS.

The campaign was named ‘Preserve our media diversity: Don’t turn SBS into Australia’s fourth commercial TV network’. Powered by the DoGooder online toolkit, it asked Australians to email both their MP and Senators to stop the bill and voice their opinion.

In one month over 10,000 people voiced their opposition!  And in response, only a couple of weeks into the campaign…

Drum roll...The government killed the Bill!

The Prime Minister issued this statement: ‘Following community feedback and discussions with industry stakeholders, the Government has decided not to proceed with the legislation. This legislation will now be withdrawn from Parliament.’

Save Our SBS President, Steve Aujard said, “Due to public pressure, not only did the Government take that decision, it restored to SBS the funding cut that was to be replaced by increased advertising. We’re very pleased.”

This is a huge victory for SBS viewers.

Ms Kostakidis stated, “If the government Bill had become law, not only would advertising have become even more intrusive, it would have driven future programming decisions. SBS would have been manoeuvred further away from its Charter obligations.”

Here at Do Gooder we’re thrilled to have helped protect this important Australian institution and are armed and ready to support more!

Do you want to stop a new law or make a change to existing practices? Are you a campaigner or local advocate?  Do you want to make a difference?

Steve Aujard discusses his experience using the Do Gooder platform. He says: “The really good part about the Do Gooder set up is the way they have simplified and automated so many functions. For example, the tool to find your local Member of Parliament and Senators based on postcode, the way their system inserts the sender’s name below the body of the email text, and so many other features, the ‘thank you’ emails and interface with social media.”

“It is all very intuitive to the user. Aside from an array of options, the Do Gooder technical support was very fast when needed. It is a well thought through system they have built. Without a doubt, I very highly recommend Do Gooder”, continued Mr Aujard.

To check out the SBS crusade and the campaign muscle Do Gooder can offer you, go to good.do to re-invigorate or create your own movement.

Once again, a big cheer to SBS staying true!

[dogoodbetter]

Stand up for your (Consumer) Rights

Today is World Consumer Rights Day (WRCD), a global day of action co-ordinated by Consumers International, the global peak body of 240 consumer rights groups. Consumers International works with its members and partners to empower and champion the rights of consumers and ensure they are treated safely, fairly and honestly. 

Do Gooder is proud to be one of those partners having teamed up to develop a suite of new innovative action tools – including the co-design of the event and mapping features driving the Consumer Rights Day Global Map of Events promoting and documenting the day as it rolls across the world.

Our new Event Action Tool (still in beta but live for this campaign) allows campaigners to create one or more events (WCRD has 118!) and display them on a custom map. Each event allows supporters to RSVP (also mappable) and provides an option to display #tag tweets to show online action supporting the event. What’s more, actions that are taken such as signing a petition or emailing /calling a decision maker can be mapped as well, creating an exciting visualisation pre, during and after an event occurs.

Maps can be embedded in your own site or displayed on your Do Gooder microsite in the header and are coming soon to our Goodest and Pro plans.

Get your free trial now and if you’d like to go on our beta program to gain access to these tools just ping us after signing up.

[dogoodbetter]

Celebrating women in activism with a revolutionary new tool: the Visual Petition

From online to on the streets, women are at the forefront of the battle for human rights. As the women's march on Trump's first day as president made abundantly clear: misogyny, bigotry, racism, hatred, and discrimination have never had a rightful place in society and do not have one now.

When you need to connect with what it means to be human – or indeed, woman – conventional one-click petitions don’t cut it. They can be a useful and easy entry point to gather supporters to your cause, but they're getting a little, well...old, after almost two decades of active use (the first successful online petition was sent in 1998 according to Wikipedia!).

So we thought today would be a great day to share our latest tool for expressing political passion, opposition and affirmation. A tool that connects us more visually to our human story and is, by its very nature, a more feminine expression of our digital toolkit. The Visual Petition Action Tool, allows your supporters to easily upload a photo or video from their mobile or desktop, leveraging the power of human expression to engage both the supporter and the target in a far more emotive manner. 

Content is (optionally) displayed on your campaign home page and/or a special gallery page for all to see and can be delivered to your target in any number of creative ways. 

We offer this tool on our mid-high level plans but if you’re fighting for women’s rights let us know and we’ll provide it on all account levels.

Grab an account and grab back!   🤜🏽🤛🏽

[dogoodbetter]

Obama is all ears for Bears Ears National Park (after a lot of shouting!)

With a single stroke of the presidential pen, President Barack Obama rang out 2016 by protecting 1.35 million acres of some of the richest cultural and archaeological significance in the United States as a National Park.

Backed by eight separate Do Gooder email and petition actions over a year and a half, Friends of Cedar Mesa and the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition – an unprecedented alliance of Navajo, Ute, Hopi and Zuni leaders - harnessed the power of 39,732 people to target Congress and President Obama himself.

The diversity of actions used in the campaign kept people engaged and targeted politicians in different ways.

"Non-controversial campaigns are easy,” says Josh Ewing, Executive Director, Friends of Cedar Mesa. “But when you're doing something historic, you're going to have opposition. Do Gooder made it easy to activate our supporters in a way that integrated seamlessly with our website."

What do nearly 40,000 supporters look like? Each delta on the action map below is one person raising his or her voice to protect this sacred and stunning area.

The face of online campaigning is changing - and we’re on the frontline with innovative and traditional tools alike to fuel any campaign.

Do Gooder is democracy in action - get some action here.

[dogoodbetter]

One awesome community ...

Happy holidays and thanks for being part of the movement to agitate, educate and organise for progressive change across the globe. 2016 has been a tough year for progressives - a serious call to action for all of us to stand up against injustice, corruption, and greed. 

Despite the prevailing winds 2016 was a good year for Do Gooder campaigners, together we...

got Oregon, USA off coal and raised its minimum wage

closed Hazelwood, Australia’s “dirtiest” coal-fired power plant

saved funding for librarians in schools across the USA

banned greyhound racing in NSW, Australia

won a long-fought 10c deposit on bottles and cans in NSW, Australia

reduced pathology costs for patients across Australia

won protections for Tasmania’s Tarkine Wilderness

convinced President Obama to proclaim Bears Ears as America’s newest national monument.

Plus hundreds of other tactical successes big and small. That’s a damn good contribution in a world that desperately needs more progressive wins!

This year we’ve doubled our campaigner numbers (come join us!) and surpassed 300,000 people on our supporter Action List. We also heavily  focused on our core technology, refining our existing tool set and building some cutting-edge tools that are at the forefront of online campaign tech – including our transFORM engine which auto-fills contact forms in the U.S. and Australia ensuring no politician can hide from their constituents for long, a Facebook profile pic swapper we affectionately dubbed the Facebook Badger, a real-time campaign dashboard (still in beta, see below for a sneak peak) – plus we went multi-lingual (10 languages to date) and expanded across the globe with campaigns launching in Peru, Mexico, Italy and the Netherlands joining our existing campaigns in Canada, South Africa, Australia, the UK, the U.S. and New Zealand.

In early 2017 we’ll be rolling out even more tools to help you win the good fight. 

Until then, thanks for all you do,

David, Justin and the Do Gooder crew

Start your own campaign for progressive change at www.dogooder.co

P.S. Real-time Campaign Maps coming soon ...

[dogoodbetter]

The Reef threatened by web contact forms!

  Politicians are feeling the heat from community campaigns and are increasingly replacing public email addresses with complex and intimidating web contact forms. While common practise in the US (Congress) for years this strategy has started to infiltrate other countries including Australia where the PM and NSW Ministers (along with a select few conservative politicians) are now applying the tactic.

These contact forms drastically reduce the ability of community campaigns to engage citizens in communicating with their elected representatives.  The good news for campaigners is Do Gooder now auto-fills contact forms from within our campaign websites & embedded actions.

 Here’s how the Australian PM prefers you to contact him ...

 And here’s how it looks using Do Gooder ...

Besides the clear star power of the Angry Turtle, these forms have other tangible benefits:

Give supporters all the campaign info & emotive imagery needed to tip them into taking action

Provide email tips for personal but relevant emails

Easy to use on any device

Own your data and build your list for ongoing activation.

All of this adds up to more engagement, more actions, and better outcomes.

Check out ACF’s latest reef campaign urging Australian PM Turnbull to consider the voting public’s opinion when deciding whether to destroy the Great Barrier Reef with taxpayer dollars. ACF asks supporters to write their own personal emails (which pack way more punch than form letters) and over 1,000 have done so already. 

Even Angry Turtle would be happy with that!

Start your own campaign for progressive change at www.dogooder.co

[dogoodbetter]

Aussies fire back at Baird’s war on trees and koalas

This is what it looks like when nearly 5,000 Australians in 2 days call on Premier Mike Baird​ to end his war on trees and endangered koalas after the ABC revealed an illegal bulldozing cover-up by the NSW government.

Each red delta - a unique monitoring tool available on all Do Gooder campaigns - represents an Australian demanding the Baird government launch an urgent investigation into illegal land clearing in the name of protecting biodiversity, rainfall, fertile farmland, and our natural heritage.

Add your name to the Do Gooder campaign by the Stand Up For Nature alliance to hold the government to account for their dodgy dealings.

Or start your own campaign for progressive change at www.good.do.

[dogoodbetter]

WWF doing a whale of good for marine sanctuaries. With style.

 As the fight to protect Australian marine parks from oil and gas developments heats up, WWF Australia are setting the bar high for effective and stylish custom-coded campaigns with integrated Do Gooder actions.

In the age of short attention spans, evocative presentation and multimedia are key to capturing the imagination of supporters - and WWF are doing a whale of a good job, garnering over 8,000 submissions in only a few days.

Starting with a captivating video banner of migrating southern right whales seen overhead from an unmanned aerial vehicle, you scroll down to a streamlined educational component on the whales that pass through Australian waters.

By the time you arrive at the action itself, followed by a call for donations to help drive the campaign, our hearts and minds are in and it’s impossible to turn a blind eye. Do Gooder was designed with this in mind: to function stylishly as a standalone campaign tool and integrate seamlessly with external platforms. 

If you haven’t added your voice to protect marine parks, now’s the time to do it.

Then start your own Do Gooder campaign today with a 14 day free trial.

[dogoodbetter]

Nuclear a no-no at Yeelirrie WA

In the wake of nuclear disasters in Fukushima and Chernobyl, Australia’s geographically largest state is one step away from keeping uranium deposits in the ground. After receiving detailed evidence from the Conservation Council of WA (CCWA) backed by 3,500 submissions through Do Gooder in support of the Uranium Free Charter  the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) has recommended the mining proposal at Yeelirrie WA be rejected and that uranium should stay in the ground!

WA has never had a commercial uranium mine, with state-wide bans on uranium mining, federal restrictions on uranium mining, and a long history of public opposition.

While the mining industry is scrambling desperately to get the recommendation overturned, CCWA is gathering forces with a renewed push to support the EPA’s recommendation, along with an upcoming submission writing workshop and joining in the Walkatjurra Walkabout.

Another great example of how we can win when we fight the good fight. 

Fight the good fight on Do Gooder with a free 14 day trial.

[dogoodbetter]

Now you’re speaking my language. Multilingual campaigns are a go!

80% of the world’s population speaks a language other than English yet the vast majority of campaign platforms either do not support other languages or do so in an ad-hoc way. We believe that humanity is at its best when we come together to solve our common problems and any platform built for change needs to be as inclusive as possible to achieve that end. That’s why we just rolled out a major multilingual upgrade to our full suite of action tools. You can now campaign in up to TEN languages at once – Indonesian, Dutch, French, Italian, Japanese, Continental or Brazilian Portuguese, Thai, or Spanish – spoken in total by 3.1 billion people across 5 continents. 

Just add language/s and enter your content and we take care of the rest - from field labels and default buttons to follow-up emails and social sharing content. Each language has its own unique URL so you can send language-based emails plus supporters can easily toggle between languages.  

Campaigns already taking advantage of the new tools includes our first Spanish language campaign by international consumer group El Poder Del Consumidor, and our first multi-lingual (French/English) campaign by FairVote Canada. 

Translate that!

We want to make language barriers to creating change a thing of the past, so if you lack native speakers in your team just let us know and we can translate your campaign copy into any of our supported languages  with a 72 hour turnaround and at very competitive rates.

Wherever you campaign, Do Gooder’s got your back! Aprecie! 楽しもう！Goda di! Geniet van! Appréciez! Goce! Menikmati! สนุกได้!

[dogoodbetter]

All bets are off: NSW bans greyhound racing

Backed by campaigns from animal welfare organisations, the NSW Greens and others –  5 separate Do Gooder campaigns in all – NSW Premier Mike Baird shocked the nation by announcing a total ban on greyhound racing. Thus putting an end to cruel training practises like live baiting, dog doping, discarded canines and a money trail of questionable “tax breaks”, gambling, and profiteering.

Up to 68,000 greyhounds have been put to death over the last 12 years in NSW  - that’s 5,500 a year - simply because they were too slow and unprofitable. But now all bets are off.

"No dog should have to die for a bet,” said the late and widely-respected Greens MLC John Kaye in one of his Do Gooder campaigns to protect greyhounds. And in NSW - and soon the ACT - now they won’t have to.

Campaigns to end greyhound cruelty have called on the Premier and cross-partisan MPs across the state to end the barbaric practise in Australia, one of only 8 countries in the world to still do it.

Premier Baird acknowledged the tireless work of Dr Kaye, supported by the NSW Greens and animal rights groups, to bring this to his attention. Following a damning exposé by Four Corners and a Special Commission which revealed widespread animal cruelty and corruption, Mike Baird had this to say:

Immediately following the announcement, big money backed by the NSW Labor Opposition have begun a campaign to undo the ban, spreading misinformation about employment impacts and a genocide of unwanted dogs.

“We are so close to a ban on greyhound racing after so many years of campaigning,” NSW Greens Environmental spokesperson Mehreen Faruqi told Do Gooder. “But with the Labor party and other members of the crossbench siding with the greyhound industry even after all the evidence of systemic animal cruelty, a ban is not guaranteed. Politicians need to hear the voices of animal advocates more than ever.”

This is turning into a battle pitting right versus might - and Do Gooder campaigns are already popping up to lend might to what is right.

Click here to send a message to your MP to support the ban.

[dogoodbetter]

Oregon does good and doubles down on renewables

If you've been following the news in the fight against big coal recently, you may have heard that the U.S. state of Oregon just had a HUGE win - a new law that will see the end of polluting coal power generation in the state and a double down on clean, renewable energy.

The Oregon Clean Electricity and Coal Transition Bill will regulate Oregon off coal-fired generation and double its renewable energy generation to 50% under the Renewable Portfolio Standard. It will also set Oregon’s electricity sector on the path to meeting the state’s greenhouse gas reduction goals, which call for a reduction of carbon emissions 75% below 1990 levels by 2050.

The win for Oregon should give everyone in the fight against climate change a reason to cheer. However, according to Renew Oregon's digital director Dina Le Roux, it's not the end of Oregon's rapid acceleration to clean energy: 

“We need to do more and we need to act faster than ever before. Transitioning off coal is only one (albeit great!) piece of a larger puzzle. This win is our fuel to move us closer to a clean energy economy, but we must go further and be bold in the fight for clean air.”

Renew Oregon, backed by Do Gooder's email politician action tool, worked with a coalition of 165 organizations with interests as diverse as business, labor, faith, health, agriculture, technology and the environment, engaged Oregonians to think about a few, simple benefits that a clean energy economy would bring to the state: local jobs, healthy communities, leading the nation in renewable technologies and innovation, and kickstarting a state-by-state movement towards a clean energy future.

Says Le Roux: ”We raised awareness, engaged the public, gathered volunteers and built political strength. Last but not least, it was every single individual who took a few minutes to send those emails to their legislators, folks who called their lawmakers. It's the people who came to Salem to raise their voice in front of the Capitol asking for clean air and climate protection... It's a combination of all the small and big actions that put together, created a powerful force for change”.

“Thank you for creating this tool. It surely played a great role in passing this bill.”

Do Gooder's tools provided an essential digital component to the larger campaign, making democracy more accessible to those it is supposed to represent. Targeting state representatives via our rapid response tools saved Renew Oregon time and money and meant that politicians heard from more than just fossil fuel lobbyists. 

2,007 emails were rapidly sent to key Congressional influencers in the Senate and House of Representatives, making it clear where the people stand on having a liveable planet for future generations.

Congratulations to Renew Oregon and the climate movement! Which state is next? Why not yours?! Start your own campaign 

[dogoodbetter]

New Features ahoy!

Target politicians better, faster

We’ve always had one of the best emailer tools around, however it’s always lacked integration with our geo-political databases. That meant, until now,  if you wanted to target a specific politician by email you had to know their email address, and if they were in the US Congress (or one of the growing number of politicians moving to contact-form only communications) you’d be stumped. To fix this glitch in participatory democracy we’ve added a neat little tool within our Email Decision Maker action editor that allows you to search for specific politicians and add them to your target list. This means you don’t need to know their email and if it changes your campaign will remain up to date. Result!

Available on all plans.

Hello Malcolm!

When the current Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, re-took the leadership he stopped monitoring his public email address (citing communication overload) and began directing people to fill out a web contact form. This is a technique practised by a minority of (mostly conservative) politicians in Australia though it is common practise in the USA, particularly in Congress.

Do Gooder’s email engine has been designed to handle contact forms for Congress in the USA as well as email addresses across the globe so we were able to quickly ingest the PM’s form into our system which is already re-connecting him with his constituents.Available on all plans.

If you find your target rep is using a web form instead of an email address let us know and we'll see what we can do!

Custom Domains are here

We’ve been beta testing custom domains for a while and have officially rolled them out so if you want to use your campaign domain name on your Do Gooder microsite its happy days.  Just go ahead and add the domain in the Account section of your admin. Instructions on how to do it can be found here.

Custom domains are included at no extra charge on our gooder, goodest and goodestPRO plans.

Facebook pixel codes are go!

We’ve had a lot of requests for FB tracking codes recently, so we added them. You can now track every page on your Do Gooder site through your FB Ad Manager. Just go to the Advanced Tab in your campaign editor and punch in your pixel id. Simple. Available on all plans.

[dogoodbetter]

Knee-jerk reaction by Nationals MP and right-wing media shows online campaigning works

Late last year West Australian MPs received over 2,000 emails from concerned community members encouraging them to oppose the Coalition’s Prevention of Lawful Activity bill via Do Gooder.

The bill, designed to give government - and ultimately companies - the right to fine and jail people for the non-violent and democratic expression of descent, has been seen by many as an attempt to disempower communities on a range of issues. Organisations like the Law Society of Western Australia have also been quick to add their voice agains the bill.  

Just another conservative policy meets community outrage so far right?  Well here’s where it gets interesting. When just two supporters of the campaign (equating to 0.1% of the total) received a follow up email from the Nationals MP Martin Aldridge they failed to recall, that they had in fact filled out a handwritten form at an event. That form was later transcribed & sent as an email on Do Gooder to Mr Martin Aldridge.  In a move that has us scratching our heads here at DG HQ Mr Aldridge decided the matter was worthy of the time of the WA Police!

In response, WA Police were quick to dismiss any possibility of fraudulent or criminal activity. Not satisfied with this or from a detailed response from us which made the points above clear,  Mr Aldridge appears to have alerted the Murdoch owned West Australian which then published an apoplectic article that tried to beat the story up into an attack on the legitimacy of online campaigning more generally. Quite a leap! 

Needless to say, we were amused and heartened by the West Australian’s “coverage.” When you see Murdoch tabloids clutching at straws and peddling half truths to discredit you - well, you know you’re probably on the right track! Seeing our elected representatives play this game too is less amusing and, in fact, deeply worrying.

Online campaigning has become one of the most effective tools modern democracy has to empower people to take part and to have their voicee heard on issues that affect their lives. The fact that we are seeing conservative politicians attempt to fabricate uncertainty about community lobbying tools suggests they fear it and the transparency and accountability it encourages (and let’s be clear, that they should be upholding!).

As for Mr Aldridge, our advice would be to continue to read, respond and act upon the opinions of the other 99.9 % of messages he received – all overwhelmingly opposed to the Prevention of Lawful Activity bill – rather than desperately looking for ways to delegitimise the voices of the people he is paid to serve.

#martyaldridge #nationals #westaustralian #campaigning #environment #socialjustice #protest #democracy

[dogoodbetter]

NationBuilder app upgrades

You can plug Do Gooder actions into almost any web site (including WordPress, SquareSpace, Shorthand Social and Facebook). One of our most popular integrations is with the community building platform NationBuilder which also includes seamless data syncing.

And now we’ve taken it even further allowing you to choose how subscription options are synced. Each campaign can have it’s own opt-in/opt-out tags leaving the global subscription flags untouched. This gives advanced campaigners the flexibility to run multiple campaigns within Do Gooder, provide one or more subscription options while ensuring campaign subscriptions do not effect organisational subscription settings. 

We also implemented deeper data syncing functionality in our latest update –  ensuring more data is synced to your Nation than ever before. So data that is captured in Do Gooder –  like the full residential address of your supporters – is passed to your supporter’s file in your Nation.

Learn more about the integration of Do Gooder with NationBuilder.

[dogoodbetter]

Introducing Promoted Campaigns

Grow your list by promoting your campaign to like-minded people through our campaign network. Promoted campaigns are an easy way for you to amplify the impact of your campaign whilst growing your supporter base.  

For the first time campaigners have an integrated list building option right within your main campaign platform. Your campaign promotion is displayed on the thank-you pages of other Do Gooder (issue-matched) campaigns giving you instant access to passionate supporters who care about your cause. We’ve made it so simple it takes minutes to set up and you only pay for the new supporters you gather. 

This is an exciting way for small campaigns to grow into big campaigns and for organisations to top up their lists with fresh energetic supporters. It’s available on all Do Gooder plans right now and is already helping campaigners to do good better.

Find out how you can amplify your campaign results through Promoted Campaigns.