Matching Members with Confidence

Climate Solutions is a clean energy nonprofit with offices in Portland and Seattle that has been working to address the climate crisis for over 20 years. Their work centers on championing transformational policy at the state and local levels of government. Climate Solutions works to activate climate advocates, advance clean energy policies, and support local legislators with training and research.

Turning a “hot mess” into a great opportunity

A large part of their grassroots advocacy work relies on activating their audience — those folks in the Northwest who believe that clean energy is possible — and convincing them to take action by speaking at a local event or contacting their legislator.

Ariana Ylvisaker joined the Climate Solutions team as the Database and Engagement Systems Manager in 2018. She inherited a database that was more a “hot mess” than a functional advocacy tool. Previously, when Climate Solutions received contact information for their audience from a new source (such as a listshare or external signup form), data-entry volunteers would add the data as custom fields to each contact record instead of updating or deleting existing data. Because of this, Climate Solutions could not confidently match their audience to districts to send effective action alerts. Ariana knew this was a great opportunity to improve their system.

Matching with confidence

Using the Cicero API, Ariana verified addresses and matched them to state upper and state lower districts (now just two beautiful and clear fields) and counties. Over the course of three months, Climate Solutions enhanced all of the addresses in their database that had been added in the past five years. They saw a difference immediately:

• Several priority districts now showed audience representation where previously they thought they had none.
• One district, WA Senate 35, grew in representation by 44%.
• In 2019, Climate Solutions’ email list of potential advocates tripled in size as a direct result of Cicero’s clean and clear address enhancement service.

Expanding impact

Cicero enabled Climate Solutions to be more targeted and confident in their audience segmentation: they knew who to alert when certain representatives needed to hear from their constituents, and they could be really specific in their messaging and calls-to-action (e.g. “We know you live in the Tacoma area. Show up to this event tonight!”). Their newfound confidence led to more productivity, more outreach, and ultimately more impact.

Are you looking to extend your organization’s impact at the state or local level? Reach out and let us know! We’d love to help.