Ragtag’s Campaign Helpdesk: Volunteers helping volunteers (and staff) navigate campaign tech

Sometimes the best way to help is just to be helpful

The thing I love most about the Ragtag volunteer team is that everyone’s here to help in whatever way they can. Sometimes that means building bots, or analyzing big data. But just as often, it means answering questions, doing research, and helping organizers navigate the often overwhelming tech tools landscape.

Over the past year and a half, the Ragtag team has worked with dozens of campaigns to help them make good decisions on tech, and to make the most of the tech they work with. Now we’re taking it up a notch, and making our knowledge and tech know-how available to a wider audience.

This week, we’re launching a brand new project — Campaign Helpdesk. Campaign Helpdesk is a resource for progressive candidates, campaigners, and volunteers to get tech help and advice from Ragtag’s team of tech volunteers.

What is Campaign Helpdesk?

The Campaign Helpdesk pairs a self-service searchable help archive with an email-based helpdesk to make sure volunteers, organizers, and campaigns have access to and support for the key campaign technologies they need to win. The Campaign Helpdesk will cover all the tech you know about, including:

• NGP/VAN support
• Online fundraising tools
• Setting up wifi in a field office
• Troubleshooting phonebanks
• Digital security best practices
• Navigating the tangle of brand-new campaign tech tools available
• and much more!

The tech covered in the help archive will grow through the summer and fall as the Campaign Helpdesk team learns more about what YOU want to learn more about. If you have a question and don’t find an answer, submit a support request!

The nitty gritty: pricing and access

The Campaign Helpdesk help archive will be available to the public at no charge, free forever, as a service to you! Anyone can submit a suggestion for a topic for us to cover in a public help post.

The one-on-one email-based tech support is free for individual volunteers asking questions for themselves. Are you confused about how @ messages work in Slack? Are you stuck trying to log into Mobilize? Get in touch and we’ll help out!

For campaigns and campaign staff, you can access the one-on-one email-based tech support for $20 per month for your entire staff. Looking for a better way to connect your email list to your donor list? Can’t find the export to CSV in NGP? Get in touch and we can help. Have a question, but not quite sure if the Campaign Helpdesk is worth paying for? No worries. We’ll start you out with a free 30 day trial.

Excited? Me, too! Check it out at www.campaignhelpdesk.org

…and/or sign up to help at ragtag.org/join!