Programs, Packets, and List Segmentation

What are Programs?

Our 'Programs' feature is here to help Owners, Admins, and Data Managers manage and group multiple outreach activities by type through Program Building & Canvass Set Up (e.g. persuasion, turnout, voter registration, etc).

  • Building a Program helps users plan and communicate details of a canvassing initiative.
  • Canvass Set Up aims to help users break their canvassing efforts into packets by Geographic Clustering or by Precinct within a Program.

After a Program and Canvassing Program has been set up and Published, the packets from that program will be available for canvassers to access from within the Canvassing feature.

All subscription levels (Lite, Pro, and Pro+) will be able to access and create a program, set up a canvassing effort, and segment their lists. Lite users, however, will not be able to actually canvass as they are unable to see personally identifiable information. 

In the future, users will be able to use Programs to organize other voter contact efforts as well such as phone banking and texting, in addition to canvassing, and will support other features such as surveys and volunteer assignments.  

Where can I access Programs?

Navigate to the RM Menu on the left, click on 'Outreach' then 'Programs'. Users will be presented with the list of all Programs created. In the Program List View users are able to: 

    • See all their Programs for their selected district
    • Note: Programs are district specific in that they are not shared across districts within a workspace. 
    • Search by Program name 
      • Update Program Status
      • Edit Program 

What do I need to do before building a Program for canvassing?

You will need to create a list in either the Saved Filter function on the homepage or build a universe in Universe Builder and turn them into 'static lists' in the Lists tab. This is because each Program is tied to a single list and that list is broken down into auto-generated walk packets (smaller lists).

Where do I access and set up a Program?

  1. Navigate to the RM Menu on the left, click on Outreach then Programs.
  2. Clicking on the 'Create Program' button

  1. Give the Program a name (required field)
    1. Program name must be unique within the same district 
    2. Description and Date fields are optional 
      1. Date fields are available to simply help the user organize their outreach efforts, but are not a required field.
  2. Status of Programs will default to Unpublished during Program creation, and will need to be published before it can be used for Canvassing. 
  3. Save the Program 

    1. Once the program is saved the will show up in the Programs listing page 


  • After creating a Program, users can start the Canvass Set Up, or return later to setup if not ready yet. They can edit by clicking on the edit/pencil icon to the right to access the Program
  • Users can also delete their program by going near the 'Basic Information' header and clicking on the trash icon.


Setting up your Canvassing Program and segmenting into packets:

Once a user has created and saved a Program, they will be able to set up their canvassing efforts via the Canvass Setup tab found within the Program edit view.  

  1. Navigate to 'Programs' and select the program you want to edit
  2. Click on Canvass Set Up located above 'Basic Information'
  3. Select Create Packets then select the static 'List' you want to canvass from
    1. Drop down will populate with the all static lists created for the district selected 

  1. Decide whether to break the list down into packets organized by Precinct, or by geographic bundling. If using the geographic bundling option:
    1. Choose the number of packets you would like the list broken down into, between 1-100 packets.
      • Please note that if the list is large, the user should aim to make the packets no larger than 1000-1200 targets, otherwise canvassers may experience loading issues or crashes, due to large packet size.
  2. Then hit 'Continue' 
      1. Note, this may take a minute or two to complete.

  1. Navigate back to the Program List Page and Publish the Program. This will make the program and any packets created available to any user with access to canvassing in the workspace.

Will my packets be saved? What if I want to readjust the packet number?

Once a user has created their packets they are automatically saved. In the current version, if the user would like to re-packet their list by increasing or decreasing the number of packets, they will need to create a new program.

I finished setting up my Program and Canvass Set Up, what's next?

Click on Canvassing and users will be presented with the list of packets within that Program. Users can then select a packet to view the targets within and proceed with canvassing. Any user who has access to canvassing will be able to see all available programs and packets within.


Can I directly assign packets to a person or group on RunningMate?

Assigning packets to specific users  is not yet available. 

List Segmentation

Effective canvassing depends on organizing large lists of voter targets into smaller segments that can be reasonably walked by volunteers. With the list segmentation feature users are able to divide their large static lists into walkable packets that are geographically-compact. They can also choose to break the list up into precincts, to assign precincts to specific volunteers.

Program Statuses 

Users can update Program status on the Program List view or by clicking into the Program Overview. 

Programs can have one of three status: 

  1. Unpublished
    1. Default status of all newly created programs 
    2. An unpublished program is not visible to users in Canvassing 
    3. This status is meant for programs that have been created, but setup is not complete yet, or its ready to launch (e.g. Admin is setting up programs for the next couple of weeks, but only want volunteers to see the program for the current week)
  2. Published 
    1. Program has canvassing setup and contains at least 1 packet to canvass off of 
    2. Published programs and their corresponding packets are accessible via Canvassing 
      1. Note: Only published programs will be available in Canvassing
  3. Closed 
    1. Closed programs are not accessible via Canvassing 
    2. This status is meant for programs that have completed.

Roles and Permissions

The following roles have permissions to access, create, and manage programs:

  • Owner
  • Admin
  • Data Manger 

The following roles have read-only permissions to programs:

  • Data viewer 

The following roles have no access to create or manage programs: 

  • Volunteer 
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