Programs, Packets, and List Segmentation

What are Programs?

Our 'Programs' feature is here to help Owners, Admins, and Data Managers manage and group outreach activities by type (e.g. persuasion, turnout, voter registration, etc).


Users can set up a Phone Banking and Canvassing efforts within the same program. They can start with a Canvassing effort and then add a Phone Banking effort later on (or vice versa), or enable both at the start of the program. Users do not need to use the same list when setting up their canvassing and phone banking campaigns. Once a program is set up, users can enable/disable Canvassing or Phone Banking in the Overview > Outreach Methods section of the program, which can be done at any point during the program. 


After a Program and either a Canvass or Phone Bank has been set up and Published, the packets from that program will be available for users to access from within the Canvassing feature or the Phone Banking feature.

All subscription levels (Lite, Pro, and Pro+) will be able to access and create a program, set up a canvassing or phone bank effort, and segment their lists into packets.


Lite users, however, will not be able to actually canvass or phone bank as they are unable to see personally identifiable information. 


Where can I access Programs?

Navigate to the 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: 

    • Create a new Program
    • See all of the Programs for their district
    • Search by Program name 
      • Update Program Status
      • Edit Program 

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

You will need to create either a Saved Filter on the homepage or build a universe in Universe Builder and turn them into a static lists in the Lists tab. Each Program is tied to a single list.


Setting up a Program

  1. Within Programs, click on the Create Program button
  2. 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.
  3. Status of Programs will default to Unpublished during Program creation, and will need to be published before it can be used for Canvassing or Phone Banking. 
  4. Save the Program 
    1. Once the program is saved the will show up in the Programs listing page 
  5. After creating a Program, users can start the Canvass or Phone Bank 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
  6. 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 
  4. 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 targets you would like in each packet
      • Please note that if the list is large, the user should aim to make the packets no larger than 1000 targets, otherwise canvassers may experience loading issues or crashes, due to large packet size.
      • Packet Visualizer will help users see where each packet is located within the selected district.
  5. Then hit Continue
      1. Note, this may take a minute or two to complete. You can move on to the phone bank creation process while waiting for it to complete.

  1. Navigate back to the Program Page and Publish the Program OR move on to phone banking setup. 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?

Note: 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.

To set up a phone banking effort:

  1. Create a static list using either a Universe or one of your Saved Filters.
  2. Go to Programs > Create Program 
  3. Name your program (required) and provide a description and start/end date if desired (optional), then save.
  4. Once you save your program, the Phone Bank Setup tab will appear. Click it to set up phone banking and then click “Create Phone Bank” 
    1. If a phone bank is already set up you will see the list of packets associated with the phone bank and have the ability to assign packets on this screen. 
  5. Select the list you want to use for phone banking
    1. Only lists that contain phone numbers will be listed in the dropdown.
      1. Users do not need to create a list with just phone numbers. The system will check the lists to see if it contains phone numbers.  
    2. Each list will also display how many of the targets within the list contains phone numbers 
  6. Select the number of packets you would like to create 
    1. Packets will be divided as evenly as possible and does not take into any geographic clustering
    2. Help text will be present on the screen to let user know approximately how many voters will be in each packet based on the input the user provides 

  1. Click “Create Phone Bank” to complete set up and generate phone bank packets
  2. Once phone bank packets are generated you will be directed to a screen that lists all the packets and will be able to assign packets to yourself or other users in your workspace. 
    1. Packets must be assigned to a user to be accessible in the Phone Banking view of the platform 
    2. Packets can be assigned to any user who is an Owner, Admin, Data Manager, or Volunteer 
    3. Users can be assigned more than one packet 

  1. If you are ready to make your phone banking program live and start phone banking, navigate to the Overview tab, click enable Phone Bank, and Publish the program. 

This is required to be able to view packets in phone banking (in addition to assigning packets out - see step above). 

I finished setting up my Program and have my Canvassing and Phone Banking programs set up - what's next?

Click on Canvassing and users will be presented with the list of available 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 only currently available for Phone Banking. 

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 but they do have access to canvass, phone bank, or use the search functionality to add Support Scores, tags, and notes: 

  • Volunteer 

Packet Visualizer

Once packets are generated it will be helpful for field managers to see the location of the packets on map. A campaign may want to focus canvassing on a particular neighborhood or assign adjacent packets to a specific volunteer. In general being able to visualize the location of packets will give our users additional data to help them organize their outreach efforts. 


Users will now be able to see the location of their canvassing packets within Programs > Canvass Setup. 

  • Each packet is represented by a marker placed at or near the center of the packet
  • The number within each packet marker represents the number of doors left to contact
    • This number will update as additional doors are canvassed
  • If user packeted their list by precinct, precinct lines will display on the map. If user did not packet by precinct, only the district outline will be displayed. 
  • On desktop:
    • Hovering over a packet name in the packet listing on the left will display the popover for that marker in map view for that 
      • Popover will display the name of the packet and the number of doors left in that packet 
    • Clicking on a packet marker will:
      • Scroll the user to the corresponding packet in the packet listing 
      • Zoom the map into into the area of that packet and display household dots 
        • These household dots cannot be interacted with (clicking or hovering over it will have no effect) and is meant to show the user where the households are for that packet 
        • To see the packet marker again instead of household dots, click anywhere on the map 
  • On desktop and mobile clicking on a packet via the packet listing will zoom the map into that marker and the map will also display the popover for that marker that contains the packet name and number of doors remaining for that packet  
  • On mobile:
    • Clicking on a map marker will display the popover towards the bottom of the map. In the near future we will be adding an “Assign packets” CTA in the popover for mobile. 
  • Packet list view has been updated to include number of Households in addition to number of Targets for each packet
    • The number listed here shows totals for the packet and does not update as the packet is being canvassed 
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