Track lobby efforts (crm)

We've got a lot of people sending emails to politicians, and setting up connections. We should gather and organize this information. We can use that to keep track of progress, test approaches, prioritize countries, prevent duplicate efforts, etc.

Who has ideas on what software to use?

I was thinking airtable + integrate it on the PauseAI website.

living-lavender•3/2/24, 9:01 PM

Because I can't yet imagine how a publicly accessible CRM system would be secure, I'm imagining an internal CRM for vetted users, with a public form for submitting potential entries/updates

living-lavender•3/2/24, 9:02 PM

(e.g. some e/acc is gonna try to wreck it)

colossal-harlequin•3/2/24, 9:03 PM

Zoho CRM works great, but the paid version is pricey. They do have a free version which I've never used, though. More to the point, I'm not sure if they have a max number of seats: https://www.zoho.com/crm/lp/free-crm.html?network=g&device=c&keyword=free%20crm%20software&campaignid=15172962852&creative=661346952360&matchtype=e&adposition=&placement=&adgroup=127255532577&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiAuYuvBhApEiwAzq_YiblYrhrghhvJNRVJJ0WnycT7NVrOhs7-MEjWaIncH0M4-CUn3DS5ABoC1-AQAvD_BwE

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living-lavender•3/2/24, 9:05 PM

I think you could do airtable for the public submissions, and then a few vetted users comb through that to update the internal CRM. Or maybe it's airtable all the way down

living-lavender•3/2/24, 9:08 PM

A CRM could also be used to track volunteers, who is where with what skills/interests

dead-brown•3/4/24, 11:38 AM

Project Tracker: https://maximolog.notion.site/Track-lobby-efforts-crm-d545cc6672b64e5582e4fa07007fe3cf?pvs=4

Maxime Fournes's Notion on Notion

Track lobby efforts (crm) | Notion

Description

spotty-amber•3/19/24, 3:22 PM

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1arZjIPe4luvixfTrgLoYYFXPEc8UDIk3zgu60pQmy_0/edit?usp=sharing @Maxime Fournes

Google Docs

PauseAI Emails Leaderboard

Sheet1

Name,No. Emails sent to policymakers,Meetings gotten,Impact
Yanni,3,"Setting up an AI Safety Institute might get discussed in Australian Parliament because i sent one email, had one meeting, and did lots of follow up"
Joep
Squink
William
Kabir,1,0

spotty-amber•3/19/24, 3:22 PM

Potentially simple solution?

hurt-tomatoOP•3/19/24, 3:31 PM

I think the data model needs to be scoped on individual mails and politicians. Would probably require a true CRM (e.g. pipedrive)

spotty-amber•3/20/24, 8:46 AM

hurt-tomatoOP•3/20/24, 9:30 AM

Haha nice!

hurt-tomatoOP•3/20/24, 10:46 AM

@Felix De Simone

worthy-azure•3/20/24, 2:30 PM

Oh man, this is fantastic! Nicely done.

spotty-amber•3/21/24, 12:48 PM

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bQyGa8hbKC3oH9zdrz7AszrO3_rkSVto0tIgDIIBcIw/edit?usp=drivesdk

hurt-tomatoOP•3/25/24, 5:02 PM

Made a submission form for lobby actions (Work in progress!) https://airtable.com/appWPTGqZmUcs3NWu/pagoraIwzlYm2QwjD/form
@Felix De Simone

worthy-azure•3/25/24, 6:39 PM

Brilliant!

worthy-azure•3/25/24, 6:41 PM

I will spend some time today creating different form templates (in addition to the lobbying form you just sent) which we might be able to integrate with the rest of a CRM.

colossal-harlequin•3/25/24, 11:16 PM

There's no category for "Snail Mail". I'll use email for now, but the UI should definitely be updated

worthy-azure•3/26/24, 6:29 PM

Just updated the outreach action submission form with some more categories & questions.

Additional context: we are planning to use a centralized submission form where volunteers can log Congressional outreach, lobby meetings, outreach to influencers/public figures, partner orgs, etc. This form will be the one-stop shop for all outreach tracking and will allow us to better track all the amazing outreach taking place.

worthy-azure•3/26/24, 6:32 PM

Outreach Tracking Form: Please take 30 seconds to fill this out whenever you reach out to or meet with a politician, influencer, organization, or anyone else!! https://airtable.com/appWPTGqZmUcs3NWu/pagoraIwzlYm2QwjD/form

Airtable

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Wworthy-azure Just updated the outreach action submission form with some more categories & que...

spotty-amber•3/28/24, 1:59 AM

can there be made a more easy version of this, with less stuff to do?

spotty-amber•3/28/24, 1:59 AM

e.g. one quick one and one 'advanced' one?

spotty-amber•3/28/24, 1:59 AM

I'm more likely to fill it out if so

spotty-amber•3/28/24, 1:59 AM

esp if the info can be added/edited later

Sspotty-amber can there be made a more easy version of this, with less stuff to do?

hurt-tomatoOP•3/28/24, 6:57 AM

I think the fields are optional

Hhurt-tomato I think the fields are optional

worthy-azure•3/28/24, 12:29 PM

Correct, the fields are optional, just double-checked.

worthy-azure•3/28/24, 3:08 PM

Made a few of the fields mandatory (type of outreach, type of official, name) but everything else is optional.

sad-indigo•3/29/24, 10:57 AM

Is there a list with all the data entered to Airtable? So we can see who has been contacted?

hurt-tomatoOP•3/29/24, 11:29 AM

yes! that's the point of the list. It's very young though, so not a lot is in it as of now

hurt-tomatoOP•4/9/24, 8:21 AM

@Chris Gerrby has some ideas on CRM tooling, also some open source options that may be more powerful / suitable than airtable

hurt-tomatoOP•4/9/24, 8:21 AM

Core issue with current approach is not being able to see our own stuff

Hhurt-tomato Core issue with current approach is not being able to see our own stuff

dead-brown•4/9/24, 8:41 AM

What do you mean?

Ddead-brown What do you mean?

spotty-amber•4/9/24, 9:47 AM

I assume Joep means that like the excel doc or that codepen, it's more fun and engaging when you can easily see what others are doing and how you compare to others

hurt-tomatoOP•4/9/24, 9:48 AM

Not just comparing / leader boards, but also being able to see your own submissions. I noticed I was asking myself 'Did I already register this mail?'

dead-brown•4/9/24, 9:49 AM

Well let's think about it this way: there is data that is ok for everyone to see (for example projects, tasks) and data that is not ok for everyone to see (lists of volunteers). With Airtable we can make some tables public and others not, so we should be able to make public everything that we want, no? I don't see the advantage of, say, excel doc

awake-maroon•4/9/24, 1:47 PM

I'm really excited to set this up!

I think we can hit two birds with one stone; 1) provide value to our volunteers via a good CRM, 2) track their efforts.

To grow our volunteer count, one important part of it is to have them feel their work is meaningful. This is an incremental task, nothing we’ll perfect in one shot.

Asking volunteers to track their progress via signing an airtable form makes it feel like they have to do another dull task. It's another ask from our end, even if it only takes 30 seconds (volunteers wanting to do this task well by filling in more than mandatory fields will likely spend much more than 30 seconds - increasing our ask even more). In the current shape, I unfortunately believe the sign-the-airtable task is decentivizing and could mean lower overall impact. In asking volunteers to do stuff, the minimum is to provide compelling reasons for why they should do it - this in itself makes their work feel more meaningful, but I don’t believe it's sufficient in this instance to scale up fast.

It would benefit us tremendously to have some value proposition to them, to enable them to act with higher quality and ease. If we’d have, then we’d organically grow our volunteer count. In the ideal case, they’ll give us data without an ask or nudge. I think we can get close to such a point if we think through the execution properly. In the current setup, we’re mainly leveraging their goodwill, a resource that we should use very sparingly.

Above enabling them, there are ways of making their work more enjoyable and meaningful such as rewards, feeling ownership, accountability, gaining ingroup / outgroup status, coworking systems, networking / bonding opportunities, etc, that we can think about setting up the CRM.

awake-maroon•4/9/24, 1:49 PM

I’d suggest we use a CRM where there are 3 different views available of the same CRM database:
(1) Whole database with all information from all senders and receivers. This is what a select few very trusted individuals can see. If we feel the need to go far with security, then signing an NDA to view this database could be an option. We’ll likely need to think a bit about GDPR.
(2) A personal CRM / CRM subsystem for volunteers. They can only see and edit the part of the database in which they are contributing to. This is a value prop; they are enabled to do better lobbying via using the CRM, and we get to track their efforts. Volunteers need to create a sign-in for this.
(3) The whole database only with sender name and receiver name fields. We might want to prevent the failure mode where many volunteers have written a message to the same person. When a volunteer wants to contact someone, they first search this database – especially if the receiver is famous. Coordination is another value prop for volunteers. This database view might very well be problematic from a privacy perspective, from both volunteers and the receivers (imagine being a politician and everyone in our movement can see that volunteer x has talked to you). Potentially use an NDA for security.

awake-maroon•4/9/24, 1:50 PM

The ideal scenario is where we can use the same CRM for all our purposes – events and outreach. It would be good to have separate categories or options of sorting people to reach out to: politicians, musicians, artists, influencers, journalists, natsec professionals, volunteers, etc.

Before we settle on a CRM system, I think it could be good to think about how this CRM integrates with the rest of the ecosystem. It would also be good to think about how to make this scalable: having the infrastructure ready if we 10x - 100x our volunteers in a short duration – something that could happen if humanity gets a warning shot.

A solution could be a free, open-source CRM such as SuiteCRM. It satisfies the criteria outlined above, but there are alternatives I haven’t looked into.

Like always, I strongly endorse anyone to challenge any of the points I've put forward. I just care about is finding the best solution.

dead-brown•4/9/24, 2:07 PM

Just want to mention that you don't need to sign into airtable to fill in the forms - are you thinking of providing direct access to the tables?

dead-brown•4/9/24, 2:17 PM

Ah nevermind I understand you meant "fill" not "sign in"

dead-brown•4/9/24, 4:10 PM

I completely agree with all the needs you have outlined above but it is still not clear to me that Airtable does not cover them.

awake-maroon•4/9/24, 5:57 PM

I'll have a look! It would be nice to not have to migrate our data

sacred-rose•4/9/24, 7:55 PM

im not a fan of what i've superficially seen of airtable (aka UI) but I don't even know about CRM so I my opinion doesn't matter lol.
Unless we start to integrate a lot more things with airtable I will probably not be affected.

Aawake-maroon I'm really excited to set this up! I think we can hit two birds with one stone...

spotty-amber•4/10/24, 3:07 AM

Oh yeah - when it's a LeaderBoard, I can sell that as a fun activity, and a reason to write an email
- "You can join the LeaderBoard!"

Not so with the CRM
- "You get to fill out a form!"

spotty-amber•4/10/24, 3:09 AM

Also, with the Google Sheets, they can immediately see what others have done, what others have put - and see themselves adding themselves to that board - stronger feeling of community, competition, less work

spotty-amber•4/10/24, 3:10 AM

Obv, a crm gives much more useful options and data

spotty-amber•4/10/24, 3:21 AM

But, imo, whatever way that data is added, if we want this to actually scale, and say, 1000 emails to be sent every month, then it needs to be:
- Having an obvious incentive (other than just ideological)
- e.g. joining the community, having your name in the same place as everyone, like carving names into the desk of classmates type feeling, competitiveness, seeing your number and others (but important to not be assy about this)
- people will rarely do it if there is no obvious, fun, incentive, imo

- Easy
- if we want this to scale, it needs to be easy to do. So it's done not just by the people willing to put in medium to high effort who have nothing better to do.

- Fun
- this isn't the same as incentives - though may be linked. It's also linked to easiness.
- making something fun is about identifying what problems are fun to solve, in what way and which ones are annoying to solve. E.g. - for
most people, waiting for things, like loading screens, isn't fun, but figuring out the right combo to get a really sick score, is fun
- I do think there is a fun aspect here - persuasion - persuasion is fun - and psychoanalysis can be fun too - people take personality quizzes for fun and read hours of articles about politicians and celebrities supposed mindset for fun all the time - and often spend a lot of time debating on that too - which is another type of fun

spotty-amber•4/10/24, 3:22 AM

Also, talking to people is fun too

spotty-amber•4/10/24, 3:23 AM

One of the important factors I think should be taken into account for whoever's leading the email thing, apart from a level of competence, their determination, etc - are they fun to talk to?
Can they comfortably lead a group in a way that's fun?

hurt-tomatoOP•4/10/24, 4:30 PM

Just upgraded to Airtable premium, now costs almost 100 dollars / month for 4 users.

Track lobby efforts (crm)

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