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Our Motto is Simple....

 

Do field right or don’t do it at all. Our team boasts a strategic partnership with Campaign Industries (CI), giving us decades of combined experience designing, building and executing field programs for national movements, candidate campaigns, issue advocacy and referendum battles.

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WHAT SETS US APART​

 

We don’t just run paid canvasses.

 

• We invest in and build infrastructure on the ground. Infrastructure that supports, nurtures and grows existing ecosystems. We pride ourselves in leaving communities and campaigns stronger and better than they were when we got there.

 

• We do this by hiring, nurturing and training organizers in the community who leave more capable (more efficient and accountable), when it comes to identifying, persuading and mobilizing voters, than they were when we began the campaign.

 

• As a People of Color Owned firm, we pride ourselves in working in communities that, historically, many campaigns and grassroots firms have been unwilling or unable to engage.

 

• Our focus on these communities however is not mere egalitarianism. Instead, we work in these communities because engaging them is essential to winning elections for progressive candidates and causes.

 

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OUR APPROACH TO FIELD

Community based, cost effective, turnkey, efficient.

 

We’re especially good at engaging oft ignored/ “tough to reach” communities (e.g., BIPOC communities and low-income voters) that are increasingly decisive in elections, mainly because our canvasses are comprised of people from the communities we’re engaging. 

 

• We are expert at cost-effectively running soup-to-nuts field operations from program design to recruitment to training to day-to-day management to reporting for campaigns that educate, persuade and motivate key coalitions of white progressives and people of color.

 

• Our programs are never cookie-cutter and always include robust accountability protocols.

 

• Unlike many firms that claim to do field the right way, we believe that an upfront investment in intensive training not only results in a more effective and efficient program but one that is more accountable. 

 

• We offer a turnkey operation with experienced organizers ready to deploy in a matter of days or weeks.

 

Our operations are soup-to-nuts and cover everything from program design to recruitment to execution while handling all of the administrative issues from employment eligibility to payroll to issuing end-of-year W-2s. Most important, however, is that our programs play a key role in campaigns that win!

 

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RECRUITMENT 

Finding the best people for the job.

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The best field operations begin with the best people for the job at hand. We believe that the best canvass operations spend the time to recruit and vet team leaders and members who have experience in both campaign work and the communities in which they will be working.

 

• This approach sounds like a no-brainer but too many firms fail to adopt it. Our recruitment process is a three-step process.

 

• First, because ONYX Field is staffed by experienced organizers/operatives who’ve worked all over the country, our first step is always to assess our professional and personal networks of individuals and affinity groups in the locale in which we’ll be working.

 

• Second, we make extensive use of national and online recruitment tools. Finally, we incentivize “friends and family” recruitment among already hired assets. 

 

• We have a long track record of building effective programs that hire canvassers exclusively from the communities in which they’ll be working.

 

• Because we recruit experienced people from the communities in which we work, we do everything we can to respect our workforce and provide them with the tools they need to succeed.

 

This means we offer higher quality training more frequently. We pay canvassers more than other firms. And we never make our workers 1099 independent contractors – they’re always placed on our payroll. 

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TRAINING

Intensive and  ongoing.

 

Many campaigns are content to provide their canvassers with a single 30-minute training, hand them a clipboard, and pat them on the back before sending them into the field. We believe every manager and canvasser can learn, grow, and improve every day. 

 

• That’s why we make sure that training is an intensive and ongoing process that encompasses a wide array of subjects including active listening, having an organizing conversation, and accurately rating voter responses, to name a few.

 

• This training methodology, coupled with regular and frequent role-playing, helps to ensure message discipline throughout the program.

 

• Our approach to training results in field operations that are more efficient, more effective, more disciplined, and, ultimately, more accountable.

 

• Our ongoing training makes our canvassers more effective because it helps them to understand not just the how of their work but also the why.

 

Put simply, we believe that the better trained our field operatives are, the better the results for our clients.

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EXECUTION, DELIVERABLES AND BUDGET

Count and quantify everything.

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Once we’ve built the team and provided ongoing, intensive training, we will execute a highly effective field campaign. This is where the rubber hits the road. Given the stated imperatives of the program, we believe success will best be assessed by three Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): 

 

1.      # of attempts 

 

2.      Contact rate 

 

3.      Conversion rate (a.k.a. collection of partial or full data from contacted voters) 

 

Because contact and conversion rates can vary widely from locale to locale and time to time, our standard practice is to use the first few days to a week of a project to set a baseline for these KPIs that is based on the realities on the ground.

 

Once baselines for KPIs are set using local, project-collected data, we work with our client to optimize the program in an effort to maximize KPIs. There are several ways that contact and conversion rates might be improved including, potentially: 

 

•  Changing days and/or times of canvassing. 

 

•  Changing geographic targets of the canvass. 

 

•  Refining the script (usually to shorten or liven up). 

 

•  Refining the universe. 

 

•  Changing personnel.