CiviCRM Extensions for Political Campaigns

CiviCRM is a great CRM for the needs of many non-profits, such as the NLG. A friend of mine suggested that CiviCRM has many features that campaign staff would use for political campaigns. He suggested two things that CiviCRM lacks that keep it from being competitive with other CRMs like NGPVan or NationBuilder:

• the ability to "cut turf" (i.e., select groups of contacts on a map to be assigned to a canvasser)
• integration with a mobile canvassing app to allow canvassers to add information to CiviCRM contact fields.

This summer, I would like to work towards both of these goals. I think that the first goal --- making a "turf cutting" extension for CiviCRM using Leaflet --- is a good baseline goal for the summer. I have a prototype that communicates with CiviCRM using the REST APIs, so it's in reach.

The second goal --- integration with a mobile canvassing app --- is a stretch, but worth working towards too. I've been rewriting the open-source canvassing app, Field The Bern, to be independent of Bernie infrastructure, and think it's a great candidate for CiviCRM integration. If time permits, I'd like to work on a CiviCRM extension to integrate with phones running Field the Bern.