Recent press

"Alter and her group present a Democratic bulwark against the digital campaign efforts of Elon Musk and his even better funded America PAC, which has received $75 million from Musk. Both Musk’s group and Alter’s employ a crucial strategy: They use digital advertising campaigns to turn out low-propensity voters—those who tend not to vote—in presidential swing states through early voting and vote-by-mail options."

“In a state that’s as close as Wisconsin, sporadic voters are the whole game,” said Josh Henderson, senior director of paid media for A Better Wisconsin Together Political Fund, which works with Tech for Campaigns. Registering a new voter “is usually cheaper” than influencing someone’s vote, he added.

‍

“They’re thinking way ahead of where a lot of establishment, old money is thinking,” said Dylan Doody, executive director of the Texas House Democratic Campaign Committee.

Tech for Campaigns, an organization that uses digital marketing and data to help Democratic candidates win elections, is now using AI to create digital ads and fundraising emails, all of which they say are managed and vetted by humans, or “AI-aided.” They want to bring data to a conversation, currently being led by fear.

AI is helping political candidates raise more money more efficiently, according to an organization dedicated to helping Democrats win.

Why it matters: Tech for Campaigns is one of the first organizations to run an AI-aided email writing experiment, starting in Virginia last year.

‍

"Jessica Alter, co-founder of Tech for Campaigns, which supports down-ballot Democratic candidates in battleground states, told Axios the momentum is a result of long-term investment — not just spending this cycle."

‍

Tech for Campaigns was among the Democratic organizations that targeted young voters with messaging related to mail-in voting in 2020. But much of that investment has fallen off this cycle, Alter said.

“We’re not seeing the investment on the digital side, which is, we think, part of the reason that you’re seeing the drop in early voting about 18- to 30-somethings,” she said.

‍

“I worry that Democrats think that vote-by-mail/early-voting behavior of 2020 was a COVID-era aberration,” she said via email. “But what our digital program has shown is that when young voters understand that they can vote from their couch, they will.” - Jessica Alter

‍

“The large majority are in districts where they feel like they’re fairly aligned already with the people that represent them, and they really want to be able to do something,” said Jessica Alter, a co-founder of Tech for Campaigns.

“Seventy per cent of Americans do not want to see Roe overturned,” said Jessica Alter, the chair of Tech for Campaigns. “It is not very popular to do something so extreme, and it is no surprise that Republicans do not want to talk about it.”

"Despite a murky regulatory picture and increased saturation, peer-to-peer texting still has the potential to increase voter turnout, according to recent data."

"Alter said many of their campaigns had their ads erroneously turned off on Tuesday. 'Of course, this is an issue for anyone it happens to and not right,' she said. 'But the Biden campaign has other ways to get their message out — our candidates much less so."

"As you rightly said, campaigns disband every two years and break down completely. Within a week and a half, everyone scatters. So you can’t expect that to change completely. [But we hope to be] this lasting presence in tech and digital that subsists cycle over cycle and in between cycles."

"We're not that sexy campaign at the top of the ticket," Florida HD-118 Candidate, Ricky Junquera said. "Money is hard to raise. They're [TFC] like my fairy godmother."

"According to Tech for Campaigns’ analysis of Facebook advertising data, Democrats have on average focused more heavily on fundraising—more than 50% of Facebook ads from Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg have directly asked for money. In contrast, Trump has focused on gathering voter data and testing variations of different messages..."

"A report by Tech for Campaigns, an organization that provides proprietary technology and a network of more than 11,000 tech worker volunteers to assist Democratic candidates, found that voters who were texted by a campaign were 1% more likely to vote than those who were not."

"[O]nline advertising by political campaigns is still largely an afterthought, according to a new report by Tech for Campaigns, a group of technology workers who volunteer to help Democratic candidates with digital outreach."

"Tech for Campaigns, a San Francisco nonprofit that focuses on state legislative elections, deployed several thousand Silicon Valley volunteers across America. They won all the Texas legislative races they targeted (eight flipped, and one defended), a big validation of their tech meets down-ballot candidate strategy. "

"Tech for Campaigns [is] a 7,000-strong volunteer organisation that enables Silicon Valley employees to use their digital skills to help Democratic election candidates [...] The aim is to become a permanent digital arm for progressive and centrist campaigns, and give access to campaigns at any level to the people, technology and resources they need"

"Tech for Campaigns has become a kind of Democratic Geek Squad — a national volunteer network consisting of more than 4,500 tech workers [...] These volunteers, who include engineers, marketers and data scientists, are matched with Democratic campaigns across the country to provide training on digital skills, such as how to promote themselves on social media, build their email lists and use data analytics to identify potential donors."

"Tech for Campaigns injects tech talent into the campaigns of centrist and liberal candidates who need advice and tools to make better use of Facebook and Twitter, craft individualized emails for segmented voters, and much more."

"During the Obama years, Democrats got comfortable and Republicans gained a digital advantage. Now, the liberals of Silicon Valley want to change that."

"Levin lacked access to both branding and technology. But with Tech For Campaigns, what would have been a slow campaign start became a fully-furnished introduction. By the end of March, the Levin campaign had raised over $280,000, almost three times his initial fundraising goal."

"TFC paired up employees from Slack, Salesforce and LendingTree with [Kansas] Democratic candidate James Thompson’s campaign, and together, they worked on areas like digital advertising, particularly on social media, meant to woo new voters and get them out to vote."

"TFC got involved with the Kansas special election around six weeks before the polls opened, and deployed a team of Silicon Valley-based experts to help boost engagement...Thompson’s Facebook and Twitter channels. Thompson’s Facebook page followers rose from 1,300 to over 10,000, and the average likes per post spiked from 20 to around 600."

"Tech for Campaigns — which brings people with coding, social media, fundraising and data skills together with 'progressive and centrist political campaigns'...helped Levin build a website and donation portal and created his social media accounts ahead of his campaign opening. While creating a website may sound trivial to some, Levin said it gave his announcement a big leg up."