September 17th is National Voter Registration Day. Register to Vote!
Battle Born Progress
How our scorecard service reduces annual time spent by over 50% and caused calls from Nevada Assemblymen.
As the Nevada state partner organization of ProgressNow, Battle Born Progress is a 501(c)4 organization advocating for a progressive state legislature. According to their website, they use strategic communication efforts to empower, engage and mobilize Nevada voters to build a state where everyone has a fair opportunity to succeed.
The Problem
Putting their annual scorecard together was taking a substantial amount of time. So Battle Born Progress (BBP) was looking for a more efficient solution for their next scorecard. They came across the work we did for ProgressNow Arizona’s scorecard and contacted the Arizona team; who recommended we work together.
The Solution
We worked with Mike Willoughby, the Technical Director at BBP, to help him learn how to quickly pull in issue-specific bill data using BillTrack50’s Bill Sheets feature. The Bill Sheets are comprehensive and allow bill ratings, sponsorship ratings, weighted ratings, bill comments, categories, and more. This gives us a complete data set to use to create engaging, personalized scorecards.
Once the Bill Sheet was set up, we imported those bills into a scorecard that we synced to our scorecard service.
While they diligently track many bills per year using BillTrack50, they use our scorecard software to narrow this down and focus on how legislators are voting on their top bills. BillTrack50s complete dataset allowed us to create a more visually appealing and engaging scorecard — Nevada Progress Report.
Results
The general public as well as their 20,000+ members use our scorecard to track how legislators vote on issues important to them. Constituents can now easily look up their own representatives and see how they voted before contacting their legislator or voting in the next election.
Additionally, our scorecard service reduces the time they spend on their annual scorecard by over 50%. As part of our regular Legislative Scorecard service, we take care of the annual work of updating legislator headshots, legislator contact information, the find your legislator by address feature, and more. Mike no longer needs to worry about these things and can spend more time focused on legislation and communications.
Battle Born Progress regularly shares the scorecard on social media platforms, in press releases. It’s also been picked up by news outlets and featured in blog articles.
Just as important, legislators not only share their scores on social media, but they also call Battle Born Progress now to better understand their scores. This opens space for a dialogue about the issues with legislators they may not normally communicate with.
We checked in with Mike again a week after launch to make sure things were going well. He responded, “The launch went off without a hitch! People are extremely impressed! Thank you for all the help to get us off the ground!”
“This scorecard changed my life. It used to take a substantial amount of time to create our scorecard. This year, I was able to turn our entire scorecard around in 12 hours. You’re the reason I have extra time now. It’s absolutely fabulous.”
Mike Willoughby, Technical Director
Notable Online Shares
Their scorecard is regularly featured in news outlets, including Public News Service, Nevada News Press, Las Vegas Review Journal and USA Today News.
