Using Civic Tech to Mobilize Communities in Support of Charter Schools
Learn how Murmuration’s data, tools, and research helped DSST Public Schools tackle data management and targeted outreach issues at the onset of their organizing efforts.
Organization
Denver School of Science and Technology Public Schools
Location
Denver and Aurora, Colorado
Public, open enrollment charter schools provide many families in communities across the country with access to a high-quality education designed to meet students' individual needs. DSST Public Schools in Colorado seeks to transform urban public education by leveraging civic engagement to advocate for the elimination of educational inequity.
With over 7,000 students across eight campuses, DSST Public Schools works diligently to encourage civic participation among students, staff, families, and community members. DSST helped their families, staff, eligible students, and community supporters understand the importance of voting, how to register, where and how to vote, and where to find more information on what was on their ballots. Given the size and scope of their organizing efforts, DSST Public Schools often found themselves with large quantities of data but no means to organize and use it to effectively conduct targeted outreach to their community members.
DSST Public Schools leveraged Murmuration’s data-matching tools and model scores to improve the civic engagement of families and staff, increasing voter turnout by 22% from the previous election during a school board election where turnout tended to be lower than a general election. They recognized that increasing turnout during this cycle could mean a greater impact on the election results themselves, given that most school board races were decided by only a few votes. This particular school board election had the potential to have a tremendous impact on the future of their charter school community specifically, given that the board members make decisions about the future of their campuses and other issues impacting their students and staff.
They leveraged our form and landing page features to provide people interested in registering to vote with the relevant information needed to complete the process, allowing them to build stronger relationships with voters and disseminate relevant information about upcoming elections and events. We even worked together to create a dashboard that allowed DSST Public Schools to track in real-time the number of registered voters so that they could evaluate whether to adjust their outreach efforts to maximize success. DSST Public Schools’ use of Murmuration's suite of civic engagement tech underscores how organizations can mobilize their communities to turn out to vote efficiently when equipped with the right tools. Murmuration’s data, tools, and research enabled DSST Public Schools to spend less time managing data and more time mobilizing their communities to drive change.