The Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (the DFL for short) is made up of grassroots leaders from across the state who lead local organizations to build support in their communities. The DFL uses Action Network’s Networks feature extensively to help power hundreds of organizations and candidates statewide.

What are Networks in Action Network?

Action Network Groups can be linked together into a federated hierarchy called a network. Networks are perfect for federated organizations, organizations with local chapters, field campaigns, and similar structures. Read more about Networks here.

I spoke with Tyler Schultz, Data Director at the DFL, and Mia Lucido, Political Data Intern at the DFL, to hear more about how the party uses Networks to manage data from across the state.

JEFF: Thank you for joining me today! I’d like to start with the basics: How is the DFL using Networks, and what do you think makes your use case so successful?

TYLER: We’re in kind of a unique space in the electoral landscape being that the DFL has been an entity for longer than I’ve been alive, so we have access to not only information for the state party but for various campaigns as well. So that is one of our biggest assets as a state party, is that data that we collect. 

We’re able to take the Action Network email and combine it with voter data that we have, or with volunteer provided information. So if we have the email, we can also have what congressional district someone lives in, or what precinct somebody lives in, or what our modeled data is saying about these people. So the heart of using Networks is the tags system, because we’re able to syndicate those out to everyone from our parent account and say, ‘These people are high propensity Democrats, these people are low propensity Democrats, these people volunteered in 2024’, and we send out a glossary of what each tag means.

We send that out to Soil & Water [Conservation] candidates, city council candidates, school board candidates — truly up and down the ballot, electoral races are using the tool. We probably have at least over 150 groups that use Action Network, and then there are multiple users in those groups as well. We set people up with the tool, and we update their lists on Action Network. We push over all of our custom field values — all the fun stuff that we have on the state party side that we’re giving them access to through this tool, through the tag system. It’s been a very big plus to the work that we do. It’s super cool to have an easy way to interact with our electorals and our activists, supply them with the information that we have, and help them to make pretty tangible change with it.

Yeah, definitely. You’ve done a really nice job explaining the benefit of Networks to the child groups. I want to talk about what the benefit is to you at the DFL as well. So it seems like you are able to offer an incentive to stay very closely connected with all of the candidates and groups throughout the state, and you’re syndicating tags down from the state party. Is the data collected by local groups flowing up to help you build a stronger database at the parent group level?

Yes, it’s unilateral pipeline, which is nice, but the main way that we keep that up to date is actually with the SQL Mirror. Basically we’re able to look at everything in the parent group combined with everything that all of our friends on the ground are collecting, and then we’re able to mush ’em together and be like, ‘This is the collective work of everything that we’ve been doing.’ So you’re right, it’s not just that we get to empower our party units and our activists and our electorals with what we’re doing. They’re able to expose us to new people. They’re able to collect information through some of the auxiliary tools that are in Action Network, which is super helpful. They’re able to input a lot of their own stuff. So we get it back, but we’re also able to see where our gaps are. 

“It’s super cool to have an easy way to interact with our electorals and our activists, supply them with the information that we have, and help them to make pretty tangible change with it.”

If the only data we have on someone is from 2010, their opinions may have changed since then. So it’s a more efficient way of checking if that Obama voter from 2012 is a Trump voter now. And then we can not only use that in Action Network itself, we’re also able to utilize that in our other forms of canvassing. So for our door knocking and our phone banking, we’re able to either make a note or put them on a Do Not Call list. That makes our other forms of outreach more efficient as well, which is cool. 

Some of the open rates on some of our campaigns are crazy. They’re like 0.2% bounce back and 60% open rate. I’m like, ‘How are you guys doing this?’ Then we’re able to keep that relationship, and it adds another layer into the way that we engage with voters in not only the Twin Cities area, but in Greater Minnesota. We’re able to keep tabs on people, notice if they’re changing, and update our own lists.

So recognizing that you all at the DFL are the gold standard for using networks within the electoral space, what best practices would you pass on to others in similar organizations on how to use networks effectively?

People come in and they make their own standards for things. One best practice is making tags as standardized as you can — because sometimes words can mean multiple things, and things get really messy, and it’s hard to put that toothpaste back in the tube. If you have a tag that says ‘User ID’ or something, is that an ActBlue ID? Is that a VAN ID? And I’m guilty of this as well, but if we make that mistake in our parent group, that will affect all of the child groups. 

Another best practice is keeping an eye on what folks are up to. We have an activity report, so we can see, ‘Is this person that has sent all of these emails in this short period, are they just blast emailing their whole list? Are they doing appropriate targeting?’ Keeping tabs on what people are doing to ensure that they’re not burning through these lists, that we’re using the buddy system and sharing with each other to an extent.

Thank you for this detailed overview! We’re so glad to see the DFL having so much success with Networks.

Thank you to Tyler and Mia at the DFL for taking the time to share learnings and best practices for using Networks! You can learn more about the DFL at dfl.org. 

If you’d like to get started using Networks for your federated or chaptered organization, visit actionnetwork.org/get-started for a quote and to sign up. Have a question about Networks or an Action Network partnership? Reach out to us at join@actionnetwork.org.