I’d like to hear from anyone that has an idea or nascent project that could use some kind of support— do you need certain resources? skills?
What could your project do with $500; $5000; more?
What could a single volunteer do? What would happen if we all chipped in?
I’ve batted around the idea of recruiting volunteers for my site, localcandidates.org. Ultimately I never knew how to get started: finding the right people, organizing the work, and managing it.
If there was one thing I could really use help with, it’s probably database/pipeline related. Organizing info from various 3rd parties: FEC, Congress.gov, Ballotpedia.
I’m the same as TP, I’ve batted around the idea of recruiting volunteers as well. possibly recruiting college students studying law, policy, etc. But I want to properly plan this out before I let anyone babysit my baby lol
As for what could my project do with $500/$5000, I would probably get more database space, for sure.
hi TP!
I’m circling back to this, just wondering if you’ve been able to get volunteers for your site yet?
I didn’t have time to adapt my process ahead of the 2026 midterms but I’m still open/interested in getting help.
I’d first need to understand what managing a volunteer (or team) would look like, as I don’t have the experience.
That said, I expect my site could reach anywhere from 10M-50M+ users next federal election cycle. I’m pretty comfortable/love doing the design and front-end work to organize content/data for users. But I’ve less experience in developing pipelines across federal/state/local data sets for various topics: candidates & elections, officeholders, finance, legislation, etc.
If anyone has experience managing data projects (the data itself or managing people), I’d love to chat.