FADP has kept busy this year. We have been upgrading the technology we depend on, re-thinking our strategies, looking for ways to be more efficient, and working to include a growing number of people in the movement to end the death penalty.
Much of that work is important, but hasn’t been visible to our friends and supporters. Well, with the kind of work we do, I feel accountable to our community. I am also a big fan of transparency, so I have been thinking for several weeks about “briefing” our community on what we’ve been up to. I’m excited to finally give friends of FADP a look under the hood. In this post, I’ll brief you on one of our technology upgrades. Let’s talk shop!
In the first months of 2024, we realized that if we wanted FADP to pull more weight, we were going to need more horsepower. With a bigger staff, FADP intended to direct new resources towards relationship-building and organizing. There is a broad, statewide community of groups that have long stood up to act as a conscience for our political leaders, organize to reduce additional harms caused by executions, and persistently oppose the dehumanization of any human being, rejecting the idea that it contributes somehow to justice. We recognized a need to better network these leaders with each other, produce the potential to coordinate more effectively, and increase the ability of these groups to grow together.
In light of that need, we first re-evaluated our mailing platform. We were relying on a mainstream platform that lots of organizations use, and it’s how most emails you’ve received from FADP have been sent to you.
Given the direction we decided to move in, it became clear that this tool was not the best option for supporting our growth. It was mostly targeting business and marketing uses. If we wanted to manage a petition or organize an event, it often meant manually transferring and comparing data between different services to accomplish simple things like—for example—thanking folks for signing a petition.
Up to that point, we had only used our mailing platform to manage our newsletter, and most of our actions and events were coordinated in other ways. But what if we wanted to create more access online to a larger variety of actions than just petitions? What would happen if we successfully doubled or tripled the number of people engaging with us? What about our Communications Coordinator, Bridget? Would she be toiling at all hours to simply transfer a never ending stream of data?
We thought it better not to find out! After evaluating options, we migrated to a system that manages communications and actions for organizations like us. Now, we can easily change and enhance the format of our emails. We have a wide variety of options for different types of actions and events that we can set up. We can do new things, like targeting our messages about events to subscribers in those local areas. Very importantly, we don’t need to shuffle data back and forth! The move reduces our costs and improves our data security, as well.
I particularly like that we can collaborate with our friends in new ways. We can sponsor and support the events of collaborators and allow them to manage the events as well, which means it will be easier for us to lift others up and support their work. We will have more tools to facilitate opportunities for Floridians to join communities and act in support of abolition.
You may have noticed that our emails looked slightly different, starting sometime last month. That’s when we made the switch. If you didn’t notice… all the better! Behind the scenes it was a little more complicated, but we got it done!
We’re thoughtfully working to give you more power and more access to making change. This is just one of the improvements we have made in 2024. I’ll be briefing you on what we’ve been up to behind the scenes and also sharing opportunities to get involved at least once a month. Keep an eye out for it!