Big Organizing

1. 1

   75M volunteer calls in 2016. Sanders started 2015 with about 3% name recognition, according to Becky Bond, and lost the 2016 and 2020 primaries.

2. 2

   A central, public plan; mass meetings that end with teams formed and tasks scheduled; volunteers doing staff work with a web dialer, texting and Slack.

3. 3

   Ask for something big, keep the strategy central, hand out the work and treat volunteers as leaders. The lesson traveled to the UK, Texas, Spain and Canada.

Copy summary

If you're new to this, start with the fundamentals, from the vote goal to what the research says. Read the fundamentals

The model was built by a team that started on the margins of the campaign and told its story in a book, interviews and post-mortems. Many later took the method to other campaigns.

• Becky Bond

  Senior adviser to the 2016 campaign; co-author of Rules for Revolutionaries

  Designed the national volunteer-driven program and later took it to Beto O'Rourke's campaign in Texas in 2018.

  Sources

• Zack Exley

  Senior adviser to the 2016 campaign; co-author of Rules for Revolutionaries

  Proposed the barnstorms, recruited the distributed team and co-founded Justice Democrats in 2017.

  Sources

• Claire Sandberg

  Digital organizing director (2016); national organizing director (2020)

  Led the distributed program in both campaigns, invented signing people up with a host at the meeting itself, and trained Podemos and Momentum.

  Sources

• Corbin Trent

  Distributed team organizer (2016)

  A Tennessee cook who sold his food trucks to organize full time and fine-tuned the barnstorm format.

  Sources

• Saikat Chakrabarti

  Volunteer programmer, then director of organizing technology (2016)

  Built the workflow for photographing and data-entering the sign-up sheets and co-founded Justice Democrats.

  Sources

• Zack Malitz

  Distributed team organizer (2016); Beto O'Rourke's field director (2018)

  Coordinated volunteer-led barnstorms and built the O'Rourke campaign's open digital toolkit.

  Sources

• Tim Tagaris

  Digital fundraising director (2016)

  Made small online donations the center of the campaign after a first day that beat expectations.

  Sources

• Faiz Shakir

  Campaign manager (2020)

  Ran a campaign of about $200 million and 1,100 people and later talked about the decisions he would make differently.

  Sources

• Revolution Messaging (Scott Goodstein)

  The 2016 campaign's digital agency

  Hired in May 2015 to run social media, online organizing, online fundraising, web design and digital advertising. Its founder, Scott Goodstein, had been external online director for Obama in 2008.

  Sources

What the organizers said about the method, in paraphrase or short quotes.

• People were just waiting to be asked “to do something big to win something big.”

  Becky Bond and Zack Exley, Rules for Revolutionaries (2016), quoted in Tim Ellis's post-mortem, 2021

• The goal was to turn mass enthusiasm into disciplined volunteer teams; 99% of the leadership was volunteer and peer to peer.

  Zack Exley, Interview with Micah Sifry, The Nation, Mar 14, 2016

• In the big data era, a handful of experts went looking for gains at the margins. In big organizing, scale is limited only by the appeal of the ideas.

  Becky Bond, Interview with Micah Sifry, The Nation, Mar 14, 2016

• Only a volunteer-powered movement could reach the 46 states where the campaign had no staff.

  Becky Bond and Zack Exley, Interview with AlterNet, Dec 23, 2016

In 2016 the campaign ran on two tracks: a traditional field program with paid staff in the early states and, on the side, a distributed organizing experiment for all the others. When enthusiasm exploded, the experiment became the voter contact machine.

75M

volunteer calls in 2016, according to Bond and Exleycampaign figure

~1,000

barnstorms in 2016, about 650 of them volunteer-ledcampaign figure

$27

average donation in January 2016campaign figure

88M

texts sent by the 2020 campaign through the end of 2019campaign figure

From 2015 to 2020

1. Jul 2015Exley and Sandberg join the campaign. More than 100,000 supporters gather at 3,500 events.
2. Oct 2015First round of barnstorms in Tennessee. Between 10% and 20% volunteer to host, but almost nobody holds the event they promised.
3. Dec 2015At a retreat in Seattle, Sandberg proposes connecting hosts and attendees at the meeting itself. In January, in Asheville, North Carolina, the sheet of paper is born.
4. Feb 9, 2016Sanders wins New Hampshire with 60.4%. In the 18 hours after polls close, the campaign raises more than $5.2 million.
5. Mar 8, 2016Michigan: with polls showing a 20-point deficit, the teams report almost 3 million calls in the last week. Sanders wins by about 1.5 points.
6. Mar 13, 201636 million calls in total, more than 1 million a day; 600 barnstorms and 22,000 phone banks run by volunteers.
7. Jun–Jul 2016Clinton becomes the presumptive nominee, with 54% of pledged delegates. Sanders endorses her on July 12.
8. 2017–2018The model spreads: Momentum in the UK, Justice Democrats and Ocasio-Cortez in New York, Beto O'Rourke in Texas.
9. Apr 27, 2019Second campaign: almost 5,000 launch events in one day and the debut of the BERN app. Sandberg takes charge of all organizing.
10. Feb–Apr 2020Sanders leads the popular vote in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, loses from Super Tuesday onward and suspends his campaign on April 8.

Three layers

The distributed program worked alongside two other layers.

• Traditional fieldPaid staff and offices in the early states. By 2020 there were more than 800 staffers, 250 of them in Iowa.
• Distributed organizingA small team with a plan, scripts and tools, and volunteers who did the rest: barnstorms, phone banks, texting, door-knocking.
• Autonomous ecosystemFacebook groups, Reddit, volunteer programmers and sites like FeeltheBern.org, built by 125 volunteers in 32 days, without the campaign.

US primaries vote state by state over several months. At the start, the Sanders campaign had staff in only a few states and had to reach the rest without big-donor money or super PACs.

Platforms

Web dialer

Any volunteer could call voters in another state from home, with a script on screen. It worked because the US has voter files with phone numbers and a phone-banking culture.

Peer-to-peer texting

Volunteers sent messages one by one (in 2016, with Hustle) and replied to the conversations. It was used to get people to phone banks and door-knocking.

Slack

The “Bernie Builders” workspace brought together thousands of volunteers in national roles, alongside staff, in the same channels. In 2020 it was still where memos to top volunteers circulated.

Facebook and Reddit groups

About 200 groups with more than 358,000 members in March 2016 and a subreddit with more than 500,000 subscribers. They were born outside the campaign, which didn't control them.

Email and online donations

The email list was the backbone of fundraising: millions of small donations through the ActBlue platform, averaging $27 in January 2016, while turning down super PAC money.

BERN app (2020)

Volunteers looked up friends and neighbors in the voter file and recorded each one's level of support; the data went into the campaign's database. The conversation itself was personal.

Local conditions

• A long calendar of primaries and caucuses, state by state, with dozens of states without staff at the start.
• Public or purchasable voter files with phone numbers, and rules that allow calls and texts sent by people.
• A candidate with about 3% name recognition at the start, according to Becky Bond, and no super PACs: the campaign depended on small donations.
• A young, connected base willing to work for free, including programmers who built tools.
• The party establishment and most institutional endorsements were with his opponent.

Becky Bond and Zack Exley distilled the experience into 22 rules in the book Rules for Revolutionaries (2016). In 2020, Claire Sandberg kept the foundation and added leadership roles and friend-to-friend organizing.

Three fronts

Ask for something big

A plan to win, laid out with numbers, and an ask to match: not “put up posters” but “run a phone bank every week”.

Central plan, distributed work

The central team sets the strategy, targets, scripts and tools. The tasks go to volunteer teams who work where and when they can.

Real contact with voters

Enthusiasm becomes conversations: calls, texts answered by people, door-knocking and, in 2020, conversations with friends and neighbors logged in an app. With lists chosen by the plan (states voting next, supporters who might stay home, undecided voters who turn out), not by the volunteer.

The barnstorm cycle

Every new region joined the campaign through the same cycle, repeated hundreds of times, first by staff and then by volunteers.

1. Invite Email and text every supporter in a city: come hear the plan to win.
2. Explain the plan At the meeting: the strategy, the theory of victory and why what counts now is talking to voters, not handing out flyers.
3. Ask for hosts Who will organize a phone bank or a door-knocking outing? Volunteers stand up and pitch their event in a sentence or two.
4. Sign up on the spot Each host gets a sheet with their name; everyone else signs up on one. Nobody leaves without a task scheduled.
5. Execute Phone banks at home with the dialer, texting, door-knocking. People are talking to voters from the very first session.
6. Record The sheets are photographed and sent in; other volunteers enter the data so the campaign can track the events.
7. Promote People who deliver take on more: they lead the team, run the next meeting, provide support on Slack.
8. Repeat The new leaders run barnstorms in other cities. The cycle starts again, bigger.

And again.

The people, tools and words you need to run the model in a candidacy, a union or a cause.

The model was designed for US primaries, but it has already been adapted to the UK, Spain, Canada and state-level campaigns. The tools and the lists change with the law and the culture.

Choose your country

Pick the moves that fit your campaign and add them to your kit to combine with moves from other playbooks.

1. Ask for something big, with a public plan

   The campaign told volunteers the plan to win, with numbers, and asked for a task to match: host a phone bank every week, not put up posters. In 2016, volunteers made about 75 million calls.

   How to set it up, step by step

   Works when

   It works when there is real enthusiasm for a cause or candidate and a goal you can count (conversations, doors, hosts).

   Don't use when

   It fails without existing enthusiasm, or with a plan you can't share: a big ask without honest numbers comes across as exploitation.

   1. Week −14 Write the plan to win on one page, with the number of conversations needed
   2. Week −13 Test every action yourself before asking volunteers to do it
   3. Week −13 Write simple scripts for calls, doors and texts
   4. Week −12 Publish the plan and a counter of what's left on every channel
   5. Week −8 Hold a national call with a concrete ask at each phase
   6. Week −4 Update the counter weekly and celebrate the team's numbers
   7. 1 week(s) after Thank people with the result and announce what happens next

   Team

   • Core team: writes the plan, goals and scripts
   • Plan spokesperson: explains the ask on calls and at meetings
   • Data: updates the counter of what's left

   What to measure: Real conversations held against the plan's goal, with the weekly gap to it.

   Risks to watch: Abusive targets burn volunteers out: ask for a lot, but honestly, without pressuring anyone or using volunteers for work the law says must be paid.

   Add to my kitIn my kit

2. A barnstorm that ends with teams formed

   Mass meetings where the plan is explained, volunteers stand up to host, and everyone leaves signed up on someone's sheet. In 2016 there were about 1,000 barnstorms, around 650 of them led by volunteers.

   How to set it up, step by step

   Works when

   It works for opening regions with no staff, when there are signed-up supporters in the area and weeks to go before the local vote.

   Don't use when

   It fails after the region has voted, or if nobody leaves with an event booked: in 2015, without the sheet on the spot, almost no host held the promised event.

   1. Week −11 Invite every signed-up supporter in the city by email and text
   2. Week −11 Prepare a 15-minute plan presentation and one sheet per host
   3. Week −10 At the meeting, explain the plan and ask hosts to introduce themselves in one line
   4. Week −10 Sign every participant onto a host's sheet before they leave
   5. Week −10 Photograph the sheets and log them the same day
   6. Week −9 Run each team's first phone bank or canvass that same week
   7. Week −7 Train the new hosts to run barnstorms in other cities

   Team

   • Barnstormer: presents the plan and asks for hosts
   • Hosts: run one event a week
   • Data entry team: types up the sheets and tracks events

   What to measure: Events that actually happen in the week after each barnstorm, against those booked on the sheet, and how many people show up to them.

   Risks to watch: Without follow-up the energy scatters: log the sheets the same day and call every host before their first event.

   Add to my kitIn my kit

3. Volunteers doing staff work

   National volunteer teams answered messages, supported the dialer, loaded lists and typed up sheets, alongside staff in the same Slack. In 2020, captains with 10 hours a week, training and a coach made the work more predictable.

   How to set it up, step by step

   Works when

   It works when the paid team is small and there are trusted volunteers ready to take on set hours and responsibilities.

   Don't use when

   Don't hand out access to data or tools without a clear role, limits and training, and don't rely on a single person to run each tool.

   1. Week −14 Create the central document (toolkit) that answers the usual questions
   2. Week −13 Open the team space, with channels per task and community guidelines
   3. Week −12 List the staff tasks volunteers can take on
   4. Week −9 Invite the most reliable volunteers into roles with set hours
   5. Week −8 Give every leader weekly training and a coach
   6. Week −6 Make sure more than one person can run each tool
   7. Week −2 Plan to hand the network over to an organization after the vote

   Team

   • Core team: defines tasks, access and limits
   • Captains: take on weekly hours and a team
   • Coaches: check in with each captain every week
   • Moderation: enforces the community guidelines

   What to measure: Shifts completed by volunteers in defined roles (hours done, not promised) and how many roles have at least two trained people.

   Risks to watch: Open spaces attract conflict and harassment: write community guidelines from day one, with someone to enforce them, and never pressure anyone with abusive targets.

   Add to my kitIn my kit

4. Friend-and-neighbor conversations, with a system

   In 2020 each volunteer listed friends and neighbors, talked to them personally and logged their support in an app. Campaign leaders argued that these conversations and door knocking paid off more, and cost less, than the sheer volume of calls and texts.

   How to set it up, step by step

   Works when

   It works where the law limits contact with strangers and volunteers have their own networks in the area that decides.

   Don't use when

   Don't use it if you can't protect the data: logging information on people who never signed up, without clear rules, is invasive, and the BERN app was criticized for exactly that.

   1. Week −10 Agree with a lawyer what data can be logged and how
   2. Week −9 Pick a logging method with minimal data and restricted access
   3. Week −8 Ask each volunteer for the list of friends and neighbors they'll talk to
   4. Week −8 Train the conversation: start with your own story, listen, invite
   5. Week −6 Log only what's needed after each conversation
   6. Week −1 Go back to supporters to remind them of place, time and transport
   7. 2 week(s) after Delete data that's no longer needed after the vote

   Team

   • Volunteers: talk to their own network
   • Relational coordination: trains volunteers and follows up the lists
   • Data lead: ensures minimal data, consent and deletion

   What to measure: Real conversations with people in their own network per volunteer, and how many end in a commitment to vote or help.

   Risks to watch: Third-party data and political opinions are sensitive: minimize, explain the use, never share contacts, and comply with the GDPR, LGPD or local law.

   Add to my kitIn my kit

The model's sequence, laid out as a checklist. Your progress is saved in this browser.

Volunteers talk to voters as themselves. Faking that, contacting people without permission or exposing data destroys trust and hands your opponent weapons.

Consent to contact

Calls and texts only to people the law allows. In the US there are federal rules on texting and autodialers; in the EU, the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive; in Brazil, the LGPD and the TSE's rules.

Say who's speaking

Whoever calls or writes identifies themselves and the campaign. Always with a way to opt out.

Handle friends' data with care

Friend-to-friend organizing apps touch the data of people who never signed up. When the BERN app launched, critics called it invasive: it compiled data on people who had no way to opt out. Minimize data, explain how it's used, don't share contacts.

Real people only

No fake accounts, bots, bought accounts or automated messages pretending to be people.

Money in the open

Respect limits, donor identification and the ban on foreign donations. Disclose everything.

Volunteering is voluntary

Don't use volunteers to cover work the law requires you to pay for, and don't pressure anyone with abusive targets.

A safe space

Written community rules against harassment and discrimination, with someone to enforce them.

Local law

In the European Union, since October 2025 Meta has not accepted political, electoral or social-issue ads, and Google has stopped serving political ads as the regulation defines them. Regulation (EU) 2024/900 requires labels and transparency notices on paid political ads and allows targeting only with explicit consent and without sensitive data. Volunteer work and your own unpaid posts are outside it. Check with a lawyer before you start. See the “Law and platforms in the European Union” section in Fundamentals.

It didn't win

Sanders lost the nomination in 2016, with 46% of pledged delegates, and in 2020, after Super Tuesday. Organizing doesn't replace electoral support among the groups that decide.

Too many calls

Tens of millions of calls and texts are impressive, but in 2020 the campaign itself concluded that conversations between friends and door-knocking delivered more. Experiments say the same: campaign contact rarely persuades in general elections (Kalla and Broockman), and what matters is the quality of the conversation: asking for a voting plan raised turnout by 4.1 points (Nickerson and Rogers).

Starting late is costly

In 2016 the program reached scale after the first states had already voted.

Without structure, energy scatters

In 2016 volunteers had no titles or management roles. In 2020 the campaign created captains with set hours, training and a coach.

Internal tensions

There were conflicts between teams, such as Sandberg's departure from Our Revolution in 2016, and former organizers later called for more internal democracy and accountability.

It depends on enthusiasm

The model amplifies a candidate or cause that already mobilizes people. Without that, there are no volunteers to distribute work to.

The bet on new voters didn't pay off

In 2020 the strategy counted on a wave of young people and infrequent voters. After Super Tuesday, Sanders himself admitted he had not brought in young voters as he had hoped; in exit polls, under-30s made up no more than 20% of the electorate in any of the 14 states. A theory of victory built on non-voters has to be tested early, with data.

Five questions to lock in the essentials.

Free materials from organizations that train organizers, linked to this case.

• The Mobilisation Cookbook

  Guide · MobLab (Mobilisation Lab) · EN

  Recipes for people-powered campaigns: how to move supporters from clicks to taking on tasks and leading. Use it to design your engagement ladder.

• Organizing Guide: People, Power, Change

  Guide · The Commons Social Change Library · EN

  The community-organizing handbook based on Marshall Ganz: relationships, narrative, team structure, strategy and action.

• Engagement Pyramid

  Template · MobLab (Mobilisation Lab) · EN

  Visual tool to map a supporter's levels of engagement, from observing to leading, and plan how to move them up.

Library

This playbook was built mainly from the organizers' book and interviews, campaign press releases and reporting based on interviews with the team, accessed on October 26, 2026.

Updated 26 October 2026