Canvassing software
Canvassing software that gets bodies to the launch
Most canvassing software is about the doors: the walk list, the script, the data capture at the porch. All of that is worthless if four volunteers were supposed to launch at 10am and one showed. Capstone Volunteer is the other half of canvassing software, the half that fills the launch.
The Saturday problem
A canvass launch fails in a specific, repeatable way. The signup sheet said eight, six confirmed in the group chat, four are standing at the launch site, and one of them is in the wrong ward. The turf that decides the race gets half a shift of knocks, and nobody finds out until the numbers come in Monday.
Every piece of that failure is a shift scheduling problem, not a doors problem. The fix is treating canvass launches with the same discipline as election-day vote centers: real shifts, named assignments, conflicts flagged, gaps visible days out, and attendance logged after.
How canvass scheduling works in Capstone Volunteer
Launch sites as locations, launches as shift templates
Each launch site goes in as a location, and canvass blocks go in as shift templates: two-to-four-hour windows, weekends heavy. Generate the season once and the grid holds every Saturday from now to November.
Ward-first assignment by default
A canvasser who lives on the turf knocks more doors per hour and gets fewer doors slammed. The fill panel ranks candidates by lives-in-ward first, so the ward-first discipline happens without anyone enforcing it.
Conflicts across the whole program
The volunteer who signed up to canvass at 10am and phone bank at 11am flags immediately, because canvasses live in the same grid as everything else.
No-shows logged while they matter
Attendance takes a minute to log after each launch and feeds every reliability count. Canvass reliability in September predicts election day reliability in November, and the fill panel remembers so you do not have to.
The turf itself stays in whatever cuts your walk lists. Capstone Volunteer holds the schedule that gets people to the turf, and the two halves meet at the launch table.
What the field director sees Saturday morning
The 7am report that morning reads: three launches today, 22 of 24 canvass slots filled, both gaps at the Ward 7 launch with four area-matched candidates listed, and two of yesterday's confirmations came from volunteers with a prior no-show. That is the whole pre-launch briefing, read with coffee, with two hours to make two calls.
On the seeded DC campaign that discipline ran across 268 volunteers and 700+ shifts. The same grid runs a three-launch Saturday for a council race with 40 people on the list, and the 7-day free trial covers that first Saturday end to end.