Background

The promise of a truly participatory democracy has never been clearer than digital media has made it today. The unique distributive nature of the Internet provides a platform that has the potential to deliver on this promise by facilitating better group action at lower cost,thereby encouraging actual participation in democracy. There have been many meaningful developments in bringing better information and actions to citizens looking to use digital networks to serve their political needs, but many useful tools and databases remain proprietary and costly while others remain too general or ineffective for effective action.

Cause Caller uses open source technology to deliver on the promise of a participatory democracy by taking the hassle and difficulty out of organizing phone banks. Users of Cause Caller can create individual causes and associate new politicians to those causes.

How do I use Cause Caller?

Using Cause Caller is simple. Click the Causes at the top of the screen and click on a cause you're interested in phone banking for. Enter your phone number into the form and click the "Start Calling" button.

Cause Caller will then call you and ask you to press 1 to be connected with the first politician associated with the particular cause you've selected. The phone will ring, and you'll be connected to the front desk of that politician's office. You won't have to worry about remembering phone numbers or keeping track -- Cause Caller will take care of all of that for you. Once you're done speaking with the first politician, don't hang up on them, just press the * button. This will move you on to the second politician associated with the cause, and you'll move down the list. That's it!

How do I create a cause for Cause Caller?

Creating a cause is simple. First, you'll need to visit the wiki and login or create an account. Then you can visit the form to Create a Cause. There you'll fill out the cause's name, a description of the cause, and have the ability to associate a script and politicians to the cause.

Once you click "Save Page" on the cause form, your new cause will show up on the list of Cause Caller's causes and you'll be able to send out the link to your cause.

FAQ

Please visit the FAQ hosted on the wiki for more answers to your pressing questions.

Contact

Please e-mail all questions and comments to info [at] causecaller.com.

Acknowledgements

Thanks go to Asheesh, Cory C, Tom, Shawn V, and Clay.