Reach — Relational Organizing App
Summary
Reach is a US progressive grassroots-organising mobile and web app that combines relational organising, community canvassing, distributed action cards, voter registration, and a shared team-chat layer in a single user experience. It is one of the canonical apps in the relational-organising-technology category and is built directly to operationalise the relational ladder on a campaign’s voter file.
Body
Reach describes itself as “the grassroots organizing app that lets you meet voters supporters members workers people where they are.” [source: reach-app] The app pairs a campaign’s existing voter file with each volunteer’s personal phone contacts so that the volunteer can match people they already know against the campaign’s universe and then contact them through scripts the campaign provides. [source: reach-app] The signature feature is the “My Network” list: every user imports contacts from their own phone, Reach matches those contacts against the campaign’s voter file, and the user ends up with a personal relational-organising queue that mixes brand-new contacts and pre-existing relationships. [source: reach-app]
The four functional layers visible on the marketing site are: an action-feed / digital-HQ layer (customisable Action Cards with links, scripts to message friends, social-media share tasks); a canvassing layer (search the voter file from any context — a coffee shop, a church, a workplace — and log interactions); a relational-organising layer (the My Network queue, contact import, follow-up scripts); and a content-distribution layer (Content Library of curated social posts supporters can share with one tap). [source: reach-app]
Reach is built to integrate with the existing progressive data stack. The site lists NGP VAN (the Democratic Party’s dominant CRM) integration as a first-class feature: canvass results, added people, and contact updates sync back to VAN in real time via an API-based integration. [source: reach-app] On-demand CSV exports, scheduled exports, and webhooks are also first-class; the company is explicit that “your data is yours and you should be able to get it out of Reach however and whenever you want.” [source: reach-app]
The product is priced for grassroots budgets: “No cost per user. No cost per response. No setup cost.” [source: reach-app] Reach lists the DNC, Working Families Party, WisDems, AmeriCorps candidate Sri Kulkarni, Unite Here, the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 2018 campaign (Saikat Chakrabarti), and Abdul for Governor 2018 as clients. [source: reach-app] The headquarters is 228 Park Ave S PMB 62932, New York, NY; Reach describes itself as “built and battle tested in Queens.” [source: reach-app]
Reach has emerged as one of the canonical examples of relational-organising technology because it bundles the full supporter-journey mechanics (the volunteer-facing My Network + contact-import + match-against-voter-file flow, the script-library for follow-up, the leaderboard that gamifies leader development) into a single product rather than scattering them across three or four separate tools. [source: reach-app]
Use it for
A working example of a relational-organising app that combines contact import, voter-file matching, scripts, leaderboards, content sharing, and team chat in one product; a reference tool when designing the supporter-journey layer of a digital-organising stack; a benchmark for what a “no cost per user” pricing model looks like in the political-tech space.