Ecanvasser, innovative new campaign management software company from Cork

Great report about Ecanvasser, a new innovative product developed in Cork, guest post written by Brendan Tobin.

Cork has seen some high profile successes in the technology sector in recent times with Pat Phelan’s Trustev being acquired by TransUnion for €44 million just before Christmas. Ecanvasser is glad to be a part of this growing tech sector with its campaign management software being incubated out of UCC and their new base in Cork’s Monahan Road. The product, aimed firmly at the U.S. market, helps political campaigns and advocacy groups to manage voter outreach through a mobile app in the field and a management dashboard at campaign HQ.

The big news story in political journalism in the U.S. this year is data analytics and voter targeting by candidates. The media seem intrigued by the amount of information candidates have on individual voters. The classic take on this is, when a canvasser comes knocking on your door they no longer come bearing a leaflet and a clipboard but instead have a mobile app with all of your voting history and personal preferences at their disposal.

On the flip side of this voter profiling is a growing number of companies that specialise in doing the profiling with the voter on their doorstep. The idea being that richer voter interactions leads to richer democratic culture. Ecanvasser, surprisingly, coming from a very traditional campaigning culture in Ireland, are very much at the forefront of this grassroots technology. Uniquely for a poli-tech product, Ecanvasser is designed to be used both pre and post-election thereby building a candidate’s support base from one election to the next, something that the Obama campaign were feted for achieving between ‘08 and ‘12.

Conceived by CEO Brendan Finucane while studying Business Information Systems in UCC, Ecanvasser drew from his frustration working canvass routes around his home constituency in Cork South Central as a party volunteer. He was aware that campaign managers were spending far too much of their time doing administration around canvassing and very little time actually seeing what data was coming back from the doorsteps. With his beta version of Ecanvasser having been used in the local elections in 2014 he was amazed to see the accuracy of the polling data coming back which allowed candidates to predict their final tallies to within a couple of votes well in advance of polling day.

Having secured angel investment from very early on, Finucane was able to develop Ecanvasser essentially behind closed doors. Now his small team of committed developers have taken the product to market leading functionality in a very short space of time.

With the 2016 election cycle in the U.S. estimated to have a total spend in the region of $10 billion, Ecanvasser is looking to make a big impact on the way campaigns will knock on doors next year. To this end we have just released a major integration with one of the largest poli-tech companies in the U.S., NationBuilder. Campaigns already using NationBuilder to host their web presence and build voter support will now be able to plug into Ecanvasser for outreach work and voter correspondence. This type of partnership is a key stepping stone in breaking into the U.S. market according to Finucane.

Certainly, the zeitgeist is with Ecanvasser if the host of articles about ‘smart’ canvassing and voter understanding in mainstream media are to be believed. However, when you speak to Finucane his focus and passion is on the longer term effects of using his technology for campaigns and advocacy groups. Connecting voters directly to the elected representative through issue correspondence and qualitative feedback is really about making democracy stronger. He feels we are only scratching the surface of what is possible in analysing real-world voter contact and is excited about what the next few years will bring.

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