Chapters
The Salsa Chapter tool is a means for groups to organize on a local level, around local issues and interests.
Once an organization has signed up for the chapter tools, individual activists can sign up on an organization's website to become their own chapter leader. After providing some initial locality information, the chapter leader is created. Chapter leaders have the ability to manage their own list of supporters, create their own customized websites, create local news reports, local blogs, manage local events, gain donation credits from the national organization, and add supporters to the national rolls. They also have the ability to organize their chapter members for local actions, house parties, donation drives, etc.
"The intent of chapters is to allow people to take action and be involved on a personal or local level, but also be part of a larger movement."
There are arbitrary levels of locality for chapters. For example, there could be an Illinois chapter that contains multiple city chapters, each of which could have many different township or regional chapters. Chapters can also be international.
The intent of chapters is to allow people to take action and be involved on a personal or local level, but also be part of a larger movement.
Local chapters have the ability to display news from the national organization, or create their own news and events based on the current local news. Events can be run, blogs written, chapter members contacted and organized, and money can be donated to the national organization that will be credited to that chapter. This allows for chapter incentive programs such as a percentage kickback to the chapter, national notes of excellent chapters, and competition between neighboring chapters to raise funds.
The national organization has the ability to monitor the news and websites of their local chapters, contact chapter leaders, retrieve donation reports, measure the effectiveness of local campaigns, and track which chapters are the most effective.
Chapters allow an individual to give their own unique twist, through blogs, news, and look and feel, while maintaining the branding and structure of a national organization. It also provides a grassroots distribution mechanism for information about an organization, without the large cost of a national ad campaign.
Volunteers
You can also manage volunteers in the database using the Volunteer Management tools in Salsa. Volunteers can be added directly into the database en masse through imports, or one-by-one. You can specify roles of each volunteer for easy segmentation and targeting later, such as Manager, General Volunteer, Mentor and Captain. Sign up pages can be made specifically for volunteers to gather interested supporters from your website.