Brenda and Brooklyn Louis were done with spreadsheets, endless group texts and chasing down volunteers like it was 2007.

After years on the campaign trail wrangling shifts, tracking turnout and trying to keep remote volunteers engaged, the Kitchener-based mother-daughter team had one of those “if no one else is going to build it, we will” moments. So they did.

They created Loop Forward, a solution that’s giving political teams a user-friendly, all-in-one political campaign volunteer management software platform.

“Loop Forward helps manage, engage and incentivize volunteers in political campaigns,” said Brenda. “As a longtime campaign manager, I’ve been searching for a product like Loop. We came up with the idea because we were unable to find anything like it.”

It turns out the product was long overdue.

According to Statistics Canada, nearly 80 per cent of Canadians volunteer in some way each year, contributing to almost five billion hours collectively. But most political campaigns are still managing those people with spreadsheets.

Tried and tested in an election with 150 volunteers

“We’ve just been developing the company, and I’ve been using a platform to develop it further,” said Brooklyn. 

That work paid off. In April, Loop Forward was tested during a federal election campaign. About 150 volunteers used the tool, and engagement went up quickly.

“We were number one in the country within the party for volunteer engagement,” said Brooklyn.

Also worth noting is that the campaign won.

Everything you need to run a campaign

“It pulls together all the pieces that we felt were necessary,” said Brenda.

Loop Forward takes all the painful, time-consuming bits of campaign volunteering, such as scheduling, shift tracking, outreach, and coordination, and brings them into one clean platform. It also gamifies the experience with features like leaderboards and a social-style feed.

“It’s a campaign office in an online space,” Brenda said. “So an all-in-one platform to manage and incentivize and really to have everybody on the campaign engage in a way that they might not be able to otherwise.”

This kind of digital connection matters for campaigns covering big ridings or working across provinces.

“We might have volunteers across the country who are making phone calls for us. It’s really hard to get those people to feel part of the campaign when they’re not physically there,” said Brenda. “So Loop Forward makes it so that even if they’re making phone calls from home, they can feel part of the campaign.”

Born on the campaign trail, built in the Communitech Startup Bootcamp

Like all good ideas, Loop Forward was born in a car on the way to knock on doors in Brantford.

“We were talking about just ideas and names of what the company could be, and it felt really tangible at that time,” said Brenda.

Not long after, they joined the first cohort of the Communitech Startup Bootcamp, pitched at the showcase event, and never looked back.

“The Bootcamp was our first experience and Communitech has been outstanding in terms of giving us the blueprint of where to start and what direction to go in,” said Brenda.

They also participated in the latest cohort of the Fierce Founders Bootcamp, a six-week program that supports the growth of early-stage companies by helping female and non-binary founders think bigger about their markets and validate their business ideas.

Next stop: national scale 

Loop Forward is already being used in a Canada-wide youth leadership campaign.

“It will be about less door knocking and more phone calls,” said Brenda. “So that’s going to be really interesting as we iterate on version two of the product.”

They’re also eyeing campaigns in Alberta and the Yukon, plus exploring how to help MPs keep volunteers warm during the “off-season”.

“We want to reach out to MPs to make sure that they’re keeping their volunteers engaged and getting ready for that next election, whenever it may be,” said Brooklyn.

One thing Loop Forward isn’t trying to be is everything to everyone, and that’s intentional.

“Political tech companies are more successful when they pick a (political) side,” Brenda said.

The most dominant tools in this space, like NGP VAN in the U.S., have a competitive advantage because they’ve aligned with one party. That focus lets them customize tools, messaging and partnerships to a specific campaign culture, creating tighter integrations, stronger trust, and loyal users who won’t jump ship to a “neutral” platform.

Lessons from the trail

Loop Forward was built by people who lived the problem, and they’ve learned to trust themselves, especially when the advice gets noisy.

“You’re going to get conflicting advice, and I think that we have found that through this journey,” Brenda said. “You listen to people, but following your gut is important.”

And through it all, they’ve leaned on community.

“I can’t imagine where we would be right now if it weren’t for Communitech and the programs we’ve been a part of,” said Brooklyn.

“There’s a feeling that goes along with that, that you’ve got people there that will have your back,” said Brenda.

If you’ve ever run a volunteer campaign and felt like you were duct-taping your volunteer strategy together, Loop Forward gets it, and they’re fixing it, with just enough leaderboard-fuelled competition to keep things fun.

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