Missions to Movements

Mobilizing Communities: A Data-Driven Approach to Grassroots Change

• Dana Snyder • Episode 210

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When your mission depends on people not just caring, but acting, the right data and technology infrastructure is so important. I am thrilled to welcome Emma Bloomberg, Founder and CEO of Murmuration, a nonprofit civic tech organization equipping grassroots groups with the tools to engage communities more efficiently, track progress, and build lasting civic power.

Emma shares how organizations on the ground can use voter files, civic data, and tailored analytics to understand who they’re reaching, measure what’s moving the needle, and mobilize supporters in ways that feel personal.

You’ll also hear one of Murmuration’s most compelling case studies: Memphis Lift, a parent-led group that began with stacks of yellow legal pads that funneled into thousands of engaged community members showing up for local education issues.

And with tools like Civic Pulse, which polls 500 people every day using open-ended questions, Emma highlights how nonprofits can gain deeper insight into what their communities are thinking in real time.


Resources & Links

Learn more about Murmuration and request a demo on their website. You can also subscribe to their newsletter, Insights by Murmuration, on Substack.

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SPEAKER_02:

When your mission is to move people, not just to care, but to act. Data and technology are so important. And today's guest has spent over a decade helping nonprofits harness both. I am thrilled to welcome Emma Bloomberg, the founder and CEO of Murmuration, a nonprofit civic tech organization that empowers local change makers with the data, tools, and strategy to supercharge grassroots organizing. Now, Emma's background spans public policy, philanthropy, and nonprofit leadership, from working in the New York City mayor's office to launching her own foundation. But with murmuration, she's really zeroed in on this powerful belief that community-driven civic engagement is how we create real sustainable change. In this episode, Emma shares how Murmuration helps groups like Memphis Lift, a parent-led organization in Tennessee, using technology to move the needle on local education policy. We'll talk about how nonprofits can leverage civic tech to track progress, mobilize people, and build momentum, even when federal solutions seem to be falling short. So if you've ever wondered how to better engage your community, measure your impact, or make organizing more efficient and effective, this episode is a masterclass for you. Let's dive in.

SPEAKER_00:

This was not just about how to make policy changes in public K-12 education. This was about how to build a truly connected community that would stand up for each other, that would support each other, that would help each other through the ups and downs of each of those individuals. And it was that sort of remembering it's not about the number of doors knocked or the number of events hosted or the number of people who show up on your advocacy day. It is about each of those individuals in that community and what their lived experience is and how the work that this organization is doing is helping to enhance that lived experience, to change that lived experience and to really create a community in which all of those individuals can thrive.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, Emma, I have to dive in because I love nonprofit tech and tools that really help amplify the impact of the incredible missions of everyone that is listening to the show right now. So for people who are deep in the work of community organizing and of advocacy work, can you really explain what murmuration does and how the platform helps organizations really use data? Because I think sometimes we get data thrown at us, but we don't really know how to interpret it, how to use it to engage supporters, how to really track their progress and build impact. And I guess who is it for too? Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00:

So thank you so much for having me. Marmoration is a nonprofit organization that exists to amplify the power of civic engagement through data and digital tools and research-driven insights. And we work with community-focused organizations. So these are mostly grassroots organizations on the ground in neighborhoods all across the United States of America who are working on leveraging civic change as sort of the engine for systems change, by which I mean like all of the different systems that we some of us take for granted that are failing any number of people in communities. How do you get people in those communities who are being failed by those systems to take some ownership of that and to try to drive change? And so the way we think about tools and data, it's really focused on helping those organizations better understand their communities and better engage people in those communities. So we bring together voter file data and civic data and custom insights and analytics and all sorts of other information about communities that they can then bring their lens to, which is they're actually in the communities, but that can help them to think about all right, who in their community is most likely to care about that issue. So if they're gonna start go knock doors, right? How can they be more efficient in which doors they knock? And then over time, how can they track those conversations so that you're not starting from scratch? Oh, wait, today we need 50 people to show up. Let's just go knock 50 random doors, or let's go into our database and see of the thousands of people we've spoken to, or hundreds, depending on the size, but of all of the people that we've spoken to over time, who do we think is most likely to be able to show up on a Saturday about this issue to help us to show how much this matters to the community, right? So there's sort of this day in and day out of community organizing, the door knocks, the emails, the forms for events, the texts, all of that sort of nitty-gritty stuff that goes into building contacts. And then the tracking of those relationships, knowing if you walk in to you know, or our organization that you've been there three times, that we've had conversations about public A-12 education or about the environmental impact of a petrochemical plant or about democracy, what are the things that have been top of mind for you? So we're not starting from scratch and saying, wait, remind me who you are and why you're here and why you're there, right? And also for lots of these organizations, they're volunteer driven. So who you're talking to when you walk in in January might be totally different from who you're talking to in June. And so how the organization can be thinking about that continuity for the people who are showing up and the volunteers who are doing the work are sort of able to manage that in a way that puts the people in community at the center. Amazing. When I founded the organization, we were working just with organizations in public K-12. That was my background, and so that was sort of the issue that brought us to the table. But we've been able to expand our scope really thinking about what is it that the organizations we work with on a day-to-day basis are coming across, right? People don't live at issue filos is something that we sort of talk a lot about. So when you're doing the work of community organizing, when you're trying to build lasting civic power, you have to be able to meet people where they are. So you might come to the table because of one issue, but the issue that everyone is showing up with in that given moment is different. Well, yes, we're not going to ignore you, right? Like that, that is the power of sort of deep civic engagement. It's that connection, that ability to meet people where they are and to drive change in communities, really centering the community voice in that conversation and ensuring then that where you're going and what you're driving towards is taking that into account.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh my goodness, I have somebody that I want to connect you with immediately that I'm thinking about, a nonprofit that I've worked with. Emily, if you're listening, it's you at Politicist. Fantastic. Their core is really driving civic engagement and empowering parents to be able to use their voices and go and vote and they provide childcare full circle. I think you guys would get along great. Couple of questions as you were talking about the platform. So if I'm understanding it correctly, it can be owned data, plus you already have community civic data that is in the platform that you're able to essentially have filters and look at your community lens. Is that right? Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So our core platform offering is something called organizer. And that is the tools that you need to do community engagement. So that is think civic engagement CRM, how you actually keep track of and then take all the actions. That sits on top of Atlas by Mermoration, which is our core data asset, and that pulls voter file data, civic data, analytics that we build, and similar, and then also your data. So as you as an organization are having conversations, you can keep track of it there in your instance of organizer. So that's just sort of for you. You can layer that in, and that helps you to create a richer picture of your community.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay. I love examples in case studies. And you have a few on your site. There was one about Memphis Lyft that maybe you can share about. So I love when you can see kind of the civic engagement in action and a very real world example. So this is a parent-led grassroots group in Tennessee. How did they utilize the platform and what did it lead to?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So I met Miss Sarah Carpenter, who runs the Memphis Lift back in, it's got to be around 2015. That's when they were founded, and that's when Marmoration was founded. They were one of the first organizations we worked with. It might have been 2016, give us a little bit of time. But happy 10 years. Thank you. Thank you. But they were totally organically grown out of the community in Memphis, a group of parents who were apoplectic about the utter failure of their public K-12 system to serve their kids. And when I first met Miss Sarah, they had all of the heart, all of the love, all of the passion, and stacks of yellow legal pads that were the notes from all the conversations they were having with the people in their community. And I was trying to explain why I thought data and tools could help with their work. And there was some initial hesitation. And when I pointed to those stacks of yellow legal pads, I said, look, that is an incredible. That is an insane amount of information about your community. All of those people want to contribute. How, when you need 10 of them to show up tomorrow, are you going to find it in those yellow legal pads? Right. How are you going to think about moving individuals who were willing to have that first conversation up a ladder of engagement? How are you going to build that core? How are you going to expand?

SPEAKER_02:

This reminds me, do you ever watch the movie Aaron Brakovich? Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

It's bringing me back to.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. So they were trying to scale their impact and they just didn't have the infrastructure to do that. And that's where we came in. It was to provide them with the infrastructure. One of the things that I credit Nasera with so much is, and I'm so grateful that she was one of our very first partners. In that initial conversation, one of the other pieces I was talking about was the ability to measure impact and start to think about the number of conversations you're having, where you're building that kind of power, how you're starting to connect more with your local electeds, how you who's showing up on multiple occasions, moving them up the ladders and engagement and similar. And she said, But Emma, the most important thing for me is how am I going to measure the love? And I had this moment of, I have no idea, right? Tools and data aren't designed for that. We're not going to be able to measure the love. What are you talking about? And then when I got to know her more, when I got to know the work that they were doing and got to really understand, this was not just about how to make policy changes in public K-12 education. This was about how to build a truly connected community that would stand up for each other, that would support each other, that would help each other through the ups and downs of each of those individuals. And it was that sort of remembering it's not about the number of doors knocked or the number of events hosted or the number of people who show up on your advocacy day. It is about each of those individuals in that community and what their lived experience is and how the work that this organization is doing is helping to enhance that lived experience, to change that lived experience and to really create a community in which all of those individuals can thrive. And so that lesson from those early days of murmuration is so core to who we are, how we approach our work, how we think about the organizations we work with. You know, we talk about the organizations that take our tools and data to drive impact, not as our clients, but as our partners. We talk about serving them because it is not just about getting tools and data in their hands. It's about helping them to then implement with those tools and data a get strategy to drive impact in their communities. So now Memphis Lift is 10 years old, as is Mermoration. I was just in Memphis a couple of weeks ago. They were hosting an event. There were elected officials from all across the state at this event because they know that those engaged parents, and now it's thousands of engaged parents, as opposed to that the small group when I was down there. They know that that group of engaged parents has a voice, is going to use it, has opinion, and matters. And they always mattered, but no one was paying attention. And that's where I think tools and data can really help to come in and help. It's not about unlocking power, it's about showing everyone else that the power is actually there, helping amplify that power so that they can affect change.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes. And what inspired you originally with the K-12 focus? What was the usually when we're creating these life-changing tools, there's something substantial that happens to us that obviously wanted you to create this. What was that moment for you?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I will go way back. I first got involved in public K-12 because I was raised to believe in a meritocracy, really. I was raised to believe that as long as I worked really hard, I could accomplish anything. And I had the benefit of a really wonderful education. And so, in many cases, that was part of what opened those doors. And I grew up in a city in which the zip code you live in very much determined whether or not you had access to high-quality education. And the more time I started spending in neighborhoods outside the one that I grew up in, the more I saw that opportunity was just being denied children from the beginning because they didn't have that access to education. They didn't have that ability to live up to their full potential. So I spent seven years at the Robin Hood Foundation, which is an organization here in New York that is working on poverty alleviation. And about 50% of their budget time was going into public K-12 as sort of the number one lever for breaking generational poverty, that cycle of generational poverty, helping individuals to then be able to step outside of that and to chart a new a new path. And what I saw, say where there were two things that led me to then go found murmuration. The first was we were really focused on people who were in crisis. And that work has to happen, right? This is one of the most important tasks for philanthropy is finding people in crisis and helping them, right? And we were able to do that really well at Robinhood. And there were always going to be people in crisis unless systems changed. That's right.

SPEAKER_02:

That's right.

SPEAKER_00:

And so then I started looking at okay, what does it take to get sustainable systems change? And there was lots of great work being done top down without any real sense of what was the demand from parents, what did they actually want, and how to have them be part of the process so that that systemic change could be sustainable, right? There's a reason that we see elected officials come in, implement a policy agenda, and then four years later the next one comes in and implements a different policy agenda. And people want to build on wins, right? You would not undo the last person's policy agenda if everyone was really excited about it and intuitively the opportunity. So if you can start to connect that policy change with the demand side, with what do people actually want in community, you create demand for that policy change that allows it to be more sustainable over time. That then, this is my very long-winded answer. It got me into working with people who were thinking about that kind of systems change. And that's when I saw that they didn't have access to tools and data. And that felt like a gap that I could come in and fill.

SPEAKER_02:

Marsh, my mind is spinning with all the organizations that I think should be using this tool.

SPEAKER_00:

That's I mean, again, we're a nonprofit. We want to work with any organization who can truly drive greater impact using our tools and data.

SPEAKER_02:

So which I guess is a good point. And you kind of started with the Lyft program. Is there an organization that's too small?

SPEAKER_00:

I don't think there's an organization that's too small. We have had a handful of organizations over the 10 years where the work that they were doing could be in the short term easily managed in a Google Sheet. Right. Okay. Like they weren't thinking about contacting communities in lots of different ways and they were talking to a very small number of people. And in those cases, we had conversations that said, look, if you want to grow this, we can provide you with the tools and data that will make that possible. But for today, if you're really just focused on that core 50 supporters, this is overbuilt for you, right? Well, default is overbuilt for you. But for the most part, I would say it's not about the size of the organization. This is where, you know, I'll call on philanthropists a little bit in the hope that some of them are listening to this podcast. All organizations, regardless of size, need some kind of investment in infrastructure for doing their work. And that is say that louder to those in the back. And so no matter how small the organization is, they need some ability to manage data, to think about tools, and to think about what does it take to have impact year over year over year. And too often that's the part of their work that gets underfunded. Yes. And so that's the part that goes. And that's really how you can drive that long-term sustainable change. So as a nonprofit, again, we don't just put our tools and data into the hands of organizations. We provide supports to actually help you to use them. Our ability to scale those supports depends on our generous donors, and we can always use more of them. And those organizations need to know that their funders are going to invest in them having that same capacity on the other side.

SPEAKER_02:

Yes. I love so I run a monthly giving mastermind program. And recently, one of it's a four-month program. We work on the tech, we optimize the donation experience, we build the landing page, we work on launch strategy, everything. And one of the organizations said, We got this funded by a funder, by a grant. They were excited to invest in the sustainability of our mission. And I was like, wow, that's refreshing. Yes, yes, it is. That exists because if it's always on the program, they're like, but we need so much to be able to grow the program. And if we can't get the funds to invest in all of those things, it again kind of is talking about that cycle you were mentioning. And there are so many things going on in the United States right now, and a lot of unrest, specifically in our sector on the federal level. How do you really see technology being able to help nonprofits really reclaim that power at the ever so important grassroots area? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

To me, when I think of this moment in time, I am grounded in my belief in local, right? I think there is, as you pointed out, maybe the word is chaos, maybe the word is dysfunction, whatever it is, it's not productive, right? That is happening in terms of the conversation at a national level. And I think when anyone gets engaged at that national level conversation, it's very easy to just focus on the lines of difference. When you get down into your community, when you're talking to your neighbor or the person who lives down the street from you, it is much easier to put aside the difference and find the common ground because you're physically standing on the same street, right? Right. And so to me, I really think about local as that heartbeat of democracy, as the place where people can feel that they can have the most impact, they can see that impact, whether that's in grassroots work, volunteer work, supporting local elections, you can have this actual tangible sense that your engagement matters as in having and is having an impact. It is really hard to find that at a national level. And so for me, local is what kind of cuts through the noise. I also think, you know, I'm a believer in a truly participatory democracy, right? And civic engagement is a huge piece of that. Local civic engagement is a place where everyone can show up, right? Yes. And so helping to build that more resilient and more representative democracy by getting more people engaged at a local level in what I call civic engagement, which is everything from local elections all the way to volunteering or just picking up trash on your street or being a good neighbor, right? All of that specific engagement. It's being part of community. And that to me is how we can start to cut through some of the dysfunction and some of the vitriol and the polarization that we see when we focus just at a national level.

SPEAKER_02:

Amazing. I love how you kind of analyze that and interpret what's happening. And I think it's also probably been really interesting to sit and the back end and in the fore end too, working with these organizations in the platform on advocacy and community. Have there been certain trends or things that you've seen that have worked really well in the past decade, or how things maybe have been shifting when it comes to that intersection of organizing and advocacy?

SPEAKER_00:

I think what's been heartening given the focus of my work is how much over the last decade we've seen more and more organizations really embracing this idea of using data to try to understand their community more broadly and to be able to be a little bit more targeted in terms of how they think about engaging with their community. Also, in terms of, you know, not just going with their gut on what matters, but actually gathering information from the community about what the priorities are, where people are really feeling a pinch and how to use that to bring people together. I think the other thing that we've seen is an increase in the use of digital for communicating with people, right? In 2020, during COVID, pre-COVID, most of our partners were focused on door knocks. It was the one way that they truly kept in touch with their community, that physical person-to-person conversation. And all of a sudden we were getting calls from organizations saying we can't do our work, right? We're used to everything being in person. What does it look like for us to stay engaged? Now that the world has opened back up, door knocking is still hugely important. And I still prioritize over everything person-to-person conversation, right? Like that is truly how you can get to know someone, understand someone, trust someone. And all these organizations had to embrace things like peer-to-peer texting and digital spaces and other ways to bring people together that I think has expanded their universes in ways that I hope are really impactful. Also, just the this increasing, I think most nonprofits, regardless of the year, would say there's some kind of budget constraint that they are dealing with. This is the world we live in. Always. That's right. Stronger data practices are really helpful for organizations in that. And I think we've seen an increase there. And then the last piece I would just point out a murmuration is a flock of birds, right? Moving as one. They are all individual birds, but they are moving to through the sky as one entity. That image was hugely important in sort of thinking about our work, continues to be. We think about the ability to have lots of little organizations all be able to work together in some way, shape, or form. Yeah. Shared infrastructure makes that possible, right? It is one thing to sit down in person and say we're going to collaborate. It is another to be able to share data, to be able to say, we're all working on this same issue together. You knock these 10 doors, I'll knock these 10 doors, and then we'll come back and have a conversation about it. Yes. Our tools and data make that kind of collaboration possible. And I think what we're seeing now more than ever is an interest in that kind of collaboration and understanding that while each individual organization may know its 10 square block radius better than anyone else ever will, stacking all of those neighborhoods together can drive change in a really different way. Incredible.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that really brings me. I worked for Take Stock in Children, and I'm from Sarasota, Florida. And I was part of our Sarasota County chapter. There's a take stock in all 67 counties in the state of Florida. And what an interesting idea if we were all able to more openly share and talk. It was so kind of like secluded. We were sometimes come together for like a state conference. But to your point, about you were all going in that case towards what you're talking about of getting students out of the risk, getting them a good education, going to college the next step, getting them outside that cycle of poverty. And I can just imagine what that would have looked like if it was that more collaborative space instead of, oh, you're you're taking that donor from my zip code or whatever it might be, but really being able to be collaborative together towards the larger issue for organizations that are focused on monthly giving, which are truly communities sometimes spread across international worlds. How can tracking some of this information in these tools really help acquire new supporters, specifically monthly, and also keep them engaged over time?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, look, I think of data and civic tech as a game changer, not really just for acquiring supporters, but for building those real and lasting relationships with them. The tools can help you to understand who your supporters are, where they're coming from, how they want to engage. And that means you can tailor your outreach, not send everyone the same message, right? For you when you're talking about international work in particular, I would imagine one message doesn't work for everybody. Certainly doesn't work here in the United States, neighborhood to neighborhood, even, right? So how you can find ways to communicate in ways that can feel truly personal and truly relevant and remind them that they are each of your supporters is actually an individual who is contributing in some way and who matters to the mission and who matters to your ability to drive impact. I think too often people can start to feel like they're just part of a group and that anonymity can decrease their willingness to participate. Transformational, not transactional, always. Exactly. Exactly. I think the other piece I would just say is good data tracking helps you to spot patterns and act on them, right? You can see person A takes an action. Why? What led that person to do it? Maybe they're just exceptional, but chances are there's lessons learned in watching how engaged that person gets that you can then take to starting to build and sort of create pathways for more people to step up in that same way.

SPEAKER_02:

Beautiful. I mean, my role and what I love to do is highlight amazing platforms like this, tech that's really going to bring the data to the footprint, but then also make it usable. That's the big part. You need to use it and be able to understand it. If someone's sitting here like on the edge of their seat, yes, I want to learn more, I want to be able to check out the platform, what's the best way for them to do that?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, for sure. Look, Marmoration wants to be the go-to source for data and tools and insights for as many mission-aligned community organizations as possible. So, with that as my lead-in, if you know any organization who could benefit from access to data and tools, you can visit our website, which is marmoration.org, request a demo, say hello. You can you can contact all of us through that. And we we love getting that kind of incoming. It also helps us, you know, we try to build tools and data that are truly sort of purpose-driven. And so the more conversations we have with the more organizations, even if it turns out we're not the a good fit for you, it's really helpful for us to hear that, to see that, and to start to be able to evolve our tools and data to meet the needs of even more organizations. The other piece I would just say is we started something about six months ago called Civic Pulse, where we're trying to think about polling and public opinion research in a much more empathetic and individualized way. So this is our ongoing tracking poll where we are asking open-ended questions of 500 people every single day. What's top of mind? What's keeping you up at night? What's giving you hope? How are you connecting to community? How are you getting information? We can then use natural language processing to distill those kinds of themes. And we want to put that kind of data into the hands of as many people as possible. We think it can be sort of truly additive in understanding communities and understanding where conversations really are right now as compared to what we see in some of the national polling work or what we read about or see in the headlines. And for that, we have launched a Substack. It's called Insights by Murmuration. It is our new newsletter. We will have other ways for people to engage with that data over time, but we are always looking for subscribers for that. It is free. Uh again, we're a nonprofit. We want to put this into the hands of as many people as possible. And feedback on that would be really helpful as well. Because again, if it's not meeting a need, we don't want to put it out there.

SPEAKER_02:

I love that. You are bringing me back to something that my parents always remind me of. So again, they still live in Sarasota, Florida. And with the anytime there's a hurricane, they'll say, Dana, don't watch the national news. We're watching the local of what's going on in our community. Because sometimes those bigger headlines can be sensationalized and are not always maybe leaning towards what's really happening sometimes. But Emma, this is amazing. Thank you so much for the time that you've put into building this and your own community to make it happen. I hope that this gets in all the hands of the right people that need it to grow their communities and civic engagement. So thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you so much for having me and for giving me the opportunity to talk about our work. And hopefully, lots of people will. Listen and we'll be able to do just that.

SPEAKER_02:

Reach out to Emma. Go check out their website. I'll link to everything in the show notes.

SPEAKER_01:

Thanks, Emma. Thank you. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode of Missions to Movements. If you enjoyed our conversation and found it helpful, I would love for you to take a moment to leave a review wherever you're listening. Your feedback helps us reach more change makers like you and continue bringing impactful stories and strategies to the show. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button too so you'll never miss an episode. And until next time, keep turning your mission into a movement.

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Dana Snyder

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