our programs

Relentless programs are about harnessing the power of personal connections to drive meaningful action — swiftly, strategically, and at scale.

We design and execute scaled relational organizing programs using our in-house software, Rally.

In the last decade, advances in technology, a global pandemic, and a changing political landscape have fundamentally reshaped traditional civic participation. Social media platforms have consolidated under right-wing ownership; misinformation is rampant, and mass models of cold voter contact have buckled under scale and over-use.

What remains constant is that voters trust their friends and family more than any institution. They want to support the issues and candidates they care about and directly affect them, but they want to do so with the people who know them best. Relational organizing ensures that the most effective messengers — members of their own community — are at the center of political and social movements.

Relentless’ paid relational programs recruit low-propensity voters and compensate them for their time as they reach, persuade, and mobilize their friends and family to vote.

HOW IT WORKS

Meet Rally Ambassadors

  • Shatania

    Mississippi | First-time voter in 2023

    “Before the program I felt like voting didn’t matter. I thought — ‘They’re going to put who they want in there anyway.’

    When I listened to each person in the program, it motivated me. I had never done any organizing before but I connected with people — even people I thought had left town — and I really enjoyed it.“

  • Bettiste

    Mississippi | Started voting again in 2023

    “I just started being a voter. Now that you get older — and you wake up to different news every morning — I’m more into politics.

    Going out and talking to people about voting turned out great for me. I was doing it on the phone, but if I saw someone at the store I would talk to them there, too. People I knew who had never voted — registered to vote and they came out and voted.”

  • Kayla

    Mississippi | Started voting again in 2023

    “I hadn’t voted for about five years, but I really wanted to see a change — and you can’t complain if you don’t use your voice.

    It was a good experience — it felt good telling people about positive things happening in the community. Some of the people I talked to hadn’t been voting either and I convinced them to vote.“

Relentless is committed to building enduring, community driven coalitions in every state where we work — so the progress we make today extends far beyond the next election.

HOW WE GOT HERE

  • In 2024, Relentless ran a scaled relational program across five battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. The impact:

    • Netting 47,533 Democratic votes.

    • Mobilizing more than 30,000 low-propensity voters to talk to over 1.2 million of their friends and family.

    • Scaling to over 40x any previous scale, this program kept persuasion and 1:1 engagement at its core. 

    Results from this program allowed us to measure retention rates and efficiency gains cycle over cycle. Over 40% of participants in 2022 programming returned to participate in 2024, and analysis across states with and without prior Relentless program investment found that costs reduced over 20% in the second and third year of in-state work.

  • Until 2023, Rally was exclusively used by mobilizers in programs run by Relentless teams. In July, Rally was released to campaigns and organizations running their own relational programs, so they could easily see who their program is reaching, how frequently, and who their most influential supporters were.

    This release included real-time mapping features showing program staff who their program is reaching while the program is underway. We also ran a scaled paid relational program during the 2023 election cycle to engage low-propensity Black voters in support of Brandon Presley’s campaign for Mississippi Governor.

    The program reached over 70,000 voters:

    • 82% of the relational network were Black voters.

    • More than 50% did not vote in 2019.

    • More than 50% of the network did not vote in 2022.

    Before 2023 closed, we teamed up with Progressive Turnout Project to run the largest-ever partisan paid relational program for the 2024 presidential race.

  • Relentless was founded to bring relational organizing at scale to the progressive movement.

    The first problem to address was tech. No tech product had been designed from the ground up for relational organizing with mobilizers at the center of the product — which meant mobilizers had a less-than-ideal user experience and program staff weren’t easily able to measure the impact of the program.

    The team designed the product they wished they had on their own relational programs, and Rally was launched that summer.

    During the midterms Relentless battle-tested Rally on seven scaled programs in battleground states, culminating in a program for the Georgia runoff that was set up in 5 days, and built a network of 70,000 people within 10 days:

    • 92.5% of the relational network matched with the voter file.

    • 23% of the relational network did not vote in 2020.

    • 3,000 voters in the relational network voted in the runoff election, despite not voting in the general election one month earlier.

  • The GA runoff race for Jon Ossoff was the first instance of online paid relational mobilization at scale. In less than a month Relentless founders built a relational network of 160k voters that Senator Ossoff said “won the race.”

    This relational program proved it was possible to mobilize voters relationally and at scale. You can read more here: ”How we built a relational network of 160k voters in less than a month”.