By: Vicki Gervickas, Gainesville Area Chamber of Commerce
The Gainesville Area Chamber of Commerce, like many Chambers around the state, partnered with the Florida Chamber this election season to provide added value to our 1,300+ members.
Part of our grassroots engagement strategy is using diverse avenues to reach thousands of employees working at our member businesses. And for this past election season, those efforts were particularly critical—we had several hotly contested county-level seats on the August primary ballot, as well as important state races during the general election. We wanted to make the process of registering to vote and learning about the issues of concern to our community as easy as possible.
Our partnership with the Florida Chamber on our GNVwins.org mirror site was instrumental in these efforts. With the FloridaWins infrastructure, we were able to easily add local content—such as our candidate questionnaires—to the site’s comprehensive, non-partisan coverage and one-stop voter registration information.
We also took full advantage of the Florida Chamber’s suggestions for social media outreach, to great success. Facebook analytics for the week of July 25th, for example, showed a reach of about 1,800 for our voter registration posts, more than four times the typical response.
Posters, memes and all-member messages rounded out these efforts. And while we can’t take all the credit, the Supervisor of Elections reported record turnout in our county for the August primary.