How Common Cause Built an Operational Intelligence Hub with Unite Analytics

For many advocacy organizations, the challenge isn’t a lack of data. It’s the opposite.

Fundraising platforms, organizing tools, email systems, finance systems, volunteer engagement platforms, advocacy applications, and issues-related web pages all generate enormous amounts of information. But too often, that information lives in disconnected systems, managed by disconnected teams, and supporting disconnected workflows. Organizations may have access to the data they need, but that doesn’t necessarily mean staff can easily use it to make decisions or take action.

At Common Cause, a nonpartisan advocacy organization focused on protecting voting rights, strengthening democratic participation, and holding power accountable, solving that fragmentation problem became a major operational priority. With national campaigns and state-based organizing efforts operating across a wide range of systems and workflows, the organization needed a better way to centralize information and make it operationally useful for staff across teams.

“We had just not had any way to deliver people information about their programs and their product in a way that was timely and centralized,” said Joe Rupp, Senior Director of Data and Analytics at Common Cause.

Over the past year, Common Cause has been using Unite Analytics, a nonprofit constituent data platform from ROI Solutions, to build what has effectively become an operational intelligence layer across the organization. By bringing together data from multiple systems and presenting it in role-specific, easy-to-consume formats, the organization has begun creating a more unified operational experience for staff across teams.

Importantly, the goal was never simply to build better dashboards. The real objective was to help staff do their jobs more effectively without requiring them to become experts in multiple systems.

Moving Beyond Traditional Reporting

Common Cause operates in a highly distributed environment, with state organizations maintaining varying levels of autonomy. That structure created a familiar challenge for many nonprofits. Different departments had access to different pieces of information, but nobody had a centralized operational view that was easy to access and understand.

State directors often waited weeks or months for reconciled financial reporting that combined direct mail, digital, and broader revenue performance data. Digital engagement metrics lived in separate systems. Grant information requires separate requests. Organizing and advocacy activity existed elsewhere. Even defining something as fundamental as “membership” became difficult because relevant information was spread across multiple disconnected systems.

As a result, answering relatively straightforward operational questions often required multiple teams, manual reconciliation, and technical staff involvement.

“Our dashboards don’t serve an analytics purpose as much as they do like an operational purpose,” Rupp explained. “The first thing that we wanted to do with it was literally just serve up information so that people could do their job better.”

That distinction shaped the entire initiative. Rather than focusing exclusively on executive reporting or high-level analytics, Common Cause concentrated on creating practical operational tools that answered recurring staff questions and reduced the amount of time spent chasing information across systems.

Bridging the Gap for Shallow Users

One of the more interesting insights from Common Cause’s approach was recognizing that most staff members are not CRM power users.

“Revolution CRM is a really great system for deep users,” said Rupp, “but it can be more challenging for shallow or occasional users.”

Instead of expecting occasional users to navigate complex CRM workflows, Common Cause embedded Unite dashboards directly into Revolution CRM and created role-specific operational views tailored to different teams and responsibilities.

For example, the organization created dashboards that allow state directors to quickly access reconciled fundraising and operational information that previously required delayed reporting cycles and coordination across multiple departments. Instead of waiting for quarterly reconciliations or requesting custom reports, staff can now access centralized operational views directly within Revolution CRM.

The organization also built operational views for donor portfolios, fundraising activity, grants, project planning, proposal management, and membership tracking. Internal training resources and documentation were embedded directly into dashboards so users could quickly find help without leaving the workflow itself.

The result is less about analytics consumption and more about reducing friction. Rather than training every staff member to become highly technical CRM users, Common Cause focused on simplifying access to the information people need most often.

“We’re trying to take disparate information that we have and put it all in one place so that it just becomes a more centralized hub and less disorienting for our use cases,” Rupp said.

When Lawyers Start Using the CRM

One of the clearest examples of operational impact came from Common Cause’s litigation and policy team.

As part of legal actions related to redistricting and voting rights issues, attorneys regularly need to identify members affected by legislative changes in specific states or districts. Historically, that process required pulling information from multiple systems and relying heavily on technical staff to manually generate reports.

Using Unite, Common Cause can now combine donor activity, advocacy engagement, and geographic data into unified membership views that attorneys can access themselves directly.

“The litigation team has become one of the strongest examples of operational adoption across the organization,” Rupp noted.

The organization can identify impacted members by ZIP code or district, generate live membership counts, and support litigation workflows far more efficiently than before. The effort also prompted Common Cause to rethink how it defines membership. Rather than relying solely on donor activity, the organization now includes both financial supporters and individuals who have taken meaningful political action within the last two years.

That broader definition more accurately reflects how advocacy organizations engage constituents today and creates a more complete picture of supporter engagement across fundraising and organizing efforts.

Turning Insight Into Action

As Common Cause’s use of Unite has matured, the organization’s focus has begun to shift from visibility to actionability.

The next challenge is not simply identifying supporters or volunteers. It’s operationalizing those insights across organizing and outreach systems so staff can quickly act on what they’re learning.

For example, during an ongoing redistricting effort in Florida, staff were able to identify affected members geographically. But additional operational questions quickly followed. Which of those members are subscribed to email communications? Which supporters are active in organizing platforms? Which individuals are most likely to volunteer or engage further? How can those audiences be pushed back into outreach systems quickly?

That evolution from reporting to operational activation represents an important next phase for many nonprofits adopting modern data infrastructure.

“We actually with the Unite product would have an ability to present all of this information in one place and kind of entice people to come into the system a little bit more,” Rupp said.

Over time, the goal is not just better visibility into activity, but a more connected operational workflow between analytics, outreach, organizing, and constituent engagement.

Organizing Intelligence and AI-Assisted Operations

Common Cause is also beginning to explore how AI-assisted workflows can support the organization’s operations at scale.

One initiative, called “One Million Conversations,” focuses on peer-to-peer organizing and volunteer-led conversations on issues within local communities. Organizers and volunteers are having direct conversations with neighbors, family members, and local networks about the issues the organization is addressing.

Today, much of that organizing intelligence flows through various systems and solutions, including Airtable and BigQuery. AI tools like Claude Code and ChatGPT are already being used internally to help classify conversations, identify emerging issues, recommend follow-up actions, and streamline reporting processes.

At the same time, organizers increasingly want access to that information in the same operational environment where they manage other constituent relationships and engagement activity.

“We have organizers around the country logging in and saying, ‘What does this have for me?’” Rupp explained. “How can I see what conversations are happening in Nebraska? How can I see what happened recently? How can I open someone’s profile and understand what’s happening operationally?”

That vision points toward something larger than traditional nonprofit reporting. It reflects a growing need for operational intelligence systems that unify organizing activity, fundraising, advocacy engagement, communications, and constituent relationships into a shared operational layer.

Building Toward a More Connected Advocacy Infrastructure

Like many organizations working with modern constituent data platforms, Common Cause continues to navigate questions around scale, architecture, and integration.

The organization currently manages large datasets across BigQuery and other systems while selectively determining what information should flow into Unite Analytics for operational use. As their use cases evolve, they are also exploring broader possibilities around audience activation workflows, AI-assisted reporting, and more connected cross-channel constituent intelligence.

For Common Cause, the project is still evolving. But the underlying goal has remained consistent from the beginning: making critical information easier to access, understand, and act on.

“If you give people what they need to do their job efficiently, they’ll log into the system,” said Rupp.

Would you like to learn more about how Unite Analytics can help your organization achieve a greater level of operational intelligence? Let’s Talk!