The field plan is a schedule. Run it like one.

What this usually looks like

Your field director builds next week’s canvass shifts in a spreadsheet on Thursday night. Fourteen paid canvassers and a rotating set of volunteers each get a screenshot of their rows in a group text, and three of them reply with changes nobody writes back into the sheet. Meanwhile you’re trying to land a meeting with a union local and two coalition partners, and any scheduling link you could send would hand them your whole week. On Friday, somebody adds up the hours from the same spreadsheet, by hand.

What happens instead

So the week gets built as shifts in Hotline — the Saturday canvass, the Tuesday phone bank, the Thursday literature drop — with each canvasser’s rate already on the roster, so the cost sits under the week while you’re still moving people around. You publish, and everyone gets their own week: in Hotline if they have an account, otherwise by email with their own link and a feed their phone’s calendar can subscribe to. When Marisol can’t make Tuesday she declines on the shift itself, with a note, and you see it on Wednesday rather than at the door. The union local gets three times on Wednesday and Thursday and nothing else, and the coalition call goes out as one link to every partner. Canvassers clock in and out in Hotline, the field director approves the hours on Monday, and the scheduled hours and cost for each person come out as a spreadsheet instead of a Friday-night sum.

How Hotline fits campaigns

• Everyone gets their own week

  Publish once. People with an account see their shifts in Hotline; everyone else gets their own link by email, with a calendar feed to subscribe to. Nobody needs an app to read their week.

• A no on Tuesday, not at the door

  Canvassers confirm or decline each shift from their link, with a comment, and the answer shows on the shift where you’re building the week.

• Hours someone actually approved

  Clock in and out in Hotline. A manager approves the hours and can correct a time, and the original stays on record beside the correction.

• Three times for the union local

  Meetings with partners, endorsers and press go out as a few hand-picked times on one link. They see those times and nothing else on your calendar.