Distributed campaigning - Definition and Overview

Distributed campaigning is a technique in campaign management that decentralizes campaign activity and reduces the importance and function of a campaign headquarters in the everyday volunteer activity of a political campaign.

The phrase was brought into common usage by Ben Katz of CompleteCampaigns.com (http://www.completecampaigns.com), a software company specializing in web-based tools for campaign management.

The idea of distributed campaigning follows directly from the preceding concept of distributed computing, an early and popular example of which was the SETI@home project. Computer users could volunteer their computers' spare processing time to an ongiong space research project by installing a screen saver that would receive small packets of information, process them, and send them back to a central research processor.

In the same way, distributed campaigning takes advantage of the resources that many volunteers have at home. Many campaigns provide petition documents, window signs, neighborhood walk lists and other materials online for volunteers to print out and use in their personal volunteer activities. This does not require the volunteer's presence at campaign headquarters, and saves the campaign staff valuable time in the distribution of campaign materials.