Swing Left Action Hub Slack Guide

👋 Welcome! The Action Hub is our virtual field office, where much of our volunteer communication will happen. You’ll find opportunities for learning, action, training, resources, and friendly volunteers ready to help. Most of the work happens in our “District Channels” where you can find action opportunities for specific Swing Districts you want to work on - whether you live in the district, close by, or across the country.

🚩Before joining Swing Left’s Volunteers Slack, you’ll need to read and agree to our community agreements.

How to use Slack

If you’re familiar with Slack, but want to know more specifics about how we use the tool at Swing Left, head to “Step 4: Join Channels.”

If you’ve never used Slack before, head to Slack’s video guides page and watch the “What is Slack?” video at the top, then follow all the steps below.

🔑 Step 1: Log in

Join Swing Left’s Slack at swingleft.org/slack and log in. If you prefer to use the app, instead of using Slack in your browser, download the desktop app at slack.com/downloads. You can set notifications for Slack overall or even for each channel in Slack as needed. This way, you stay connected without being ‘over-notified.’ Make sure you indicate that you want to receive email notifications so you can stay updated without being online:

Another great way to stay connected is downloading the mobile app on your smartphone at slack.com/downloads. You can change notifications for your smartphone so you can get support and updates. When you add the app to your smartphone, this is our Slack Workspace: swing-left-volunteers.slack.com

😎 Step 2: Setting up your profile

Fill out your profile — be sure to include your full name, your pronouns, and time zone. Upload a photo of your choosing!

🚀 Step 3: Getting started

Watch the short videos listed below (and more if you’d like) at slack.com/videoguides. They’re short and full of useful tips.

Step 4: Join channels

Channels are subsections of Slack, divided by topic where we communicate with each other and share updates. In our Slack workspace, we have three types of channels— district-based organizing channels, tactic-based channels, and informational channels. Below we’ve listed all the channels in the Swing Left Slack, organized by type, and how to join the district-based channel(s) you’re interested in. When you join Slack, they will be listed alphabetically on the left side of the window.

To join a organizing channel, hover your cursor over the “Channels” header on the left side of your Slack window. Click the down arrow that appears next to “Channels,” then click “Manage,” then “browse channels.” Search for the state channel you are interested in joining, and click on the channel to join.

District-based channels

These channels are where the organizing really happens! Swing Left works to protect and expand Democratic majorities in Congress and build Democratic power at the state level to help safeguard our democracy. We do the research to find the competitive races where the outcomes impact the national balance of power, and we make it easy for you to get involved. In 2025, our focus is regaining Democratic control of the U.S. House, and we just need 3 to Win. Each target district has a dedicated channel, and we’ll create new district channels as we expand the map. In these channels you’ll find local volunteer leaders posting events, updates and news on the races you care about, and opportunities to deepen your involvement in the races you care about. Since there are many target races in so many states, we won’t add you automatically to district-based channels, you can choose the districts you care about. You can pick a district for any reason - whether you live in the district, near it, or across the country and just care about it.

Here is a list of all our current district channels: AK-AL, AZ-01, AZ-06, CA-13, CA-27, CA-41, CA-45, CA-47, CO-08, IA-01, IA-03, MI-07, MI-08, NE-02, NJ-09, NY-04, NY-17, NY-19, OR-05, PA-07, PA-08, PA-10, VA-02, VA-07, WI-03

Find out more information about the district you're interested in pinned to the top of the channel.

Vote Forward channel

team-letter-writing: This channel has everything you need to start writing letters via Swing Left’s affiliated organization, Vote Forward. Share with other letter writers what message you write to voters, and draw inspiration!

Informational channels

  • announcements: Important programmatic information. Only Swing Left staff and lead volunteers can post in this channel.
  • help: If you have a question, here’s the place to get an answer! Post your question, whatever it is, and our staff or moderators will point you in the right direction.
  • resources: Here you’ll find a handy list of resources that Swing Left staff will keep updated. In order to keep this list of resources easy to find, please do not post in this channel. If you need resources that aren’t listed here, post in #help.

❆ Step 5: Get to know the team

The Team Swing Left Staff. We’ll be the ones responding to your questions in the #help channel.

  • Nia Bentall (she/her) - Senior Director, Mobilization
  • Matt Caffrey (he/him) - Senior Director, Organizing
  • Lizzie Heyboer (she/her) - Deputy Organizing Director
  • Janna Kaplan (she/her) - Deputy Organizing Director

Swing Left Volunteer Slack Norms

In addition to our community guidelines, here’s a few helpful notes on how we use our workspace. Help build our Slack community into a cultural hub of volunteer fun! @here immediately notifies the active members of a channel, but won’t notify people who are away or have snoozed notifications. We try to use @here sparingly and only for urgent purposes.

When responding to a question in a channel, we try to ‘thread’ to a specific message. Hover over the message and click the (message) icon that indicates "reply in thread.” This is good when you want to minimize channel clutter but allow others to hop into the conversation thread.

🎉 You're finished setting up Slack! Happy organizing!