A wild Thistle appears

In an increasingly digital world, where are the affordable tools to help build strong political parties? If democracy depends on choice and representation – why are there almost no tools on the shelf to help establish parties?

Each party requires a plethora of tools to try and build its campaign engine – many cost eye watering amounts individually but are required to build party machines that win.

If you’re a new party – there genuinely isn’t much available. If you have low income or subscription value – there potentially is nothing.

ViveEcosse is about trying to kick forward progress in Scottish Politics. We’ve already created the open-source-esque Indy X, and we’re supporting many other groups bring their own events to life.

Our second project? Owing to the technical backgrounds of two ViveEcosse founders, is to create Thistle.

Thistle is a Scottish Political Party management and campaign engine.

The Vive Ecosse Team is developing Thistle due to the lack of serious alternatives able to fit the requirement of a modern Scottish Political Party. 

That all sounds kind of technical, so here’s a brief idea of what it does.

• Party Management: Membership (multiple levels), Supporters (multiple levels), Gamification, Email, Support Desk
• Party Policy: Policy submission, Policy curation, Policy development , Policy Index
• Party Discipline: Reporting, Cautions, Warnings, Suspension, Exclusion, Expulsion, Appeals, Member handbook
• Party Internal Elections: Term Management, Candidate biography, Vote Capture, Results & Reporting
• VoterID: Support + Opposition Tracking, Questions, Canvassing, Data Capture, Data reporting, Self Identification, Targeting
• Get Out The Vote: Reporting, Feedback 
• Electoral Tracking: Poll Tracking, Party Candidate Tracking, Opposition Candidate Tracking 
• Campaign Team Management: Todo lists, Contact lists, Chat, Notes, HQ Updates, Teams
• Press Release Management: PR drafting / proofing, PR Tracking, PR crisis management, Document repository
• Fundraising: Crowdfunding, Donations, Funding drives, Ticketed events, Lottery, 50:50 clubs

We previously built the Party Policy and Campaign Team Management modules for another purpose, but due to never being used, we have them ready to go for our initial release.

Next week we hope to bring the development roadmap out and have some stuff to showcase. Thistle has its own page. If you’re interested in following along into the details.

If you have any ideas that aren’t mentioned above – that you think ought to be in the system – pop them in the comments and lets see what we can make among ourselves.