Culper. The intelligence your opponent doesn't have.
Every URSA campaign runs on Culper, campaign software we built for local and down ballot races. The voter file, every text, every door, every sign and every ad live in one system, so every channel talks to the same voters and the reports add up.
What is Culper?
Culper is a campaign operations platform for local and down ballot candidates and committees. It combines a voter database you can query in plain English, peer-to-peer texting, SMS and email outreach, volunteer coordination, GPS verified block walking with a mobile app, yard sign and billboard tracking, and a contact history for every voter, in one system where every action writes back to the voter record. URSA Dynamics uses it on every campaign. Learn more at theculpernetwork.com.
Campaign software for local and down ballot races. See the platform, book a demo or sign in at theculpernetwork.com.
Why We Built Our Own Software
Local campaigns have been running blind. National campaigns hire analysts and buy expensive data stacks. Local candidates cobble together an email tool, a spreadsheet and a consultant who runs queries for them. The tools are not the same, so the races are not fair.
We built Culper because our campaigns needed something better: one system where the voter file, the property data, the texting program, the walk lists and the media audiences are the same list. When the daily early vote roster comes in, it updates everything at once. When a volunteer learns at the door that a voter wants a sign, the sign team sees it. When a voter tells a texter about the pothole on their street, the targeting team sees that too.
Culper is named after the Culper Ring, the intelligence network that worked for George Washington during the Revolutionary War. Good information, quietly gathered and put to use, wins.
What Culper Does
A voter file you can talk to
Type "Republicans over 55 in precinct 42 who voted in the last three primaries" and get a saved list. Segment by age, party, precinct and vote history, and share lists across every outreach tool.
Any data source in
County voter rolls and county appraisal (CAD) parcel data, early voting turnout as it is published, and imports from L2, i360, Aristotle or any spreadsheet, resolved field by field into one record per voter.
Peer-to-peer texting
Volunteers send one to one texts from the phone app or the web and carry on real conversations. Opt out language, texting hours and STOP requests are enforced automatically. Every conversation ends with a disposition on the voter record.
SMS and email
Compliant text and email outreach to the lists you build, from the same system.
Block walking
Walk routes from any saved list. Volunteers log every conversation on their phone: receptiveness, issues, yard sign requests. Every visit is time stamped and geolocated, and results sync live.
Signs and outdoor
Drop every yard sign and billboard on a live map with its size, installer, status and pickup date, so nothing is lost and everything comes down after the election.
Coverage map
Every knocked door, text, email, mailer and sign rolls up onto one map of the district by precinct, so cold areas stand out and nobody walks the same street twice.
Contact history and win number
Culper counts every touch per voter, next to their likelihood of voting, tracks progress toward the win number, and flags key voters who have not heard from the campaign yet.
Every door, logged as it happens.
Volunteers record each conversation on the Culper app. GPS verified, time stamped, synced to the voter record.
Where Our Persuasion Scripts Run
Culper's peer-to-peer texting is where URSA's persuasion psychology goes to work. Volunteers load the campaign script, make it their own and send each message by hand. The voter's answer and the outcome are saved to their record, so the confirmation the night before goes to exactly the right people.
Disposition saved: Committed, sign shift 7:30. Monday night's reminder is already queued.
Hi James, this is Rob from the Smith campaign, I'm your neighbor on Oak Hollow. Could you do us a quick favor Tuesday?
Depends what it is
We need someone to stand our sign up at the community center where you vote, 7:00 or 7:30. Which works better?
7:30
You're the best. I'll text Monday night with the details. Reply STOP to opt out.
How Culper Powers an URSA Campaign
One universe
The scored voter universe feeds the texting lists, the streaming and digital audiences, the mail file and the walk lists. Every channel talks to the same people.
Daily early vote scrub
Every morning during early voting the county's roster updates the file, and voters who have cast a ballot leave every audience.
Message matching
The message matrix is set once in Culper, so seniors get the senior message and business owners get the business message on every channel.
Reports that add up
Because every channel uses the same list, the numbers reconcile, and after the election the campaign can compare turnout with contact across the whole universe.
Voter data privacy is not a setting. It is the product.
Culper never shows voter level data outside the campaign that owns it, honors every opt out permanently and keeps which campaigns use it private. Learn more about the platform at theculpernetwork.com.
Who is Culper for?
Culper is built for local and down ballot campaigns: city council, school board, mayor, county offices, judicial races and state legislative races, along with county parties, precinct chairs and consultants running several races.
Is Culper an alternative to NGP VAN?
Culper covers much of the same ground as larger campaign platforms, including a voter database, texting, walking and volunteer tools, but it is built and priced for local races and for candidates the major vendors do not serve.
Can I import my own voter file into Culper?
Yes. Culper imports CSV files from L2, i360, Aristotle or any provider and resolves them with county rolls and appraisal data into one record per voter.
Do I have to hire URSA to use Culper?
No. Campaigns can sign up for Culper directly at theculpernetwork.com. URSA uses Culper on every campaign we run, and we can run it for you.
Keep reading.
- Persuasion PsychologyWhy "go vote" fails and a one to one ask works. URSA writes persuasion scripts for Culper peer-to-peer texting that turn supporters into voters, built on decades of turnout research.
- Micro-TargetingURSA finds the issues voters feel at the end of their own street, like the pothole, the carpool line and the road where people dump pets, and targets those households with messages that drive them to vote.
- Streaming TVConnected TV puts a campaign ad on the living room TV of the exact voters who decide a race. URSA pairs streaming TV with CAD data, voter history, L2 and i360 to reach them without waste.
See Culper in action.
Book a demo at theculpernetwork.com, or talk to us about running your campaign on it.
Talk to URSA