Contact Match: Guidelines and Best Practices
Contact Match helps volunteers quickly identify which people in their phone contacts are registered voters, so they can build a personal outreach list and mobilize the people they already know.
What is Contact Match?
Contact Match is a tool inside the UpVote app that compares a volunteer’s phone contacts with the campaign’s voter database and suggests likely matches. Once matches appear, the volunteer reviews them and chooses which people to save into their outreach list.
It is one of the most important parts of relational organizing. Instead of asking volunteers to contact strangers, Contact Match helps them find the friends, family members, neighbors, coworkers, and community members they already have a relationship with. That makes it much easier to build a supporter universe based on real relationships.
Why it matters
Traditional voter outreach often relies on cold calls, door knocking, or texting people who have no personal connection to the volunteer. Contact Match works differently: it focuses volunteers on people they already know, which often leads to:
- ✓More trusted conversations
- ✓Better response rates
- ✓Faster outreach
- ✓Stronger volunteer engagement
- ✓More effective relational organizing
When people hear from someone they know personally, they are often more likely to listen and take action.
How Contact Match works
Here is the basic flow, from opening the app to starting outreach.
Open the UpVote app
Log in to the app and go to the Contact Match section.
Enable contact access
To use Contact Match, allow the UpVote app to access the contacts on your phone.
Run Contact Match
The app scans your phone’s contacts and compares them to the campaign’s voter database.
Review suggested matches
UpVote shows possible voter matches based on your contacts.
Choose who to save
You decide which matched contacts to add to your outreach list. For name-only matches, saving the voter also automatically saves the primary phone number from your phone’s contact entry.
Start outreach
Once saved, those voters can be contacted through the campaign’s outreach workflow.
Privacy and visibility
Your privacy is our priority. Granting full contact access lets UpVote suggest potential voter matches. Granting access alone does not save your entire contact list to UpVote or make it visible to campaign admins.
You review the suggestions and choose which matches to save. When you save a name-only match, UpVote automatically saves that contact’s primary phone number for outreach. You can edit it or add another number later. Contacts you do not save remain private and are not visible to campaign admins.
Saved contact data is stored temporarily for your campaign outreach, never for any other purpose, and is deleted from UpVote after the campaign concludes.
In other words, volunteers stay in control of what gets added to the campaign’s outreach universe.
How matching works, and what you control
Contact Match quickly compares the names, phone numbers, and email addresses in your phone contacts with the campaign’s voter file to suggest potential matches. Suggestions may be based on a name, phone number, email address, or a combination. You review each suggestion and choose which contacts to save for fast, easy outreach through UpVote’s Bulk SMS tool.
If a match is based on a name only, confirming it and adding the voter to your outreach list automatically saves the primary phone number from that person’s contact entry on your phone. This makes the number available for Bulk SMS outreach. You can edit the saved number or add another number later.
If both the name and phone number match, that number already exists in the voter file. Confirming the match connects someone you know to an existing voter record rather than supplying a new phone number.
You choose which matches to save. For name-only matches, saving the match also saves the contact’s primary phone number automatically. You can review and edit that number afterward.
What the campaign can see
Campaign admins can see
- ✓Contacts a volunteer chose to save
- ✓Outreach activity and high-level metrics related to campaign work
Campaign admins do not see
- ×A volunteer’s full contact list
- ×Contacts the volunteer did not save
- ×Private contacts that were never added into UpVote
This gives volunteers a clear choice and helps campaigns organize responsibly.
You can still participate without syncing contacts
Some volunteers prefer not to enable contact access, and that is completely fine. They can still use UpVote by manually searching for voters in the campaign database.
The manual option
This gives every volunteer a way to participate, whether or not they want to sync contacts.
The three checks before you match
Not every suggested match will be correct. Confirm a Contact Match only when all three of these statements are true.
It is the exact same person
Be at least 85% certain. Use the available details, not only the name, to verify that your phone contact and the voter record belong to the same individual.
They know you
Only match people who are likely to recognize your name and phone number when you reach out. A familiar message should feel personal, not unexpected.
You want to mobilize them
Match people for whom campaign outreach is appropriate: someone you genuinely want to inform, encourage, or mobilize.
Do not match a spouse, relative, household member, or same-name voter instead of your actual contact. Even when the people are related, they are separate individuals with separate voter records.
Why an exact match matters
Contact Match connects the person in your phone to a specific voter ID in the campaign’s database. That connection may later be used to understand whether the matched voter voted early, requested or returned an absentee ballot, or completed another tracked action.
Matching your contact to a spouse or another person with the same name can create inaccurate campaign data and may cause future voting-status information to be associated with the wrong person.
- ×The name looks right, but the other details do not match.
- ×The record appears to belong to your contact’s spouse or relative.
- ×You recognize the name but are not confident that it is the same person.
Best practices for volunteers
To get the best results from Contact Match:
Keep contacts organized
Saved names and phone numbers should be as complete and accurate as possible.
Review matches carefully
Not every suggested match will be correct. Confirm each one before saving.
Focus on real relationships
The tool works best when you save people you actually know and are comfortable contacting.
Use it early
The earlier you build your outreach list, the sooner the campaign can start activating real relationships.
Best practices for campaign admins
If you are training volunteers on Contact Match, keep the explanation simple. These four points usually answer the biggest concerns up front.
- 1Contact Match helps you find voters you already know.
- 2You choose which contacts to save.
- 3Anything not saved stays private on your phone.
- 4If you prefer, you can skip contact syncing and add voters manually.
Leading with these points helps volunteers feel more comfortable using the tool.
Your 30-second checklist
- ✓I am at least 85% certain this is the exact same person.
- ✓I did not substitute a spouse, relative, household member, or same-name voter.
- ✓This person knows me and is likely to recognize my number.
- ✓This is someone I genuinely want to mobilize.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to sync my contacts to use UpVote?
No. You can skip Contact Match and manually search for voters one at a time.
Does the campaign see all of my phone contacts?
No. The campaign only sees the contacts you choose to save into UpVote.
What happens to contacts I do not save?
They remain private on your device.
Why should I use Contact Match?
It helps you quickly find the voters you already know, which makes outreach faster, easier, and more personal.
Can I match my contact to their spouse?
No. Each person has a separate voter record. Match your contact only to the voter record belonging to that exact individual.
What should I do when I am not sure?
Skip the match. Leaving a contact unmatched is safer than creating an incorrect connection in the campaign database.
Is Contact Match only for large campaigns?
No. It can be useful for campaigns and organizations of many sizes, especially any team using relational organizing.
Contact Match helps campaigns organize around trust.
Instead of building outreach only through cold contact, it helps volunteers identify the people they already know, choose who to save, and turn real relationships into meaningful voter outreach. That is what makes Contact Match one of the most practical and powerful tools in the UpVote app.