The process of recruiting volunteers is a pain felt by the entire American electorate: citizens are quick to hang up on complete strangers begging for their time and campaign organizations, as a result, are perpetually short staffed. Amicus, a Y-Combinator nonprofit volunteer-recruitment platform, may have found a clever way to ensure that citizens are only contacted by trusted friends. Amicus scours public and private databases and matches names up with their volunteers’ facebook friends, assigning volunteer outreach only to those who have a personal bond between the caller. “Amicus’ friend-to-friend connections enhance our traditional outreach program and make it easier to mobilize our supporters online,” said Jared Schwartz, Director of Digital strategies, AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the US.
