How to Pay 3,500+ Get-Out-the-Vote Workers in One Day
DJs at the Polls hires thousands of DJs to lift turnout on Election Day, then pays them all within hours. Here's how they moved $4.9M to 3,500+ workers through Dots, at a 96% payout success rate.
The short version
- Who: DJs at the Polls, a national nonpartisan get-out-the-vote nonprofit that places DJs at polling sites to boost turnout.
- Challenge: Pay thousands of independent DJs across the country accurately and fast, with 1099 tax compliance, in a single Election Day.
- Solution: Dots' payouts platform, letting each DJ pick their own payout method and get paid on the rail they already use.
- Results: $4.9M+ processed across 6,800+ payouts to 3,559 DJs at a 96% success rate, including $1.7M to 1,800+ DJs in a single day.
About DJs at the Polls
Founder Anton Moore, a longtime radio and TV producer who also runs an anti-gun-violence nonprofit in the citym had a simple idea: voting shouldn't feel like a chore. It started with a single DJ at one polling place in South Philadelphia.
It worked, and not just anecdotally. A 2022 randomized controlled trial in Philadelphia found that turnout rose about 3% at polling places with a DJ. That evidence turned a local idea into a national, nonpartisan movement. By the 2024 general election, DJs at the Polls had grown from that one DJ to more than 3,000 of them, spread across nearly 6,000 polling sites in 11 states.
The Challenge: How Do You Pay Thousands of Get-Out-The-Vote Workers at Once?
Mission success created an operational problem. Every one of those DJs is an independent contractor who expects to be paid quickly after their shift, and the whole workforce is deployed on a single day. Each DJ is compensated $500 per shift (up to $1,000 for a full day) and paid in two parts: the bulk up front, with the remainder released within 48 hours once they submit a post-election survey. That structure alone means roughly two payments per DJ, thousands of them concentrated around one date.
It's a payments problem most nonprofits never have to solve, and it's the same one facing any civic campaign that pays canvassers, poll workers, or field staff: onboard thousands of gig workers, collect their tax information, and disburse thousands of payments in a compressed window — without a large finance team, and without making anyone wait days for a check.
The Solution: Let Every DJ Get Paid Their Way
With Dots, DJs at the Polls sends each performer a payout and lets them choose how to receive it — no forced bank onboarding, no chasing account numbers. Payees land on the rail they already use, and the results show why that matters: nearly half of all payouts (49%) went to instant peer-to-peer apps, such as Venmo, PayPal, and Cash App, rather than a traditional bank transfer.
How DJs Chose to Get Paid
50% chose to get paid via bank transfers, 23% via Venmo, 20% by Paypal, and others by Cash App, Amazon gift cards, and Airtm.
That spread is the whole point. Force everyone onto one rail and you lose the DJs who don't have, or don't want to share, a bank account. Offer seven and completion stays high while support tickets stay low.
Dots also handles the compliance layer nonprofits dread: collecting W-9s and generating tax forms, so obligations don't pile up for January. Across these cycles, Dots auto-filed 2,000+ 1099s on the organization's behalf, without any manual collection or year-end scramble.
The Results
Overall, $4.9 million was paid out through Dots, across 3,500+ DJs and nearly 7,000 total payouts processed. Additionally, $1.7 million was sent to approximately 1,800 DJs in a single day on the peak payout day after the 2024 general election.
The November 2024 cycle alone accounted for 6,000+ payouts to more than 3,300 DJs totaling $3.58M. That's the kind of concentrated, high-volume disbursement that breaks manual processes but is a routine day for an automated payouts platform. And it didn't stop after the general: DJs at the Polls has kept using Dots through 2025 and into 2026 for primaries and local elections, paying hundreds more DJs each cycle.
“We recruited 4,000 DJs from neighborhoods that they actually live in. We compensate $500 a shift to get the word out about voting.”
— Anton Moore, Founder & Co-Director, DJs at the Polls (The Philly Download, Nov. 2024)
How to Pay Canvassers, Poll Workers, and Field Staff at Scale
If your organization pays people to power democracy, such as canvassers, poll workers, phone-bankers, DJs, drivers, field staff, you face the same math DJs at the Polls did: a lot of independent workers, a hard deadline, and real tax obligations. The playbook that worked for them is the same one that works for any get-out-the-vote or civic campaign: onboard workers fast with no forced bank setup, let each person pick the payout method they already use, disburse thousands of payments at once, and let the platform collect W-9s and file 1099s automatically. That's what Dots is built for.
Paying canvassers, poll workers, or field staff this cycle? Get set up before your next deadline and pay everyone instantly, on the rail they prefer, fully 1099-compliant.
Frequently asked questions
How do nonprofits pay canvassers and poll workers at scale?
Platforms like Dots let a campaign send each worker a payout and have them choose how to receive itm Venmo, PayPal, Cash App, instant debit, or bank transfer, while automatically collecting W-9s and generating 1099s.
How fast can get-out-the-vote workers be paid?
On instant rails, funds arrive in seconds to minutes.
Does Dots handle 1099 tax compliance for campaign workers?
Yes. Dots collects and verifies W-9/W-8 forms, calculates withholdings, and generates 1099s at year-end, so organizations stay IRS-compliant without manual work.