How to Pay 30,000 Get-Out-the-Vote Organizers At Scale

Relentless pays everyday people to mobilize their friends and family to vote. Here's how they moved $8.1M to nearly 30,000 paid organizers through Dots — including more than 14,000 of them in a single day.

The short version

• Who: Relentless, a progressive organizing group that runs paid relational organizing programs — paying everyday people to mobilize the friends and family who'll actually pick up.
• Challenge: Pay tens of thousands of organizers — mostly small stipends — quickly, on the methods they use, with correct 1099 handling, concentrated around Election Day.
• Solution: Dots' payouts platform: each organizer picks their own payout method, and Dots collects W-9s and files 1099s only for payees who cross the reporting threshold.
• Results: $8.1M paid across 37,000+ payouts to nearly 30,000 organizers, including 14,095 people paid in a single day.

About Relentless

Relentless was founded in 2022 by Davis Leonard, Greta Carnes, and Zoe Stein. Carnes had built the national relational organizing program for Pete Buttigieg's 2020 presidential campaign; the team started Relentless on a single thesis — that the political power we need is in the relationships we already have.

Instead of strangers cold-calling strangers, Relentless recruits and pays everyday people — often the low-propensity voters campaigns struggle to reach — to talk to the friends and family who already trust them. Relentless reports that these relational conversations are about 2.5x more effective than talking to strangers, with contact rates above 80%. The programs run on the organization's own software, Rally.

The challenge: how do you pay tens of thousands of organizers, mostly in small stipends?

Paid relational organizing only works if the pay actually shows up. Relentless compensates organizers — often around a $200 stipend — for the time they spend reaching their networks. That turns into tens of thousands of individual payments, most of them small, many going to people who don't have or don't want to use a traditional bank account, and most of them landing in the compressed window around an election.

Then there's tax: some organizers earn enough across a cycle to require a 1099; the large majority don't. Getting that determination right — across tens of thousands of payees — is the kind of back-office work that quietly sinks a program if it's done by hand. It's the same problem facing any campaign that pays canvassers, poll workers, or field staff, just at unusual scale.

The solution: let every organizer get paid their way, and file taxes automatically

With Dots, Relentless sends each organizer a payout and lets them choose how to receive it — no forced bank onboarding, no chasing account numbers. Organizers land on the rail they already use, whether that's an instant peer-to-peer app or a bank transfer, which is what keeps completion high across a population that skews away from traditional banking.

On compliance, Dots tracks each payee's cumulative earnings and files 1099s only where they're actually required. Across nearly 30,000 payees, j702 crossed the reporting threshold — and Dots filed 1099s for exactly those, without Relentless hand-auditing tens of thousands of small stipends.

The results

On the peak payout day around the 2024 election (Nov 15), Dots processed 16,530 payouts to 14,095 individual organizers, moving $3.17M in one day.

That single day is the whole test of a payouts system: tens of thousands of people, most expecting a small amount, all at once. Relentless has run these programs on Dots from 2023 through 2026, spanning the 2024 general election and the cycles around it — the same infrastructure scaling from steady week-to-week stipends up to a five-figure single-day surge and back down.

How to pay canvassers, relational organizers, and field staff at scale

If your organization pays people to power democracy — relational organizers, canvassers, poll workers, phone-bankers, field staff — you face the same math Relentless did: a huge number of independent workers, mostly small payments, a hard deadline, and tax obligations that only apply to some of them. The playbook that worked here is the same one that works for any get-out-the-vote program: onboard workers fast with no forced bank setup, let each person pick the payout method they already use, disburse tens of thousands of payments at once, and let the platform collect W-9s and file 1099s only where required. That's what Dots is built for.

Dots at the Polls

Paying relational organizers, canvassers, or field staff this cycle? Get set up before your next deadline and pay everyone — on the rail they prefer, at scale, with 1099s handled automatically. Talk to Dots.

Frequently asked questions

How do campaigns and nonprofits pay relational organizers or canvassers at scale?

Platforms like Dots let an organization send each organizer a payout and have them choose how to receive it — Venmo, PayPal, Cash App, instant debit, or bank transfer — while automatically collecting W-9s and generating 1099s. Relentless used this model to pay nearly 30,000 relational organizers across multiple cycles.

How do you handle 1099s when most get-out-the-vote workers earn small stipends?

A payouts platform tracks each payee's cumulative earnings and files 1099s only for those who cross the IRS reporting threshold. Across nearly 30,000 Relentless payees, only 702 exceeded the threshold, and Dots filed 1099s for exactly those.

How fast can get-out-the-vote organizers be paid?

On instant rails, funds arrive in seconds to minutes. Relentless paid more than 14,000 organizers in a single day around the 2024 election.