Helping campaigns reach supporters faster and at scale.

Elections are decided by who shows up. Getting supporters to donate, volunteer, and vote requires reaching them — personally, quickly, and at scale. Switchboard was built for exactly that.

Switchboard provides campaigns with bulk SMS messages, email, audience targeting, fundraising analytics, and more. Campaigns using Switchboard have raised millions and mobilized countless voters.

Buckling under the weight of their success, Switchboard came to us for help.

Their database had become a bottleneck. CSV uploads with enormous volumes of data were grinding slowly. Text blasts were straining the system.

Switchboard had already upgraded to the largest database instance available. With vertical scaling having hit its limits, the only path forward was to change how their platform worked.

Deep integration: getting inside the machine.

We embedded fully into Switchboard’s team: standups, meetings, codebase and all, in order to assess their application and come up with a plan.

5x faster uploads.

After taking a deep dive and researching solutions, we identified a way to refactor Switchboard’s data processing logic and change how data got inserted into their database.

The result? We were able to increase their upload speed by a factor of five, and reduce the load on their database in the process.

Partitioning for message-sending speed and durability.

Switchboard’s tables hold a staggering amount of data. At that scale, having everyone’s data in the same tables was starting to slow things down.

We worked closely with Switchboard’s data engineer to formulate a partitioning plan in order to optimize both speed and structure. We assessed the codebase, identified what needed updating, and mapped out a careful transition.

Powering the communication that powers progress.

Switchboard’s users rely on the platform to reach their supporters quickly and when it matters. We’re proud to have helped ensure that the infrastructure they depend on can keep up.