Many of the congressional offices using Fireside proudly state that they are able to turn around mail in two days or less. We’ve talked to the staff in these offices about how they use the system and leverage its tools to not just reactively respond to constituents but create relationships with them. Thanks to this quick turnaround, they’ve been able to create powerful, aggressive, proactive...

The Why

Congressional offices receive overwhelming amounts of mail expressing all kinds of sentiments. As volume has increased, we’ve watched our clients grow frustrated with their inability to manage the deluge of mail manually. Sometimes it takes overtime or even coming in on the weekend to accurately tag every piece of inbound correspondence by issue and sentiment, whether pro or con. We...

Memorial Day weekend — a time for grilling, watching baseball, and more importantly, preparing for summer interns. When the new crew of eager beavers barges through the doors of the House office buildings, how will you prepare them for their time in Fireside?

We’ve put together some resources to help you and your newbies during this frenetic time:

For the intern coordinator:

• Creating an account...

At Fireside, your experience means everything to us. That’s why we designed our new interface from the ground up with a focus on efficiency, clarity, and aesthetics. There’s a lot that will be familiar to you, and you’re going to love what’s new.

Navigation

The Fireside platform has always been easy to navigate, and we’ve taken that a step further, relocating the global navigation to be vertical...

Myth 1: I can’t switch my constituent relationship management platform until the end of the year because I already signed an annual contract

You are not locked into your contract. House rules state that you can break your CRM contract at any time.

That’s right, anytime.

Here’s another tip: The best time to switch during an election year is October. Your volume of mail decreases, giving you time...

What inspired you to start Fireside?

I spent the first part of my career at several startups, but playing the startup lottery as an employee didn’t work out for me. One company after another went out of business — as 90 percent of startups do. I wanted to do programming, and I wanted to know that my work was making a positive impact on people's lives. The best part of my job now is knowing that...

At Fireside, the Engineering team is allowed to experiment with tools they find helpful to get work done. In the early teens when we tried writing code on OSX for our .Net application, Engineering staff variously used TextMate and Sublime Text along with Vim. You couldn't build the app (no, Mono didn't support all the APIs), but it shortened the cycle for some kinds of development.

The Web...

“Work smarter, reach further, and discover more. Every day, we help our clients foster stronger connections.”

It’s our mission statement, and it’s what we focus on day in and day out. With over 170 clients, we understand that there is no one solution for all offices. That’s why we focus on each office’s individual needs and building personal relationships with our clients.

As previous Hill...

Staff are the heartbeat of every congressional office. In our previous post about the Ecosystem of Congress, we highlighted how everything that happens in your office and in your district are connected. But, we only touched on the other distractions and tasks the office will experience every day in session. To help better understand the day, we created a flowing data visualization to show you a...

Fireside Announces New Brand Identity

Washington, DC, September 12, 2018 -- Fireside, a software company catering to members of Congress, announces the implementation of a new brand designed to reflect its ongoing mission to simplify the complexity of the Hill. The company’s new look reflects its success in forging strong client relationships and fostering client-constituent connections.

While...