Yard Sign Routing

The Yard Sign Problem

During canvassing, volunteers flag households that want a yard sign. That information ends up on a clipboard, in a text thread, or in a spreadsheet column that nobody looks at until three days before the election.

Then someone drives around with a trunk full of signs and a phone full of addresses, placing them by memory. After the election, nobody remembers which houses got signs, and half of them stay up until the HOA sends a letter.

Flip solves this by turning sign requests into optimized routes — the same way it handles canvassing.

Three Phases, One System

1

Build the List

From your walk canvass — volunteers tap "Wants yard sign" while door-knocking. Or upload an address list directly, the same way you'd start a walk canvass.

2

Sign Placement

Coordinator generates optimized driving routes from the canvass sign requests — no re-entry, no export. Volunteer drives the route and records what was placed.

3

Sign Pickup

After the election, Flip generates a pickup route from only the addresses where signs were confirmed placed — not every request, just the confirmed ones.

Canvass Data
or Address Upload

→

Sign Address
List

→

Placement
Route

→

Confirmed
Placed ✓

→

Pickup
Route

The pickup route is built from confirmed placements only — signs that were actually put in the ground, not every address on the original list.

How It Works

1

Two ways to build your sign address list. The most common: while door-knocking, volunteers tap "Wants yard sign" on receptive households — captured in real time alongside all other canvass outcomes, no separate process. Alternatively, upload a CSV of addresses directly, the same way you'd start any walk canvass. Both paths produce the same result: a list of addresses ready for routing.

2

Coordinator generates optimized driving routes. One click pulls the sign address list through the same route optimization engine used for walk canvasses — clustered by geography, ordered for minimal driving time. Whether the list came from canvass data or an upload, the routing works the same way.

3

Sign volunteer gets a driving-optimized view. No voter detail needed — just the address, a navigate button, and three outcome buttons (Placed, Changed Mind, Not Placed). The interface is built for someone moving by car, not on foot.

4

Placement results feed directly into the pickup route. Every stop is recorded — Placed, Changed Mind, or Not Placed. After the election, Flip generates a pickup route from only the addresses where a sign was confirmed Placed. Not every request. Not every house you drove to. Just the ones with signs in the ground.

5

Pickup runs the same way. Volunteers drive the route, tap an outcome at each stop — Picked Up, Not Found, or Left In Place (homeowner keeping it). The coordinator sees real-time progress and knows exactly where every sign ended up.

Sign Outcomes

Placement

Placed — sign installed
Changed Mind — homeowner declined
Not Placed — couldn't deliver

Pickup

Picked Up — sign collected
Not Found — sign missing
Left In Place — homeowner keeping it

Why It Matters

Yard signs aren't just decorations — they're social proof. A neighborhood full of signs shifts perception. But a neighborhood full of stale signs after the election damages your brand and can violate local ordinances.

With Flip, the entire sign lifecycle — request, place, track, retrieve — runs through the same system your canvassers already know. No separate spreadsheet. No memory-based pickup runs. No signs left behind.

A Note on Multiple Canvasses

Campaigns often run multiple canvasses across the same geography — a primary walk canvass, a follow-up canvass, an uploaded sign list from a separate source. The same address can turn up in more than one.

We're building cross-canvass deduplication directly into the sign routing workflow, so coordinators can catch and resolve duplicate addresses before routes go out — no volunteer dispatched to the same house twice just because it appeared in two different lists. Questions about this? Reach out.