What a county captain does

A county captain holds three things: the relationships in one county, the data on who lives there, and the responsibility to show up for two events per year.

A county captain is the standing infrastructure in a county between events. The role is intentionally narrow so it can be sustained by a volunteer over multiple years — not a paid staffer, not a one-time activist.

Three concrete responsibilities. First, the captain is the local point of contact: the person whose name is on the door knock script, the press advisory, and the partner org introduction. Second, the captain maintains the county-level list — the running record of supporters, story-tellers, and potential volunteers. Third, the captain commits to two events per year in the county: typically one town hall and one accountability check-in.

What a captain is not. A captain is not a paid organizer; not a full-time field staffer; not a spokesperson for Datos Lab on policy positions; not responsible for fundraising. Captains who try to do all of these burn out within six months.

The 159-county problem. Georgia has 159 counties. Most state-level civic organizations have meaningful presence in 20 to 30. The captain network exists to extend reach into the rural and exurban counties where redistricting and accountability work disproportionately matter and traditional field organizing rarely reaches.

Post-Callais priority counties. Datos Lab's current captain map prioritizes the 47 Georgia counties where the redrawn 2026 congressional map split a previously-cohesive Black or Latino voting population across two or more districts. Coverage in these 47 counties is the immediate operational goal; the broader target is 80 captains by end of cycle.