The German Day of Climate Democracy — a digital exchange between citizens and parliamentarians powered by CiviCRM and CiviEvent

The German Day of Climate Democracy (https://tagderklimademokratie) is returning for its third edition this year, organised by Together For Future e.V. in collaboration with various partner organisations. This impactful dialogue format successfully connects citizens and members of parliament in direct, digital conversations focused on climate policy. Each session lasts one hour and brings together 15 citizens with one MP, enabling open and focused discussion. What sets the Day of Climate Democracy apart is its unique format: all Citizens’ Dialogues take place simultaneously, distributed across four time slots on a single day. Individual MPs can opt to join multiple slots, allowing them to engage with citizens several times throughout the event. Altogether, the initiative creates nearly 100 hours of authentic civic dialogue—an effort that resonates strongly and leaves a lasting impression.

While preparations for the 2025 edition of the Day of Climate Democracy are now handled by a well-coordinated and experienced team with minimal noise, the inaugural edition three years ago posed a significant challenge. A campaign website had to be built from scratch, MPs had to be convinced to participate in this new format to offer talks at all, citizens needed to be informed and engaged, and meticulous coordination was essential to ensure everything ran smoothly on the day itself. After all, launching a brand-new pro- gramme always carries a certain level of risk.

It quickly became evident to everyone involved that, even with moderate success—just a few dozen meetings with MPs—the Day of Climate Democracy would require a solid technical foundation to efficiently manage participant data. As Together for Future had already been a dedicated CiviCRM user for several years, and was fortunate to have experienced campaigners who recognized the value of its segmentation and CRM tools, the decision came naturally: CiviCRM would become the central hub of the campaign, storing all user interactions and powering the entire value chain from behind the scenes. The plan involved multiple interconnected components, delivered by several service providers: a web agency (dfacts Puell und Partner, Berlin) developed the campaign website, the CiviCRM agency (civilisten GmbH, Berlin) implemented the CRM system and its landing pages for MPs and citizens, and the Together For Future e.V. team coordinated all efforts to bring everything together seamlessly.

The journey toward the Citizens’ Dialogues on Climate Democracy Day can be broadly divided into three key phases: recruiting MPs for the Citizens’ Assembly, activating the available discussion slots on the campaign website and enabling citizen registration, and final- ly, synchronising participants with the video conferencing software and running the live discussions. Each of these project phases is outlined below, both conceptually and from a technical perspective.

Together with the TdK team, we compiled a comprehensive dataset using publicly available information on MPs. This included contact details, party and committee member- ships, constituency data, as well as information on new elections and re-elections. The da- taset was then imported into CiviCRM—a process that is repeated after every parliamentary election to ensure data remains current. (Minor updates during a legislative term are made manually.) With this foundation, targeted segments could be created, enabling direct outreach to MPs and their offices.
Through a multi-stage campaign using CiviMail, MPs were informed about the Climate Democracy Day and invited to participate. A personalised access link guided them to a dedicated landing page, where they could select the time slots during which they wished to offer public talks.

Once sent, CiviCRM handled the rest: appointment slots for the Citizens’ Dialogues were created via an API script, MPs were registered for the event accordingly, and confirmation messages were automatically dispatched.
The personalised link could be accessed as often as needed, allowing MPs to add more available time slots at any point. However, there was no technical solution for withdrawing a previously offered slot—MPs had to get in touch via a designated email address.
Meanwhile, something else was happening behind the scenes: CiviCRM transmitted each new appointment to a webhook on the campaign website.

As soon as a number of Citizens’ Dialogue time slots had been collected, they were activa- ted and made visible on the campaign website. A pre-established mailing list of interested citizens was then notified via CiviMail, inviting them to register for climate talks with their MPs directly through the campaign website.

This phase is technically defined by the seamless exchange of data between the campai- gn website and CiviCRM:
New dialogue participants on the citizens’ side were transferred to CiviCRM, registered for their parliamentary talks, and provided with further information via CiviMail—such as gui- delines on how to participate and prepare for the discussions. Meanwhile, CiviCRM conti- nued to update the campaign website with new available interview slots, ensuring a steady increase in options.
Additionally, the number of registrations for each talk was sent back to the campaign web- site, as participation was limited to 15 citizens per MP session to maintain a high-quality dialogue.
For citizens wishing to cancel their reservation, a dedicated cancellation page was avai- lable, which also synchronized updates back to CiviCRM. This enabled new participants to move up the list, allowing high demand to be managed fairly and efficiently.

While the two previous phases focused on gathering data within CiviCRM—specifically the dates for Citizens’ Dialogues and participant details—this data, or a selected portion of it, also needed to be exported from CiviCRM. This was necessary to transfer all participants into the video conferencing software ahead of Climate Democracy Day. With over 70 conversations involving more than 1,000 participants, manual data transfer was simply not feasible. Additionally, it was important to account for participants potentially changing their minds or canceling their reservations shortly before the Citizens’ Assembly, allowing others to register in their place.
To address this challenge, we employed a customized version of our easytransmit exten- sion, previously used for integrations with identity providers like Auth0 in single sign-on en- vironments. This tool monitors built-in CiviCRM hooks for specific events and triggers cor- responding actions. For Climate Democracy Day, the key events were participant registra- tions and cancellations, which prompted webhook calls to a middleware that collected the data and forwarded it to the video conferencing platform (Swisscom/Veertly). There, events were set up and participants added automatically.
Only six data points were transferred:

• Participant ID
• Event ID
• Contact ID
• Participant role (delegate or citizen)
• Email
• First and last name

Flowchart of event and participant data

On the big day of the campaign, a fully prepared series of video conferences was ready to launch simultaneously. This allowed the campaign team to focus entirely on organising and moderating the discussions without having to worry about technical issues. Thanks to CiviCRM, every participant—MPs and citizens alike—had smoothly progressed through a seamless chain of integrated processes.
In 2024, over 70 MPs engaged in direct dialogue with more than 1,100 citizens during Cli- mate Democracy Day. Looking ahead to 14 June 2025, 44 MPs have already committed to meeting over 600 registered citizens eager to discuss climate policy issues in direct conversation following the recent elections.

It is important to highlight that the integration presented here represents an evolved sys- tem developed collaboratively over three years with the campaign team and project part- ners, reaching the expanded stage showcased here. In the initial iteration, there were no landing pages for MPs; instead, appointment slots were manually secured by the project team and entered into CiviCRM. It was only last year that the event-driven transfer of participants to the video conferencing software was introduced.

As civilisten, we are proud to have supported Climate Democracy Day with our expertise from the very beginning. While CiviCRM serves as the backbone and central repository for all data, many other components and contributors play a vital role in its success. From the campaign website to the Zoom hosts and the comprehensive annual testing—thank you all for the excellent collaboration.

We organise the largest digital climate dialogue of the year between politics and society. For participants the underlaying technology for e-mail campaigns and event registrations stays behind the scenes, but it simply works smoothly – thanks to CiviCRM.«