From Picking States to Covering the Country
When the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) first considered Quorum, its small state policy team was preparing to scale back. Monitoring legislation nationwide seemed impossible, so the team expected to focus on a handful of states and leave the rest uncovered.
“Trying to go to state legislative websites, and then using spreadsheets to track things, was bonkers,” said Ryan Jayne, Senior Policy Counsel at FFRF.
Today, the same three-person team tracks roughly 700 bills across all 50 states. It can triage 100 or more bills in a day, catch committee hearings scheduled with as little as 24 hours’ notice, and mobilize advocates in time to act. With Quincy, Quorum’s AI assistant, the team can access in seconds insights that once depended on a decade of specialist experience.
This is how they got there.
Challenge: Too Many Bills, Too Few People
FFRF works to protect the separation of church and state, and legislation relevant to that mission can surface in every state during every session. For a national nonprofit with roughly 35 team members and a three-person state policy team, the manual workflow could not scale. Before Quorum, the team checked individual state legislative websites, logged bills in spreadsheets, and hoped nothing moved while no one was looking.
The problem has only intensified. Bill volume continues to climb, and some legislatures schedule committee hearings with barely a day of public notice. A tracking process built on manual checks cannot keep pace.
“If we’re tracking 700 bills, you desperately need an AI assistant to track them,” said Jayne.
Solution: A System Built in Quorum, Accelerated by AI
FFRF’s IT Director introduced the policy team to Quorum, and Jayne committed to learning the platform in depth. He built a system of 40 to 50 issue tags, priority labels, Alerts, tracking boards, and Dashboards that now structures the team’s daily work.
Key capabilities FFRF uses in Quorum:
- Issue Management and Alerts: Every bill is tagged by stance, priority, and issue area across dozens of state-church topics. Morning email Alerts surface new bills and hearings involving high-priority legislation, while Quincy helps turn a few seed terms into a more comprehensive set of search terms.
- Daily Hearings Dashboard: A homepage widget lists every hearing scheduled that day involving a high-priority bill, helping the team respond even in states that provide only 24 hours’ notice.
- Personalized AI Bill Summaries: Quincy summaries are tailored to FFRF’s issues, flagging bills that could affect state-church separation and helping the team set aside lengthy bills that contain no relevant red flags.
- Grassroots Campaigns: When a hearing appears, the team can launch email and phone campaigns that mobilize FFRF members in that state to contact their representatives or members of the relevant committee.
- Shareable Dashboards: FFRF’s state chapters receive live views of tracked bills, sponsors, and multiyear trends without needing Quorum logins. Annual Dashboard reports also show leadership the team’s campaigns and advocate activity.
AI as a Force Multiplier
Quincy first transformed the highest-volume part of the team’s work: deciding which bills require a closer read.
“Sometimes these are complex, 40-page bills. You want to go in and verify, of course, but it is so nice to have the summary there,” said Jayne. “And other times it is the opposite: Quincy looks through the whole thing and sees no red flags, and I have 100 bills to review today. I cannot possibly read them all, so I can set that one aside.”
Jayne did not take the AI’s reliability on faith. He tested Quincy using model legislation he had written himself. He asked which committees a bill would likely move through, which legislators would make strong sponsors, and what arguments opponents might raise during a public hearing. Because Jayne already knew the answers, he could evaluate the results.
Quincy passed the test. Its expected opposition arguments matched, point for point, what Jayne had learned through a decade in the field.
“Normally, newer lawyers would come to me and ask what kind of pushback we are going to get on a bill,” said Jayne. “That is why I am Senior Policy Counsel, because I know the answer to that question. But Quincy knows, too, and it takes five seconds.”
Just as important is how Quincy responds when it cannot find an answer: It says so. For legislative questions such as identifying likely sponsors, Jayne now trusts Quincy over general-purpose AI tools because it works with real legislative data inside a closed system.
Impact: Institutional Knowledge, Available to Everyone
Embedding Quorum and Quincy into its daily workflow changed what FFRF’s three-person team could credibly take on. Instead of shrinking its footprint to match its resources, FFRF now covers the entire country. The organization has also moved beyond playing defense by proactively advancing its own model legislation, which was introduced in a handful of states during its first year.
Expertise that once lived primarily in one Senior Attorney’s head is now available to the entire team on demand. State chapters can work from live legislative Dashboards, while annual reports give leadership a clearer view of campaigns and advocate activity. When a state schedules a hearing with only hours of notice, the team can identify it, understand the bill, and mobilize advocates.
“Quorum’s insanely granular filter system is one of my favorite things,” said Jayne. “Once you know how the power search works, you can filter for anything you can imagine.”