I’m not a fan of fatalism. So much of the time people want to research their votes but have no idea how to do that. Just disseminating contact info and an events calendar which includes debates in your own back yard will make a bigger difference than you would believe. Votes on important bills are also needlessly obscure, so just keeping a tally and distributing the well documented results when most people start figuring out that they should take such things into account can spread like crazy.
I can surely appreciate your hopefulness and encouragement. :)