Recruiting and retaining great volunteers
Effectively managing volunteers is a crucial part of winning elections. If you simplify winning an election into three parts: persuading people to vote for you; identifying who will vote for you; and getting your supporters out to vote, then it becomes clear that the easiest path to success is to have people willing to talk about voting for a Green candidate to their neighbors, friends, family, and even strangers. This raises the challenge that anybody who has worked with volunteers has faced: how do you find people willing to help? What motivates a person to dedicate countless hours, personal resources, and money to helping a candidate win? To answer these questions, I’ll draw from a field manual from one of the primary elections of the Obama campaign. Build a Community This is the fundamental building block of recruiting volunteers. When I have felt a personal connection to either a cause or an individual, I have been much more likely to expend significant time and energy to that cause. One of the challenges I experienced with the 2008 federal Green campaign and the 2009 BC provincial election was asking people to volunteer, and being rejected, by people who were Green Party supporters but had no personal connection with the party. This challenge emphasizes the need for continual and constant building of social and personal connections with new Green supporters. Events like summer barbeques, drop-in sporting events, yard sales, speakers series or any of the other ideas discussed in a variety of articles on greenpartystrategy.com are crucial to building a community of people who move from Green Party supporters to people who are engaged with the Green Party. Recruit them The most common reason for a person not to volunteer is that they were not asked. I have participated in a variety of conversations where an executive member of an EDA will say “our volunteers are burnt out” or “there is nobody to do task X”. It frequently turns out that a request was not sent out to the members email list at all, or that phone calls were not made to a list of identified supporters, and that an assumption has been made that the people who have always volunteered need a break. In order to expand our volunteer base, we need to be able to trust that the people included in the Green Party community described above might be willing to say yes, and that they are capable of completing the tasks you need accomplished. Don’t be afraid to ask people for help! If you have a long volunteer list, you can even use an auto-dial (or robo-call) company such as Solusone to leave a message for all the Green supporters you have identified. Know what you want them to do When it comes time for action, a campaign is nearing or taking place, you should ALWAYS know exactly what you need your volunteers to do. The first time a person walks through an office door, they need to feel welcomed, and that their time and effort is going to make a difference. Having a list on the wall of volunteer tasks is an easy way to demonstrate what your campaign needs are. This should be established at the start of the campaign as part of your field strategy. Some examples of questions to ask yourself about volunteer tasks include: Are you going to focus on phone calls or door-knocking? Do you want people to organize house parties and invite family and friends over to discuss the Green Party? Do you want Letters-to-the-Editor written? Are there events coming up that you need tickets distributed for? Train and Recognize your Volunteers Retention of volunteers is much more likely when they feel valued and appreciated. Small acts of thanks and tokens of appreciation can have an incredible impact with this. Writing a Thank You note, having volunteers thank each other, and taking time to share stories and celebrate at the end of a volunteer task are simple things we can do to ensure that we retain the highest percentage of volunteers possible. As a cautionary note, be careful with the amount of time you take to train your volunteers. If you take too much time, the volunteers will either become bored, or use the training as a way of procrastinating from doing the real work, if you don’t take long enough than the volunteers will feel unprepared. Whenever possible, have senior volunteers or campaign staff trained on how to train volunteers before a campaign, so that everybody is using the same methods to get to the same results. Be selective You do not need to accept every volunteer that comes to help; volunteers can be turned away. If a volunteer is harshly critical of the work environment, the campaign, of individuals in the office, and in some way they are creating a negative environment, they are far more likely to drive other volunteers away and do more harm than good! It is fully within your right to politely ask the person to leave. Organize yourself out of a job The ultimate goal of any field organizer should be to organize one’s self out of a job. Being aware of which volunteers are excelling and are capable of taking on more responsibility – and trusting them with that responsibility – will free up the time of an organizer to work on an area of their choosing. The goal of every field organizer on the Obama campaign was to create a situation where they were bored on Election Day because their volunteer team was running such a tight ship. Not only does this make for successful campaigns, but it builds a group of community activists who are capable and empowered to make change in their community. I have yet to find work more rewarding than that. Robert Routledge managed a rural Albertan campaign for Reeve and the 2008 federal campaign in Edmonton Strathcona. Robert was consulted for the 2009 BC provincial election and worked as a Field Organizer with Obama for America in five states.
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