Case Study: Campaign to Reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act

Recruiting volunteers for any campaign can be a daunting challenge. Whether a campaign is issue based or electoral, it's critical to offer a variety of roles that volunteers can play. Volunteers can be discouraged if there are not opportunities that match their interests, as well as their capacity to engage with the campaign.

The Sheila Wellstone Institute, a program of Wellstone Action, addressed this challenge head-on when running a nationwide, grassroots campaign to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in 2005. VAWA is landmark legislation that provides millions of dollars and supportive programs for survivors of sexual and domestic violence. VAWA was set to expire, and the Sheila Wellstone Institute knew that activists across the country had to get mobilized to help pass the legislation.

The primary goal of our campaign was to pass VAWA legislation in Congress. However, we also set grassroots goals - goals for building the base of engaged activists on the issue of domestic violence. To do this we needed to provide concrete opportunities for action that allowed people to feel invested in the campaign and able to provide meaningful contribution.

When writing our plan for grassroots mobilization, we were thoughtful about a volunteer/staff infrastructure that would allow us to complete all the activities we needed to do to sway Congress and public opinion in favor of VAWA (calls to members of Congress, letters to the editor, rallies and public education events, etc) while also engaging and motivating volunteers. The infrastructure is illustrated below.

This system allowed for different "points of entry" into our campaign, depending on an activists capacity, or ability to act, and their commitment, or willingness to act.

For this campaign, we wanted to anchor our volunteer infrastructure in organizations on the ground that already worked to end domestic and sexual violence. These organizations had resources to help our volunteers get started and were key allies in the campaign.

Domestic violence organizations identified a staff member to serve as a full- or part-time organizer for the VAWA campaign. This organizer was responsible for overall strategy and planning of the campaign, with assistance from the Sheila Wellstone Institute. In turn, the organizer was also responsible for recruiting a key super-volunteer to serve as the leader of an "Action Team" - the core group of volunteers that would be the gearbox of the campaign.

Action Team leaders were responsible for recruiting Action Team members, coordinating activities like writing letters to the editor or meeting with elected officials, and convening meetings.

Action Team members helped to implement the activities of the VAWA campaign that was overseen by the Action Team leader and recruit rank-and-file volunteers.

Volunteers were folks with minimal commitment and no responsibility but came to a phonebank, attended educational events, or called their member of Congress.

The final "point of entry" was for Supporters of the campaign who wanted to be involved in the campaign without active engagement. Supporters were folks who received newsletters or e-alerts, voted based on the VAWA issue, or contributed to the campaign.