Grassroots electoral and issue organizing are about engaging, organizing, and mobilizing ordinary people - not just political or legislative professionals - to shape public policy or a community issue.  Volunteers are the heart and soul of all grassroots organizing.

A comprehensive voter registration campaign is a campaign's first step in executing a successful voter contact program. Voter registration is an important organizing tool for increasing voter turnout in your targeted areas, accessing untapped resources in under-represented communities, and building the base of your campaign.

To actually have a targeted conversation with both base voters and persuadable voters, your campaign needs to specifically identify them. Identifying voters as supporting, opposing, or not decided on your issue or candidate helps to focus your resources and find areas of support (where you focus on developing leaders and turning out the vote) and areas that need work (where you focus on persuasion utilizing your local precinct leaders). This is known as voter ID, and it is done in various ways.

There are generally three tools that a field operation uses for voter persuasion: canvassing, phoning, and direct mail.

Get Out the Vote, or GOTV, starts the first day of the campaign. This is a line that is often heard on electoral campaigns, but many campaigns fail to really think about GOTV until the final weeks. But GOTV should be seen as the culmination of the process of base building and expansion. It is not enough to deliver a compelling message and have a well-run campaign. The true test of a campaign comes when it translates support into votes on Election Day.