Volunteer Recruitment
Precinct Captains and Volunteer Recruitment
Your first task in your neighborhood voter contact program will be to identify local leaders to act as Precinct Captains. Precinct Captains will be the campaign's volunteer coordinators and point persons in each of your targeted precincts.
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. In addition, in an era where financial resources are limited, a good volunteer operation can help bridge financial gaps. This is particularly true if your campaign cannot hire paid field organizers to manage your voter contact program. Precinct Captains can be key volunteers, functioning as staff by taking charge of contacting a small segment of voters in your overall universe.
Precinct captains will have two roles - recruiting volunteers and having conversations with voters in their precinct.
Step 1: Finding volunteers
Your best potential audience for finding Precinct Captains is your strongest supporters. In a partisan election, this might be the core party activists. It also might be the natural constituencies of your candidate - if your candidate is a nurse, one source for key leaders may be health care professionals.
You will also want to look for volunteers that also have their own networks to help be leaders of others and recruit more volunteers - union members, community activists, college students, etc.
Regardless of where you find your volunteers, you need to have a plan. Copy and paste the template below to create your volunteer plan.
There are many places for campaigns and organizations to find volunteers. Below are some examples. Jot down some ideas for volunteer resources in your area under each example.
Campaign supporter and/or donor lists
Your allies' lists of supporters or donors
Volunteer databases from previous campaigns
College campuses and high schools
Tabling or clip boarding at community events
Senior centers and other areas with retirees
How to recruit volunteers?
Recruitment
- Know your audience - Whom are you trying to recruit? What will motivate them? Consider having conversations with current volunteers to help determine the best recruitment message to reach new volunteers.
- Don't assume - When looking at a list of supporters or supposed volunteers, don't assume they are all active volunteers. Until you have seen someone do something for the campaign, each person should be considered a potential volunteer that needs to be recruited and persuaded to help.
- Prioritize requests - Limit what you are asking of volunteers. Pick the one or two most important activities. Avoid overburdening them.
- Sell the activity - Asking is not enough. Give reasons why people should volunteer. What can they help with? Why is the activity important? What might happen if they don't volunteer?
- Hard counts and reminders - Record the name, phone number and email of everyone who agrees to volunteer for a specific activity. Remind them at least twice, including the day before they are scheduled to volunteer. People are busy and likely to forget. Probably fewer than half will ever show up. Therefore, you must over-recruit. If you have ten phones in a phone bank, you need to recruit at least fifteen people to ensure that you fill ten phones. Follow up with people who don't show up (remove them after three no-shows).
The Volunteer Experience
- Welcome, training, and motivating - Greet volunteers when they arrive at the event, office, or location. Explain the task so they understand what is being asked of them. Reiterate the importance of the task and their role. Monitor what the volunteer is doing, and provide them with input. Always be positive and take the time to ask and answer questions.
- Fun - Reward your volunteers with food, a shirt, a button, or "inside information." Create a relaxed atmosphere for your volunteers. They aren't staff.
- Participate - Never ask a volunteer to do something that you are unwilling to do yourself. Let them see you engaged in the activity. If it's not good enough for you, then it's not good enough for them either. Don't disappear after the welcoming and training; be available. They are working with, not for you. Without them, you cannot succeed.
Post Volunteering
- Sign-up for the future - Ask them to volunteer again immediately. No volunteer should make it out the door without at least being asked to come back on a specific date. It is easier than having to contact them after they leave. Capitalize upon the feelings of goodwill that your campaign has created.
- Recognition - Recognize their contribution; make sure they know how much they've helped, and how crucial that help is. Thank you notes, emails and calls are always appreciated. Invite volunteers to non-fundraising events.
- Communicating between asks - Don't just contact volunteers when you need something. Regular communications will help keep them engaged. Email is a great tool for keeping in touch with all of your volunteers without having to spend money or time to do it; it can also drive them to the web site for on going information and updates about the campaign
In every interaction with volunteers, be thinking about how to move supporters to active volunteers to leaders of others. The role of your Precinct Captains will be to identify more supporters in their precinct and offer them an opportunity to take leadership in the campaign through volunteering.
Volunteer Tasks
As you develop your volunteer base in a given precinct, you will want to have activities for these volunteers to plug in to. In a precinct-based voter contact program, the primary role of volunteers will be having direct conversations with voters. However, what types of voters they talk to and what the conversations are about will depend on the stage of the campaign. Steps 2-5 will illustrate the steps of a voter contact program at the precinct level.