Grassroots

Every Fourth of July, I think about my former boss, Congressman Jim Jontz. Jim taught me the importance of grassroots campaigns - real conversations, and knocking on doors. Jim was a congressman from Indiana’s 5th district and a progressive legend. In his first campaign, he won a state representative seat by 4 votes. He went on to win a state senate seat by less than 100 hundred votes and three congressional elections by less than four thousand votes total. He was my mentor and teacher in the world of grassroots campaigns.

With door-to-door contact, especially on political campaigns and issue organizing, one good conversation can be enough to make a difference. Let’s discuss how a good door to door contact can make such a difference.

Your organization has developed a strong campaign supporter list. That’s great news! Now let’s make sure we keep your campaign supporters involved with your campaign or cause. Email is undoubtedly one effective method of communicating with your campaign supporters. There are, however, a variety of other ways to engage with your campaign supporter list as well. Here are a few suggestions:

Running a grassroots campaign is hard. There are always going to be grassroots volunteers who sign up for shifts and do not show up. That’s why when organizing an event, you can generally assume a 50% flake rate (percentage of grassroots volunteers who do not show up for their shift). More often than not, however, with the right coaxing, you can get a volunteer, who would have otherwise failed, to turn out for their shift. Below are a few suggestions to help you to mitigate your flake rate.

Canvassing rural areas present a unique set of challenges. While you want to canvass as many homes in these areas as you can, as grassroots canvassing is the most effective method of volunteer voter contact, you also want to do so in a way that makes sense for both you and your canvassers. Below are a couple of suggestions for overcoming the challenges of rural canvassing:

For political organizers, data entry and turf cutting are the two most likely tasks that will be keeping you up late into the night. Unlike cutting turf, which can be strangely comforting, data entry is only really enjoyable when it is complete. So to help out political organizers still in the field we have compiled a short list of tips to make data entry a bit easier.