Grassroots

David Fleischer is the founder and former director of the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s Leadership LAB, and the creator of the pioneering outreach approach called “deep canvassing”. Before the Leadership Lab, David led political training programs at the LGBTQ Victory Fund and the National LGBTQ Task Force. He has politically organized all over the country, advocating for LGBTQ+ rights for decades. His work has been profiled in major publications such as The Atlantic and the New York Times days, David has an amazing Substack you should check out and writes about deep canvassing and its empirically proven ability to change hearts and minds. This week, we asked Dave 7 questions about his career path and experience.  Checkout the podcast interview here.

Brandon Wolf is a nationally recognized gun safety and LGBTQ+ civil rights advocate and public speaker. Brandon is a survivor of the 2016 shooting at Orlando's Pulse Nightclub. After losing two of his best friends that night, Brandon set out to honor their and the other 47 victims’ legacies with action. Brandon is a co-founder of The Dru Project, a non-profit organization that helps fund higher education to empower youth and future leaders in the LGBTQ+ community. We asked Brandon 7 questions about his experience and career path.

Grasstops and grassroots are both an important part to any successful advocacy campaign. Maybe you’ve heard the term and have asked, “What’s the difference?" They sure sound the same. Well, you're not the only one scratching your head.

Volunteer recruitment is never easy - but when done right, volunteer recruitment can build on itself. Here are 16 rock solid volunteer recruitment tips to get your grassroots campaign started:

Deep canvassing is a growing tactic for voter persuasion that uses longer, two-way conversations. Campaigns, especially electoral campaigns, are always on the lookout to find the most efficient and effective way to persuade voters to support their cause. In the past, door to door canvassing and phone campaigns were a staple of field operations to identify and persuade voters to vote for their candidate or issue.

ActBlue is a nonprofit organization that aims to increase public participation in politics primarily through grassroots campaign fundraising. Their grassroots political fundraising tool allows Democratic and progressive campaigns and organizations to increase their individual donations and build a grassroots-funded movement.

Joshua Habursky is the Founder and Chairman of the Grassroots Professional Network (GPN), an organization that helps associations, corporations, and government agencies develop skills in the world of grassroots advocacy. Joshua is also an Adjunct Professor at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management and specializes in advocacy communications. 

When you get into politics, it’s hard to resist the all too common tunnel vision of focusing only on politics. But be careful – binge watching Veep or The West Wing is not going to help you run a better campaign or organization; nor will reading solely political books. So Here are some of our favorite non-political books. 

The 2018 election cycle is here! Everyone has a renewed spirit of social justice and resistance. Lots of activists are looking for ways to get involved in the new wave of change. Are you thinking about becoming a grassroots organizer?

As candidates, by this point you have probably been knocking on doors for weeks and are finally at a place where you are ready to bring in the cavalry, your volunteers! For campaigns, we believe in doors, doors, and more doors.  Those doors translate into more voter contact and more identified targets for GOTV. Hitting doors in the right way is why having a structured and detailed canvass training is vitally important.