Now that the results are in, I’m looking to hear from those of you who volunteered on campaigns, either in this cycle or past campaigns.
Do you have suggestions? How could your time have been used more efficiently?
If you are an organizer (paid or volunteer), what can volunteers do be more effective?
I’m asking this not to hear complaints, but to improve the experience. No situation is perfect. If you had a bad experience that you want to share as an example of what can go wrong, please don’t mention the name of the campaign.
I visited a friend today who doesn’t live near me. She mentioned that she had received a number of broadcast e-mails asking her to go to NH, but she hadn’t volunteered.
She was afraid of the unknown. The e-mails weren’t specific as to what they would be asked to do. She was afraid that she would be asked for specific information. She didn’t know if there would be training. She felt, in retrospect, that if there had been some personal contact, that maybe she would have made the trip. My thought was that I should have called her and made arrangements to meet in NH. She said that she might have volunteered if a friend had called her.
Lessons learned from that conversation:
1) Include specific information, especially emphasizing that there will be training, when sending out e-mails.
2) Volunteers should make personal contact with their friends. Making it easy to have questions answered is critical.
I’m also curious as to thoughts and suggestions on matching the availability of volunteers to the amount of work. I’ve been on both sides of the table so to speak. You recruit volunteers and expect a certain amount of fallout. If you have fewer “no-shows” than expected, you run out of work. If you don’t recruit more than you need, then you may not be able to get what you need done. If you over-prepare and your packets or call sheets go unused, you have wasted valuable time. When a volunteer goes to great effort to carve out a few hours or a day and then finds that there is no work, it is demoralizing. Did anyone experience that situation? What was your reaction? Do you have suggestions on how it could have been better handled?
I and others would love to hear your thoughts!
lynne says
is worth working for in any capacity. that’s what I’ve learned in the last few cycles.
<
p>I will be writing a post about that at some point…
<
p>Anyway, training campaign managers and campaign staff, that is something the party should seriously focus on, and it is, and it worked (50 state strategy). Go Obama! Go Dean!
medfieldbluebob says
It was extremely well organized. The web site looked like a clone of the Deval Patrick campaign web site.
<
p>I thought there was a bit of a disconnect between the internal campaign database and the Obama web site, at least at the end. I was getting calls to volunteer in the last couple weeks, after working through the web site for months. I was canvassing with someone in NH, when they got a cell phone call asking them to volunteer in NH; that was an interesting conversation.
<
p>I think some of what your talking about, and your friend, is part of the transition to an internet driven organization. Some people prefer a bit more direction and personal contact than they can get through the web site, as great as it was. Some people can jump on the web site, get the script, get the call list, and bang out the calls.
<
p>As a town coordinator for Barack in Massachusetts, trying to recruit and organize people to go to NH, I found myself juggling the web site, email, and phone call lists of volunteers. The “ourtown for Obama” group on the web site had almost nobody on it actually from our town. Some were group junkies who didn’t even live in Massachusetts.
<
p>I think we need to work a bit on integrating and coordinating grassroots and netroots. You’re right about balancing work and workers, but I thought the Obama people did a good job of that. They also handled a ton of people and moved them through the process very very well.
<
p>I think the Mass Democratic party needs to focus on training and organizing the grassroots, starting with the ward/city/town committees. We need more and better resources (starting with the web site), training, and tools. We are the Party’s grassroots. We could be better and help the Party enormously with a little investment. And that investment would pay off over the years by providing a pool of trained and experienced volunteers and organizers for campaigns to come.
<
p>
lynne says
We desperately need help here (and in some cases, serious kicks in the pants) to get reorganized in Lowell.
<
p>There’s nothing here, really. A City committee that every year meets to caucus. I am not kidding.
<
p>I’m working with my own ward chair, she’s a malcontent like me, to start meeting on our own, which is what we should be doing anyways.
syphax says
One thing, I hate the word “netroots”, but that’s an aside.
<
p>
<
p>This is exactly what my dear wife the town coordinator experienced. One problem is that there really isn’t a mechanism for getting data about offline people and activities into the same database as the online stuff. As far as my.barakobama.com knows, I’m a guy who gave a little money and made a couple phone calls. But in reality I gave a fair bit of money through various channels, and donated a fair amount of time (mainly in the form of helping my wife with communications, distributing lawn signs, co-running a call center on election day, etc.). But the Obama campaign doesn’t know that, which would be useful for future actions (though I suppose my wife knows where to find me).
<
p>Toward the end, it did seem that both the campaign and local grassroots were starting to figure out how to span the chasm, but it needs more refinement.
<
p>Another thing: Lawn signs. 538 had an instructive post about lawn signs awhile ago, which seems on the mark. It’s not that lawn signs are useless, it’s just that the cost/benefit isn’t there. They are a total timesink to allocate and distribute.
<
p>My suggestion- make lawnsigns and all that junk a subsidiary of the campaign. Find the volunteers who are passionate about lawn signs, but shouldn’t be let near someone’s door or call center (people like me- high energy, low social skills), and let them run it, preferably as a profit center (or at least breakeven). Keep 1-2 lines of communication open between the main campaign and the signs operation, and that’s about it.
<
p>The only signs that I felt were worthwhile were those that were delivered to people who were too elderly or infirm to do much else, but wanted to support the campaign.
sabutai says
There are many volunteers who are reluctant to do direct voter contact, and some precious few who love it. I’ve found that campaigns that do the most to get those direct-contact folks (think Kate Donoghue) as much time in the field as possible are on to something. A people person shouldn’t be doing any more paperwork than they have to — pick up a clipboard and go.
christopher says
I have done enough phones and doors to know that I absolutely do not like doing them. So often, however, that’s all a campaign has to offer. It seems everything else is already taken care of. I’d rather cut turf, enter data, or other behind-the-scenes. My favorite volunteer gig in recent years was as a regional desk in the Patrick campaign because that was organizational leadership. Of course, with a Masters degree in Political Management I’d rather get paid anyway, but that’s another issue.
jasiu says
I will likely have more to say on this in the weeks and months ahead, but since it’s something that requires a lot of planning, I thought I’d at least plant the seed.
<
p>The Regional Democratic Office in East Arlington was a great success. Despite people calling us an “Obama Office”, this was actually a joint project of the Arlington and Lexington Democratic Town Committees and was open for use by all locally pertinent races in the Democratic coordinated campaign as well as NO-on-1. This was our second such effort, as we also ran an office for the 2006 coordinated campaign. We logged over 61,000 phone calls for the duration (getting seriously started after Labor Day) and sent I don’t know how many canvassers up to New Hampshire.
<
p>The intent was to provide a place for Arlington and Lexington coordinators to stage phone banks, recruit volunteers, and to be a meet-up place for canvassing. For the coordinators, it’s really helpful to have one place to have your “stuff” and to be able to hold phone banks night after night without having to give new directions and times to your volunteers – not to mention carting lists around and forgetting that sheet that says how to get an absentee ballot in some town in NH. For volunteers, it’s just easy – you know where to go. We were open seven days 10-6 (later when phone banking) so that people could walk in and sign up.
<
p>We attracted volunteers from beyond Arlington and Lexington, as expected, but we even had people show up from much further away. “There wasn’t anywhere else to go.”
<
p>So to the point of my comment: Start thinking about whether this would be feasible in your town (or if you get along well with your neighbors, for a collection of towns) for the 2010 gubernatorial / midterm general election. The two main ingredients are money and volunteers, and it’s never too early to start collecting either.
woburndem says
Regional offices in all states a big Plus it lead to the growing of grassroots support by having visible rallying points this along with the truly effective use of the internet was a key to not just local results but the 50 state strategy. This certainly was born out of the successes we had in the Kerry campaign and if we had used it more broadly may have changed the results but then again this is a Monday morning view.
<
p>The great unknown that should not be discounted and it will take some time to look at the numbers and the actual vote to decide the true benefit Cell phone text messaging. If we look at just the rallies and see the young faces that filled the space it is safe to assume the cell phone generation was reached and stuck with Barack. I think this is a key tool used by their campaign and like email addresses is something locally we will need to work on to collect and build the data base with.
<
p>Back to local offices and some constructive criticism the need for more local leadership is critical putting young people in charge of out of state offices with out the knowledge of the ground, political as well as geographic is an area where I saw once again a near collapse in the system to many volunteers time was wasted and efforts minimized by a lack of knowing the communities the distances even the location of some areas this may be the one area where the most could be gained with better trained personnel and better planning.
<
p>Last issue and this is the issue of what I have heard term SWAG the bumper stickers, signs, pins etc… which make up the outward visualizations of a campaign. Here again the old saying signs don’t vote a slogan I firmly believe in but as a reward for volunteers I think is critical to helping to retain and build that experienced and reliable base. This is tied to money and if you wanted it you could pay for it but in a campaign that likely succeeded as a result of a near financial collapse it did not reflect this reality on the ground. Certainly I am not going to suggest it cost us votes in the sense no sign no vote but it may have lost us volunteers and a certain level of enthusiasm necessary to keep a long campaign on it’s feet and moving forward.
<
p>Last issue is tied tot he last comment fatigue this was a long campaign and for experienced campaigners the tank was on empty for some time anther month of campaigning may have seen a different result as the polls showed it tightening. Thank God we will never know that for certain. But this is back to the issue of grassroots cultivation and the need to continue that effort now after the campaign, I believe this is one of the great miss steps we could take if we fail to capitalize this huge effort thus far every local Democratic organization should actively seek the lists of the under 30’s ID as supporting Obama and contacting them and encouraging them to join. This is a huge opportunity that really should not be lost. The next generation stands ready to become the leadership in the future of our Political system.
<
p>As Usual just my Opinions
<
p>Best to All
medfieldbluebob says
Regional offices:
<
p>Yes! I spend time in Maine, and they have at least one, for the Kittery, York, Berwick. They have an office, raise money to pay a staff person, and coordinate the campaigning in their area. Seems a bit more efficient than 300+ town and ward committees. Question: what region? We’re a bit hampered in Medfield because we don’t overlap state senate/house districts with many of our immediate neighbors.
<
p>Button, Bumper Stickers, Yard Signs:
<
p>Yeah, they don’t vote. Probably don’t even sway (m)any votes. But, they are important to many supporters. We had some people buy Obama stuff and donate it to the town committee, which then turned around and sold it. Made some decent money so it was worth it.
<
p>People People vs. Computer People:
<
p>Amen! Walking and Talking are a kids game. As I’ve gotten older, and more annoyed by the junk mail, telemarketers, and door knockers myself, I like do it less and less. By that last weekend in NH people, obviously home, weren’t answering the door, or answering questions if they did.
<
p>I think this is a database problem, and when campaigns recruit volunteers they need to solicit and respect people’s talents and preferences. Every weekend I was in NH the option to do office work was offered. I think if it was explicit before we left, we could have recruited more people.
<
p>Ward/City/Town Committees
<
p>Anyone for starting a thread on the committees? What we need? How we can be better?
<
p>