Building Your Membership and Support BaseTo maintain a strong organization it is important to continually involve those interested in your group or issue, and to constantly reach out to potential supporters who might not be able to be directly involved. Building a base of passive and active supporters is essential to the success of any long-term campaign.New Member Outreach and Recruitment Outreach and recruitment should be central to all of your events and activities. You should provide opportunities for people to become informed about an issue and show support. Often new people are just curious about your group and need some extra encouragement before they decide to get more involved. The best way to recruit new members is one-on-one contact. After you talk to a potential member at an event, tabling, or door-to-door work, follow up with a phone call. Find out what they are interested in and give them easy ways to get involved. With a commitment to recruiting and nurturing new members, your group will retain people who stick around to become leaders in the organization. You also continually reinvigorate your group with new people and energy as old members leave or graduate. Building a Broad Support Base Once you have a core group, you can do outreach on a much larger scale. Large-scale outreach involves going out and finding those who are interested in your issue rather than waiting for them to come to you. Outreach on a large scale can involve campus-wide events, petition drives, or actual door to door soliciting. The idea is not to get everyone to become an active member of your group (which might be unwieldy), but to develop a large base of support who can provide funds and be helpful in a time of crisis. For example, the Campaign for Affordable Rutgers Education (CARE) “canvassed” Rutgers dormitories four nights per week during the fall semester of 1991. Over 20 volunteer canvassers went door-to-door giving a basic rap about tuition increases and university democracy, and then presented each student with a petition demanding a tuition freeze. They went on to describe CARE and present the student with a membership form and ask for a $2 donation. Many more students were willing to sign the petition than sign up as a member. CARE was able to build a membership of 700, and an even larger phone list to be used during emergencies. They also identified those members who were interested in coming to meetings. The money was used to send members a bi-monthly newsletter. By dividing up this list among dozens of volunteers, CARE was able to phone-bank its members whenever an event or demonstration was scheduled. The steps in building support are basically the same regardless of your initial size: 1) do something that gets the attention of the community in which you are working, such as a rally or door-to-door canvassing; 2) keep track of those who show interest with databases and phone trees; and 3) follow up on your contacts and get them involved. By reaching out to all on campus who may be interested, you can develop the strength to win concessions from the administration or other people in power. Keeping Track of Supporters It is helpful if you compile all the names of people who have signed in at your activities into a “master list.” You may want to divide the list into three sections: 1) active members who come to meetings, 2) volunteers for specific tasks who do not attend meetings, and 3) supporters will come to rallies or events. If your group is large, you may want to assign the task of maintaining your membership list to a member who has a computer and is familiar with spreadsheet or database software like Excel, Access or Filemaker. For example, you could put the “master list” into a table containing each person’s first name, last name, address (2 lines), city, state, zip code, home phone, work phone, year of expected graduation, living group, level of interest, comments (explain where the name came from, what kind of work they like to do), and date they were interested. Once the information is in your computer, you can print out mailing labels (perhaps sorted by living group) and phone lists sorted by last name and first name. You can periodically delete people who leave school, especially during the summer. In September, the vitality of your group will depend on your ability to track down key members. If you lose people, perhaps you can find them through e-mail, the registrar’s office, or by asking around. Other Tips on Keeping People Informed and Involved 1) It is good to send out minutes or a newsletter to keep less-active supporters involved and up-to-date. 2) Have social events as well as rallies to keep less active members who just want to support your issue involved and connected. 3) Involve people in a long-term planning, so that they can feel some “ownership” of the organization. Invite new members to retreats and bull-sessions about the future of the organization. 4) Hold regular meetings at regular locations, so that peripheral members can rely on your organization and know where to go if they want to get more involved. 5) Write a constitution and operating rules that everybody can see and understand. Sticking to the rules that your group writes for itself will enable people to expect consistency and make decisions about the group. |
Introduction Why Work for Peace & Justice on Campus? How to Start a Group Meetings & Group Process Planning an Event Planning a Campaign Research Publicity Techniques Media and Press Releases Building your Membership & Support Base Nonviolent Direct Action Bibliography For the Long Haul Helpful Organizations |