Party Building Basics: Part 2

Thanks to all of you for your patience...

With the essential elements described in Party Building Basics: Part I, the big question remains: now what do we do? This post, like all posts here at Reform Florida’s DECs are full of broad overviews, big ideas, with some specifics thrown in for good measure. However, every county in Florida is different. Each county has its own constituencies, its own unique issues, and its own colorful personalities and institutions. There is no such thing as a “one size fits all” model for Florida’s DECs to effectively build themselves up to be effective political institutions. The following ideas I present in this post are meant to serve as an outline – not an exact blueprint for success.

Go Grassroots: In my opinion, the best way to ensure electoral success is through grassroots organizing. In an ideal and perfect world, every DEC would have precinct captains in every precinct, with block captains working with them. That is far from the truth today in most (but not all) DECs here in Florida and around the country. This should be the goal of all DEC organizing efforts. It may take the most work – but it will pay your DEC and your community HUGE dividends years and years to come.

Remember to Target: Chances are, your DEC doesn’t have the resources to launch organizing efforts into every single precinct in the county. Just like in any decision, the DEC needs to prioritize. My suggestion is to go to the areas which need the most help, that is Democratic precincts who vote heavily for Democrats, but have piss poor turnout.

Set Up A Calling Program: If your DEC is anything like mine, you know that most of your activists aren’t necessarily canvassing types of people. However, most make decent callers. Work with FDP and come up with a good organizing script. The script should ask questions to gauge the level of support an individual has for the Democratic Party and what issues motivate them. Don’t forget to try and collect email addresses – the cheapest and easiest way to stay in touch and disseminate information! Give out lists of 100 to each caller to take home for a couple of weeks – it’s a lot more effective than trying to pull people into a phone bank for one night and only talk to 10-20% of the people on your list.

Again, Remember to Target: It’s probably a bit of a waste of time to have callers call every single registered Democrat in your targeted precincts. Then again, if there’s only a few hundred – go for it. If you have a couple thousand – its time to target again. My suggestion is talk to the Democrats who vote often, particularly the ones the vote in primaries.

Think Younger People: If you’re using FDP’s VAN system, you’ll probably notice that once you pull a list of active Democrats, particularly ones that vote regularly in primaries, that the average age is pretty high. In Marion, it’s around 73. No offense to the Greatest Generation, but even if you do find a good number of interested people, how much use can they be? They’ll make good callers for sure, but what about canvassing and being able to use a computer? The older the volunteer the less likely they’ll be able to deal with such important tasks. This is a big problem with DECs today: there are not enough people below 60 to get major tasks accomplished. So make sure that in your targeted lists that you’re throwing in a number of people below the age of 60 – you might be surprised about the number of potentially interested people.

Listen for Activists: This is the main point of all of this effort. Each wave of calling should turn up a handful of potential new activists and volunteers to start building the up the network. If a caller finds someone who seems interested about the party, has concerns about issues, is angry at the way things are, and/or are interested in our candidates – this is probably someone who needs to be talked to again.

Plug People In Immediately: Once lists are handed in, obviously data needs to be entered into VAN. In addition, all people listed as being potential volunteers should be handed over to the volunteer coordinator for immediate follow up.

Tommorrow will be final installment of party building basics: part three. That post will focus on the next level of party building: ideas for training and organizing new people as well as keeping up the momentum.

Party Building Basics: Part 1

I see way too often DECs and progressive organizations going out to do party building/membership/volunteer recruitment without the basics to do it with. I also rarely see it all fitting into a larger plan - which means any results gained could possibly be short-lived. I'd like to open up the discussion today to focus around the basics of party building. By the way, the same tactics go for campaigns. Here are my ideas:

Good Party Leadership: This is often the hardest commodity to have, I know. I used to believe that even with poor leadership at the top, a dedicated activist can still get things done. This is only partially true: a dedicated activist can move the ball, but in terms of accomplishing things for the long-term, the possibilities of success are very limited. You have to have a party chairperson, vice-chairperson, secretary, treasurer, state committee people, and committee chairpersons who can work together effectively. They can (and probably will) have differences on a number of topics. This, by the way, is normal. If there aren't any differences between your leadership members - that's probably a sign that something is seriously wrong. At the end of the day, however, everyone needs to realize the larger goal of building the Democratic Party and electing progressive politicians. The DEC leadership also needs to be able to adapt. Plans should be built to be adaptable - because conditions can change instantly. The DEC leadership also needs to have some vision (a long term focus) and realize that just because you have a setback, doesn't mean you halt the program you're working on and start from scratch. Wrapping all of this up, DEC leadership needs to be able to work together, and create long term focused plans which can roll with the punches.

A Committee Dedicated to Party Building: In the Marion DEC, this entity is known as the Grassroots Development Committee (or GRD, pronounced "Gird".) I know other DECs have different entities dealing with this, but for the sake of brevity, I'll use GRD to describe the party building committee that your DEC has or should have. A good GRD chairperson is someone who has been a successful precinct captain or club leader. They need to know and understand the volatile nature and structure of the grassroots. They need to be able to figure out and juggle personalities - the Democratic Party is full of varying and...shall we say interesting personalities and psyches. Knowing how each person ticks can yield better results in volunteer recruitment and task allotment. When I talk to New Yorkers, the accent that my grandmother and mother has comes out slightly. When I talk to my friends in the peace community, I take some time to talk about the War and the peace movement before I ask them for help. You get the picture. This isn't sinister in my view, its being courteous of the people you're trying to recruit and get more involved. I view the Democratic Party as a community of individuals from diverse backgrounds and spectrums. Party builders should be very conscious of this.

A Volunteer Coordinator and System: When you find people who might be interested in getting involved, or you have them in your database, how do you manage them? You don't want them sitting on the database forever - those individuals might think you don't value them over time. You also want to be able to track how well they do with certain activities. A volunteer may say they like to phone bank, but if they have a voice that shatters glass - you're going to want so find another activity for them to do! Its also a good idea to track how long it takes volunteers to complete a certain list of calls, and how effective they are at getting information from the voters. Effective volunteers can make effective trainers as your operation grows.

To do all of these things, you need a volunteer coordinator who has the same abilities as your GRD chairperson: someone who knows the lay of the land, who can be patient, can juggle personalities, and in general get the job done. Your volunteer coordinator also needs to learn how to use the FDP's voter database, the Voter Activation Network (called "VAN".) The new version of VAN will contain volunteer database options. In the meantime, a simple access database (for a volunteer system over 100) or excel spreadsheet (for a volunteer system under 100) will do.

People Willing to Do the Work: We have way too many people in DECs who love to talk - but clearly don't want to lift a finger. They have golf games, haircuts, and the like. For the first stage of real party building (which I will start discussing tommorrow), you need a group of people who will be willing to do the phone call work to start getting in touch with your base. Don't bother with the dead weight of the DEC - they're not going to help you. Get the activists together and get going. More tommorrow...