Non-Electoral Organizing for Your Local Democratic Party
The National Democratic Party has a wonderful training organization called the National Democratic Training Committee. You can find their training offerings at traindemocrats.org. They offer training programs that you can access at any time. They also offer live training using Zoom. Today, they had their first live training of the year which was “Non-electoral Organizing for Your Local Democratic Party.” Since that is exactly what we are trying to do and we have established that we have a lot to learn, I attended today. I took notes, which will make up my post today. You don’t have to depend on my notes completely because they recorded the training session, and you can find it here: https://traindemocrats.org/recorded-trainings/
The chat can be a valuable addition to the recorded training, so I saved that, as well. You can find it here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1s7Z3ZicLqqP-eHFl_rZu_um0l_eAW8j2
Chuck Cook, who is a very experienced field organizer, led the training. People from all over the United States attended. I noticed that there were 128 attendees.
As we were getting underway, we noted that a lot of the attendees were Precinct Committee People (PCPs). That caused Chuck to mention that every county party needs a training program for PCPs and I concur. So, that is another item to add to our To-Do List! The goals for the training are to:
• Understand why organizing works.
• Identify ways to develop local campaigns
• Identify strategies for local campaigns
All of us doing field organizing need to develop a Field Plan. A template for one can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KOPt4VaHny-wwLH8-tjhobe_bqt1EJTxn00eG3HjMwU/edit#
The field plan is a comprehensive blueprint that includes goals, targets, deadlines and tactics. That plan will be discussed more later in the presentation.
The next discussion topic was the role of the local party. The point was made that elections are won in years that end in 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9. The local party creates the motivation for taking action. It gets people who care about issues to build community and develop leadership skills. Campaigns aren’t just about candidates and elections but include any effort that invokes sustained collective action. Chuck noted that a lot of local parties complain about membership falling off. People want to see action being taken and results achieved. If they don’t see that they will move to organizations that they see doing the work.
We have to remember that resources are important. All we have is time, money and people. A campaign is any effort to organize time, money and people into a plan to achieve a particular goal. Also, we don’t have a lot of time, because every election has an expiration date. We have to commit time to get people. We have to be smart about how we deploy resources. The time to start is now. 75% of our resources should be used to build relationships and only 25% on the efforts to get out the vote. It is all about building relationships. It is sales. Creating and fostering the relationships is of utmost importance.
That 75% of the time is what the party field organizing effort is about. That time should be used to:
• Reflect on the prior election
• Develop short and long term goals
• Build long term infrastructure
• Identify and fill leadership roles
• Strengthen relationships and partnerships
We should be in constant contact with our volunteers, giving them kudos for good work, supplying training, sharing goals, coordinating actions and events, and developing their leadership skills.
The phases of a campaign cycle include:
• Developing Infrastructure
• Persuasion
• Get Out the Vote
Activities included in developing infrastructure include donor recruitment and engagement, volunteer recruitment and escalation, and data acquisition and maintenance. Volunteer escalation means that the volunteers are identified, trained, engaged and then they build their own teams.
Persuasion is the base listening to understand the issues that will win hearts and minds and then using what you learn to persuade the community that voting for Democrats is the best solution to their issues.
Get Out the Vote includes the efforts of voter registration and voter education.
Developing local campaigns lend party legitimacy to candidate’s campaigns: When the party can lend skilled campaigners to the candidate’s efforts, the party is perceived as more competent and more helpful, and it is more likely that the candidates will support the party’s messages. Development of local campaigns includes the steps of community listening, policy accountability and advocacy and engagement in the community.
Community listening is mostly one-on-one conversations where the organizer asks these questions:
• What matters?
• What worries them?
• What do they want to change?
When the folks who answered the questions see their words reflected back to them in the party newsletter (because we got their email when we talked to them) they feel like the party listens to them and they are more likely to vote for the party’s candidates. In this way, we identify and develop supporters.
Policy accountability and advocacy includes county wide lobbying days when important issues are before the legislature, earned media and can include sponsored events, even Zoom events where speakers talk about issues that the canvas has determine are important to the community. Everything is about branding. The community has to know it was Democrats who made the event happen.
Coalitions with other allies is important. It is critical that the party shows up for their stuff, too. We need to ask questions like:
• Do you have events?
• Do you need us to show up in numbers?
• Do you need us to push this out?
The “snowflake model of organizing was discussed where the Team Leader is at the center and parts of the overall effort are the responsibility of individual team members, but everyone communicates with everyone else.
The “Ladder of Engagement” was discussed. The ladder of engagement is a framework to deepen volunteer’s engagement within a campaign or organization through taking action steps leading to an eventual goal. A true leader gives power away. Power is creating leaders who know and believe in the organization. The rungs of the ladder of engagement, starting from the bottom, are:
• Training
• Observing
• Following
• Contributing
• Owning
• Leading
Plans are critical. Without plans and measurable goals, you can’t look back and see if the plan worked or if it needs to be changed. Goals should be SMARTIE:
• Specific
• Measurable
• Actionable
• Relevant
• Time-Based
• Inclusive
• Equitable
Inclusivity means identifying opportunities to give up power. Debriefing is critical for growth—what went well, what could be improved. Everyone in the group should be asked:
• What they liked
• What they learned
• What they lacked
• What they longed for
A training on debriefing can be found at: https://traindemocrats.org/mini-lesson/how-to-conduct-a-campaign-debrief/?returning=1
Talked about asking everything of everyone all the time.
We talked a little bit at the end about the reverse walk list concept. I believe there are some missing pieces of that that people gloss over.