Volunteer Training: The Art to Master your Volunteer Strategy to Win Elections
Political volunteer recruitment strategy can drain many resources of your election campaign. The last thing you can imagine in this strategy is that the volunteers that you recruit do not perform up to the mark.
While some of them know the nitty gritty of political campaigns, others need proper training so that you can optimize your campaign perfectly.
What is the best way to train your volunteers? Let's see.
Volunteer training comes in various shapes, depending upon the niche in which they are going to perform. While Get Out for Voting volunteers require different training compared to door-to-door canvassing volunteers, some commonality needs to be followed by all of them.
Introductory Training
Irrespective of the fact which aspect of your political campaign the volunteer belongs to, they need to present their introduction to the potential voters most of the time.
Make sure to craft a catchy introduction related to the current trends so that the public can identify with your campaign.
Most of the time, you cannot narrate the crammed pitch after knocking on the door. So, learn the art of either cutting the presentation short or extending it based on the receivers' reaction. If you find them in a hurry, it is better to wrap up your pitch as soon as possible.
Purpose of Volunteering
The purpose of canvassing should be crystal clear to all volunteers. If they are unaware of what they are campaigning for, it is useless to campaign in the first place.
Whether you are a political field director or campaign manager, training your volunteer team and making your purpose clear to them can help you a lot so that they can pursue the campaign perfectly.
Action Speaks Louder than Words
Once you are done crafting the introduction and purpose, it is time for practical action. Train your team to roam around the area optimally and mark their constituencies, keeping in mind no repetition happens.
Once all the things are done, it is time to provide them with resources so that they can go and canvass freely.
Data Collection Techniques for Volunteers
Data is part and parcel of political campaigns, so you must train your volunteers to collect it with full ambitions.
While you must have some pre-imagined techniques to collect voters' data, empower your volunteers enough so that they can amend the strategy based on the on-ground situation.
You must train your canvassing staff to use the campaign app which you are using for collecting data. This way, you can help your campaigns by making a voter file out of that data.
Scrutinize Decided and Undecided Voters
It is the responsibility of your campaigning team to see which faction of voters lie in the confirmed votes and which of them are undecided.
Train them to segment the data as per the voters' groups so that undecided voters can be reached afterwards.
Follow-Up
Reaching out to voters only once is not enough most of the time. Follow-up is necessary these days because sometimes the public can just forget about your candidacy if you do not keep in contact with them often.
Now, which voter group you follow up with depends upon the inclination of that group toward your candidacy.
If someone is completely committed to voting for you, you have no need to follow up with them. However, undecided voters should be reached out to again to maintain a steady flow of information between your volunteers and the public.
Final Thoughts
Volunteer training can be a tough part of advocacy strategies and needs a proper schooling methodology.
If your campaign is open to recruiting volunteers all the time, the job becomes even tougher. However, if you are recruiting them occasionally, training them together can lessen your burden up to a great extent.
Always ensure that you are promoting your campaign volunteers up the ladder of the organization hierarchy so that they can feel self-motivated.
