A menu of effective grassroots activities

Submitted by Drew Mckissick on Wed, 01/20/2010 - 01:05.

So you’ve got a group of malcontents together and you’re ready to get active. Now what do you do?

The point of this post is to review a relatively easy to do list of grassroots activities that have been proven successful in giving citizens a greater voice in their government. These items are purposely easy to implement and, when coupled with similar activities in surrounding churches and/or precincts, they can greatly strengthen the political impact of conservatives in your community.

While this is by no means a comprehensive list, the purpose here is to relay the basics, which, if you’re not doing them in some fashion, you’re greatly reducing the chances of any long term impact.

So with that, here’s the list…

Build a conservative contact database.

Create a database of identified, registered conservative voters in the church (or precinct) with as complete contact information as possible, (names, precincts, churches, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses). An Excel spreadsheet will work fine. Use this list for distributing key information on all your projects. A good database is critical to making other projects easier and more effective in the future. Make use of your church directories if possible.

Hold a voter registration drive.

As shocking as it might seem to some, almost half of potential voters aren’t even registered to vote, and that tends to hold true for conservatives as well. The purpose of a voter registration drive is to make sure that every identified conservative in a church or precinct is registered and able to exercise their right to vote. Get registration forms from your county registration office and set up a registration table in your church, and encourage others to do the same in other churches. You can even cross-reference the names in church directories with the county voter registration list to find out who needs to be registered.

Again, given low average registration and election turnout percentages, this one effort alone can have a tremendous impact. If you’re not registered, you can’t vote. And if you don’t vote, you don’t count.

Attend the next meeting of your local Republican Party.

Going to political party meetings and getting involved will help you keep up to date with important political information, but it can also provide you with good opportunities for political activism on issues you care about. Get others involved as well! The more conservatives that get involved in the grassroots of the party, the better off the conservative agenda will be.

Set up a citizenship bulletin board or table.

To be effective in our political system, people need information, so make sure that they get it. A bulletin board or table can easily be set up at a church so you can post or distribute timely information about issues or upcoming events, (such as local council/school board meetings, elections, etc.).

Conduct a petition drive.

Petitions are a great way to demonstrate a strong, unified voice on a given issue, as well as to show politicians the breadth of support it enjoys. If politicians understand one thing, it’s numbers. They know that numbers equal power – and petitions demonstrate numbers. They’re also a great way to build a database of supporters that you can go back to for further action on related projects in the future.

Find an issue that your community is concerned about, circulate a petition, and make a difference by forwarding it to the proper elected officials, (especially when working in coordination with other local grassroots leaders). You can conduct petition drives “off-line” in printed form and/or create an online petition, (with sites such as AktNow).

Lobby your elected officials.

Generally, some form of lobbying is the most popular type of grassroots effort that most local groups engage in. In fact, many groups are formed specifically because of a local issue and the desire to be heard by elected officials. Once you’ve identified an issue you intend to pursue, you can mobilize your group to flood elected officials with emails, post cards, personal letters, faxes, phone calls and personal visits, (again, websites such as AktNow can help you coordinate such activities online).

Remember, the number one goal of most elected officials is to get re-elected. An organized group of registered voters with a particular point of view will have considerable influence with most any elected officials.

Distribute legislative scorecards.

A legislative scorecard is a listing of key votes cast by elected officials indicating how each voted on bills that are important to specific groups. These can be for any federal, state and/or local elected officials that have a voting record. Contact other conservative organizations that may have scorecards and order enough for your church. If you’re in charge of organizing your precinct, order enough for precinct volunteers to be able to effectively distribute them in their churches, as well as to identified conservative voters in your precinct.

The more people know about how elected officials actually vote, the better they can hold them to account. And it puts officials on notice that they’re being “watched”. (See Level Three in my Grassroots Training Series for information on compiling your own scorecards).

Distribute non-partisan voter guides.

These are guides that demonstrate to voters where candidates stand on issues that are important to conservatives. They are usually based on a public official’s voting records and/or candidate questionnaires and will represent positions in easy to understand terms on each issue, (such as Candidate Smith “Supports” or “Opposes” taxpayer funded abortions).

Voter guides help cut through the clutter of campaign advertising that may or may not discuss the issues that are most important to conservatives, and “bottom-line” the candidate’s positions. For the best impact they should be distributed just a few weeks prior to primaries and/or general elections. If you’re working as a precinct organizer, you should acquire enough to enable precinct volunteers to distribute in their churches. You should also consider mailing them to identified conservatives in your precinct. (Again, see Level Three in my Grassroots Training Series for information on compiling your own voter guides).

Make Get-Out-the-Vote (GOTV) phone calls.

GOTV calls are essential to turning out a large conservative voting-bloc in any election. You can create a telephone bank with other church members (or precinct volunteers if you're organizing your precinct) to make calls from lists of identified conservative voters just prior to and on Election Day. This is where the work of identifying and registering conservatives pays off. Work with your local or state grassroots leadership (if any) to determine how you can best organize making these important calls.

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This is only a partial list of the things you can do. The more involved you become, the more ideas and opportunities you’ll have. Using these time tested grassroots principles and techniques you can have an impact on the things you care about by working just a few hours a month.

The bottom line is to do something. Remember, if you don’t do anything, nothing happens, (or at least nothing you would want to happen).

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(You can find tips like this and much more in my “Grassroots 101: Grassroots Training Series”.)