This is the third installment in a series titled, How to Get Your Client on the Front Page of the New York Times, explaining how PureDriven helped vault the GoogleTwinPorts initiative (focused on Duluth, MN and Superior Wis.) to national prominence in its effort to win Google’s attention and become one of the few sites where Google will build an ultra-high speed network. I’ve written this series in hopes of sharing with businesses, politicians and grassroots organizers how to best gain offline and online attention for your cause, event or organization.
Volunteers at a bicycling event in St. Joseph, Missouri. Photo Credit: MoBikeFed
Lesson 4: Volunteers are your most important asset. Treat them like they are.
During the Google Twin Ports Fiber Initiative, our core team of leaders dealt with hundreds of volunteers. Here are three lessons we learned.
1. Don’t try and tell them what to do.
We knew what we felt needed to be done, and assumed that because we were the leaders, all the volunteers would be quick to following instructions. While some volunteers certainly followed directions, many didn’t.
They’re real people with time constraints and challenges. So over time we took a more laid back approach to volunteers. We would offer them specific tasks we called missions (so they didn’t sound like work, thanks to our marketing genius Kate Bradley) and would encourage them to try one. If they weren’t serious, they quickly faded away. If they didn’t do what we asked them, but hung around anyway, we would then try and talk to them about what they were interested in. Often once we matched them up with their natural interests, did some amazing work. It’s better to let go of some of your control and get a volunteer engaged where he or she feels comfortable, so they can contribute, even if where they feel comfortable isn’t where your greatest need might be.
2. Ask Early, Ask Often
We needed hundreds of volunteers to blanket our communities with fliers talking about the Google Twin Ports project, much like an election campaign does. But because we had so many projects in need of volunteers, we didn’t start asking for volunteers for a pledge-campaign drive until a week prior to the canvassing across the Duluth and Superior area. (Keep in mind Google only gave us about six weeks total.) When we were ready, we hit as many media outlets as possible with the message (social media sites like Facebook, e-blasts, TV, newspapers and radio especially.) While we hoped for about 125 volunteers, we probably got about 80, and covered half to 3/4ths of the area we were hoping to. Other initiatives later on made up most of the slack. But remember to ask for volunteers early and often.
3. Engage, engage, engage
Our group’s official Facebook Groups Page stands at 20,569 members
That page ended up being a great location to keep volunteers and supporters loosely associated with the organization informed, and to hear our latest calls to action. In order to keep the energy up, we made sure we worked hard to have several volunteers constantly chatting on the site, as well as asking people to post the verification code that they received, after nominating the Duluth-Superior area as a test site for Google. This gave something for each person to “talk about” and contribute. That once again allowed our organization to touch them with our message. We didn’t come up with the idea of posting the code though. We got it from the Grand Rapids, Michigan, fan page, which did an amazing job as well. And as you can see, had a much bigger presence on Facebook than we did: 38, 843 people as of 11:40 a.m. on May 3, 2010. (We’ll get into why in our minds that didn’t matter much in the long run though.)
So Remember: 1. Try and steer volunteers to what they want to do, because that’s where they will be most effective. 2. Ask for help early and often. It takes seven to 10 times before someone will typically take your request seriously. 3. Find little ways for people to stay connected to the effort, even if they don’t have the time or inclination to do a whole lot.
To read the first post in this series, visit “Google called, so we vaulted our client to Page 1 of the New York Times”
To read the second, visit “In Campaigns, Little or No Money Sometimes An Advantage”
To read the third, visit “When Running Big Projects, Simple Tools Work Best“
Tags: Campaigns, Googletwinports, grassroots, Volunteers
