Entries from March 2009 ↓

With just 7 1/2 hours to go, the Birthday Challenge total is up to $1,204. That’s enough for a Lorax Reading OR a Peace Fairy race, but not for both. Will we cross the $1,500 mark?

Yesterday I posted about the importance of following up quickly. Let me add one more point to that: follow up with a personal touch.

Again to quote from Tools for Radical Democracy, “Adhere to a twenty-four- to forty-eight-hour rule: within twenty-four to forty-eight hours, you call people with potential and have a deeper conversation” (emphasis added).

You call people.

That’s a personal contact. It’s human-to-human, and in this age of electronic bombardment, it’s a rare and valuable thing.

In Milk, there’s a great scene where Cleve is rallying people to come out for a demonstration. What does he do, he goes out to the phone booth and he calls people. They spread the word, and soon the streets are filled.

Follow up. Quickly. Personally. It’s the heart of organzing.

I’ve been reading Tools for Radical Democracy, and you’ll be hearing a lot about it here, it’s a great book.

In their chapter on recruitment, one of their instructions is:

Follow up. Adhere to a twenty-four- to forty-eight-hour rule: within twenty-four to forty-eight hours, you call people with potential and have a deeper conversation.

Confession time: I fail at the 24-to-48-hour rule. But I think it is a good goal to have. As the authors say, “If you wait too long, people are likely to forget about your conversation and the interest the experienced when speaking with you face-to-face.”

If you don’t follow up, most of your outreach efforts will be wasted.

Follow up, and fast.

Thank you so much to everyone who has donated to the Birthday Challenge. Our latest total is $1004! That’s enough to have the peace fairy run in the Dexter Ann Arbor Run.

What I’ve heard as the most asked-for requests are:
–Peace Fairy
–Lorax
–Shaved head

We could do all 3 for $1,750. AND we could support a great local group that brings people together for peace and justice.

Last month I posted about the declining influence of “old media” and the challenges it creates for organizers.

I didn’t expect one month later to hear that our local paper, the Ann Arbor News, is closing, to be replaced with AnnArbor.com

After the news I was talking to the education director at the University of Michigan Exhibit Museum of Natural History, Kira Berman, who told me that one of her key outreach strategies of public events is to get them listed in the paper.

So much for that.

Now, what do we do?

The easy answer is that we need to incorporate new technologies into our outreach strategies.

But it’s not that easy.

The new media do not have the same following that the old, mass media did. In a world of 3 TV networks, each of them had a lot of influence. In a world of 100 TV channels + netflix + insane numbers of YouTube videos + blogs + everything else, nothing has the same influence that the old systems had.

This means 2 thigns:

1. You don’t need to work as hard to get a somebody to carry your story.
2. You have to work harder because you need more somebodies to carry your story.

I still have to think about how we get those more somebodies. Stay tuned.

We’re up to $570 raised for my birthday challenge. That’s enough to get me to recite the Lorax on Main Street, but so far the most votes go for a shaved head.

The idea of a peace fairy running the Dexter-Ann Arbor Run is getting a lot of buzz, but we’re $430 away from that. Will we make it?

We’re still on for my Birthday Challenge, where my friends, neighbors, and co-workers get to pay to see me make a fool of myself in public all to support the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice.

So after getting some feedback about how I should embarrass myself for the birthday challenge.

Now, here’s the list:

• 

  $250 and my noggin could look like this

  If we raise $250, I’ll shave my head. “Bic it” as they say. I’ll end up looking something like Seth Godin.  OR I’ll provide all donors with a jar of preserves, a loaf of homemade bread, or a bottle of homebrew (out of towners will have to kick in for shipping).

• If we raise $500, I’ll recite The Lorax on a soap box on Main Street wearing a Cat in the Hat hat. It would be a nice Earth Day event (yes video will be taken.
• If we raise $750, I’ll make my own version of the Lazy Sunday music video. Choose this one at your own risk, I’m not that musically talented.
• 

  Yes, for $1000 raised for ICPJ I would dress up like this...in public.

  If we raise $1,000, I’ll Run the Dexter Ann Arbor run in fairy wings with a tiara and a wand. It might look something like this, only for real, not for incompetently photoshopped;

• and the grand prize, if we raise $2,500 I will wear a similar pink fairy costume all day, including to a board meeting, walking around campus, and downtown for dinner out.

Donations are accepted from now until March 31 either through Network for Good or through the Facebook Causes application. Every $50 get you 1 vote ($5-$50 is 1 vote, $51-$100 is 2, etc). If you’re not into online giving, you can mail donations to ICPJ, 730 Tappan, Ann Arbor, MI 48104. Make checks out to “ICPJ” and put “Chuck’s Challenge” in the subject line.

I want to point out that we can overshoot a goal and still go back to an earlier “prize.” So if you really want to hear the Lorax, but we raise $1,000, people can still vote to hear me recite. And remember, if that’s what you want, the more you donate the more you get to vote.

Finally, if any great ideas come up for other “prizes,” we can add them to the list. Voting will begin after the challenge finishes up.

I'm willing to make a fool of myself for a good cause. What type of public humiation should I do? How much is it worth to you?

So I was inspired by the Beth’s Blog stories about people publicly humiliating themselves for good causes. So I figured, “hey, my birthday is coming up, maybe I should make a fool of myself and raise some cash for the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice.”

So here’s the plan: I’m taking suggestions for what I should offer as a prize for reaching our fundraising goal.

Here are my initial thoughts:

• Every donor gets either a bottle of homebrew birthday beer, a loaf of bread, or a can of preserves (okay, it’s not embarrassing, but it is tasty);
• Make my own version of the Lazy Sunday music video;
• Shave my head;
• Recite The Lorax on a soap box on Main Street for Earth Day while wearing a Cat in the Hat hat;
• Run the Dexter Ann Arbor run in fairy wings with a tiara and a wand;

So these are my ideas, but somehow I figure you have other ideas for what I could do. Offer them up in the comments, and on Tuesday, March 17 I’ll come up with the humiliation list.

Now for the fine print:

• I reserve the right to disqualify actions (sorry, no public nudity);
• Not every act of public humiliation is worth the same amount of money. For example, I’d shave my head for $250, but the tiara would take at least $1,000;
• Donations accepted until March 31, 2009;
• Everyone who donates gets to vote on what I do.  ($5 to $49 donors get 1 vote; $50 to $99 donors get 2 votes, $100 to $249 get get 4 votes; each $250 donation gets you 8 votes) Every $50 get you 1 vote ($5-$50 is 1 vote, $51-$100 is 2, etc);
  
• I can donate and vote too, so I might choose to put something really out there as one of the options and then start a bidding war over whether or not I actually have to go through with it.

You don’t have to wait until we pick the humiations, you can start donating now. If you’re not into online giving, you can mail donations to ICPJ, 730 Tappan, Ann Arbor, MI 48104. Make checks out to “ICPJ” and put “Chuck’s Challenge” in the subject line.

“The number-one rule about politics, like fundraising and movement building, is that it is all about relationships.”
–Mike Roque in Grassroots Fundraising Journal

Organizing is all about relationships. Fundraising is just organizing for money, and political activity is organizing for policy.

And they are all about relationships.

Sometimes, though, activists resist building relationships with potitical figures.  We spend so much time criticizing the political establishment we convince ourselves we should have nothing to do with it.

I believe it is a mistake when we refuse to build relationships with people in positions of power.

Some activists have a vision of themselves as the perpetual outsider, and that limits our ability to get inside where the decisions are made.

Yes, sometimes doors are closed to us, but sometimes what keeps us outside is that we don’t even try to open the doors because we assume they are closed to people like us.

So go ahead, build those relationships. Try to open that door (as a person rather than as a rampaging cause). Create human connections. Establish the lines of communication that will carry the policy changes you want to see forward.

If you’re a community organizer, your job is to help people take actions that lead to positive social change.

Sure,  there’s other important dynamics about leadership development, issue education, and community building, but if you don’t help people take action, you’re not doing your job.

And if you’ve been doing this work for longer than a week, you know that getting people to take action takes a bit more work than just saying “go do something about this issue.”

So, how can you make it more likely that people will act?

1. Make it very clear what action you want people to take.

While you think about your issue 25 hours a day, you’re lucky if the people you work with think about your issue 25 minutes a week. That means that if they have to take the time to figure out what to do about global warming, human trafficking, or banning cluster bombs, they just won’t do it.

So you’re job is to make it very clear what you want them to do. Here are some examples:

• “Call Representative Bigwig and at 1-800-cashbag and tell him to listen to support the Voter Power Bill, HR 1234, limiting the power of big-money lobbyists. Here’s a script for you.”
• “Show up at the corner of Rise and Up at 12:30 on March Fourth to join the rally to save the legless turtles.”
• “Come to our office at 123 Sesame Street from 3-5 on Friday to help us mail out our newsletter.”

All these examples tell people exactly what they need to do. They don’t need to ponder it or puzzle out exactly what do do, they just need to do it.

2. Get people to make a commitment to act, preferably a public one.

Often we are engaging with people to take action, but they need to go home to take the action. So we tell them, “When you get home, make this call,” or “write this letter.”

The problem is that many people will say, “I’ll think about it,” but by the time they get home they’ve cooled off and now their more worried about doing the dishes than they are about taking your action.

One way to up your chances that they’ll write your letter before doing the dishes to get them to commit to acting. For example, we could tell them:

What I need you to do when you get home is to pick up a pen and paper and write a letter to Senator Beltway telling him to save the legless turtles. Will you do that? Hands up everyone who will write that letter. Look around! This is exiting! Now I want you to plan it out right now. Where is your paper? Where are your stamps? Write that letter before you turn on American Idol or Lost, and together we will save the noble legless turtles.

Notice here that people had to make a commitment in the moment to take action. They decided then and there to take action, rather than putting off the decision until they got home.

Yes, there’s also a bit of peer pressure here, you don’t want to be the only heartless clod without her hand up.

Peer pressure is part of the power of a public commitment. Also, a public commitment creates public accountability. People will realize “Miguel saw me raise my hand and commit to writing a letter. Maybe he’ll ask me about it next time we meet. I’d better write that letter.”

There’s also a bit of visualization here so that people know what they’re doing right when they get home.

3. Remove barriers to action.

If you want people to write a letter, as in the example above, think about what they have to do. They have to remember until they get home. They have to find paper, an envelope, a stamp, the address to write to, and think about what they have to say.

How many of these barriers can you remove?

I can tell you from experience you will have more people write letters if you give them paper, envelopes, a sample letter, the recipient’s address, and some time to write a letter just then, especially if they know you expect to collect their letters before they leave and that you’ll stamp and mail them.

If you make it easy to act, more people will act.

4. Follow up.

Okay, so you can’t get people to take action then and there, but you passed around a clipboard or you asked people to fill out a pledge card commiting to take action.

Now follow up with them.

The next day send them an email with the sample letter and address to remind them to take action.

Three days later have a volunteer phone bank to ask them if they’ve written that letter yet (and if they want to come to your fundraiser in two weeks).

We’re all so busy these days we tend to do what we’re reminded to do, so you want to be the one reminding, not the one forgotten about.

Yes, I know it takes a bit more work to figure out exactly what you want people to do, to get them to make a commitment, to make it easy for them to act, and to follow up.

But if you do these, you will see a lot more people take action. You will be farther along in winning the postive change. And you will be serving the people you work with by helping them create a better world.