THE CAMPAIGN TEAM
IN WIS CHAPTER
• The Campaign Committee
• Campaign Committee Packets 8 The Treasurer
• T/je Campaign Manager
• Ten Tips for Campaign Managers
• 77ie Campaign Chair or Co-Chairs 8 Finding Volunteers
• Potential Volunteer Sources
• Volunteer Sign-Up Sheet
For the purposes of Ibis handbook, "campaign team" refers to all those who help organize your efforts. It is made up of the committee, the treasurer, your volunteers, and each of the individual teams that oversee a portion of the campaign. Your media team, for example, may have a liaison to the campaign committee, but it should be viewed as part of your overall campaign team rather than part of the committee itself. Aspects of the campaign team will be covered in this chapter. Campaign efforts that involve large numbers of people and independent efforts, such as lawn sign activities, media projects, brochure development, and fund-raising, will be covered in separate chapters.
The Campaign Committee
The relatively small campaign committee serves two functions: First, it is a support group, both for itself and for the candidate or issue-based campaign: second, it is the primary source of expertise for the campaign. This small, select group will maneuver and steer a campaign while drawing on the
7
8 g THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
The Campaign Team til 9
resources of the community. The committee should consist of individuals who have different personal strengths and areas of ability.
Your campaign committee is an insiders' group. The candidate, the manager, and each of the members must feel safe in speaking candidly without fear of recrimination. Treat them like insiders and keep them informed of
any campaign development. You would never want a committee member to first learn about a problem with the campaign
"The impersonal hand of government can never replace the
helping hand of a neighbor."
-Hubert 1 lumphrey
in the newspaper or through the rumor mill. Call or e-mail your committee members often. Welcome their criticisms. Encourage them and support their individual efforts in the campaign. Listen carefully to determine when they might need additional help. Be clear about their tasks, expectations, and time commitment.
Take time in choosing the right number of people for a campaign committee. 1 have worked on countywide campaigns with four committee members (including the candidate), which was too few, and citywide campaigns with twelve members, which was too many. I have found that six or seven committee members for a city with a population of up to 20,000 is perfect. In countywide campaigns a successful committee might also include members from each city who oversee teams within their respective cities.
You want only enough committee members to cover the campaign activities that you have decided to do. Keep in mind that not all campaign activities occur at the same time, so it is often possible to have more than one task assigned to a single committee member. For example, the campaign brochure is written and printed at the beginning of the campaign, whereas the demands on the canvassing coordinator are greatest toward the end of the campaign. On the other hand, fund-raising responsibilities and clerical team coordination are both ongoing tasks and should not be combined with any other campaign responsibilities.
Once the campaign starts, meet with the committee each week for one hour. For citywide campaigns where people are not traveling great distances, it isn't a bad idea to meet in the evening after 8:00 p.m., when children have been taken care of and the day's work is done. Up to a point, the later you meet, the better, because people are ready for their day to be done, so they arrive on time and get right down to work. Few people function well after 10:00 r.m., so at 9:30 be ready to call it quits. Try to keep committee meetings to one hour unless it, is the first meeting and you're setting up the campaign. For this first meeting, allow additional time by starting the meeting earlier,
or have the meeting at a different time—for example, set. up a morning retreat followed by a lunch at which the campaign becomes official. For countywide campaigns, it works well for the committee to meet in a central location at the end of the workday before dinner.
"The time to win a fight is before it starts''
—Frederick W. Lewis
Campaign Committee Packets
Your committee may quickly break down into specialized campaign functions. Once specialized groups are formed, keep track of their progress by getting reports back each week. When the committee meets, meetings should be productive. Always have an agenda. It is important that all meetings begin and end on time.
A campaign committee packet (figure 1.1) is a great organizational tool for committee members. (The finance committee packets, discussed in Chapter 4, are assembled in a similar fashion.) Each pocket folder contains tiered sheets of alternating colors organized by category for the tasks the committee will undertake in the course of the campaign, such as lawn signs, canvassing, phone banks, letlers-to-the-editor. and so on. Although one sheet should be dedicated to listing committee members and all
contact information for each, the remaining sheets clearly outline job descriptions for each campaign duty and indicate who will oversee that particular job. The folders travel with committee members to war room meetings and contain information that may be distributed there. Helping volunteers with this kind of organizational framework keeps members happy and makes your campaign a little more volunteer friendly.
In addition to the weeldy meeting for the full committee, occasionally get together with the individuals who are responsible for specific campaign tasks, and bring this information back to the committee. For example, you may meet with the ad person to hammer out two or three ads and then bring these to the regular committee meeting to have them critiqued.
Other than the treasurer and the campaign manager, the makeup of the campaign committee is discretionary, based upon how many people will be needed l.o plan and supervise the campaign. You will depend on the people you invite to join your campaign committee, so they should be capable of organizing and directing some particular aspect of the campaign. In addition to a treasurer and a campaign manager, your committee must include one or more people to oversee letters-to-the-cdilor, canvassing, clerical work, brochures, the media, lawn signs, phone banks, fund-raising, getting out the vote, and volunteer workers.
10 g THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
The Campaign Team
GOTV* Get Out the Vole Event Coordinator Letters to die Editor = Lawn Signs Vblurtfeer Coordinators Field Signs
ll!,.,lc 2i l^c signs priEKd.
Speaking Engagements Canvassing Clerical Team Phoac B;ink> Media
i& .       4^ jftk
Figure 1.1 Example of a Campaign Committee Packet
The Treasurer
I usually ask a volunteer to serve as the campaign treasurer. I look for someone who is well respected in the community and who will lend credibility to an issue-based campaign or balance a candidate campaign, Selecting the right person for this position is one of Hie most important things you will do. The name of your treasurer will appear on every campaign publication. He or she will be called from time to time by the press, or even the opposition, and asked questions. Like a vice-president in a presidential election, the treasurer should balance the ticket. For example, if you are a retired senior, select a prominent, involved, young person of the opposite sex. If you are a young progressive man and relatively new to your community, consider an older conservative woman who has been in town a number of years. Find a person who complements rather than merely repeats your strengths. If you're a Democrat, find a respected Republican, if you are working for more taxes for
"If you want something done, ask a busy person."
—Benjamin Franklin
schools, get someone who is conservative and who may have sometimes spoken out against tax increases.
If possible, find someone willing to represent the campaign, discharge the official duties of treasurer, and help in other ways. For example, a treasurer may take on all thank-you notes and keep donor files up-to-date in a database. In one campaign I managed, the treasurer sat in on war room meetings, canvassed, helped with lawn signs, and oversaw data input on campaign donations, but this level of involvement by the treasurer is the exception and not the rule.
The treasurer is usually responsible for obtaining and completing the registration forms required for participation in an election. The necessary forms can be obtained from the city recorder's office for city races, from the county clerk's office for county races, and from the election division under the secretary of state for elections to state offices. Don't be afraid to use these offices. The people who staff government offices are extremely helpful and accommodating.
Not all the forms and information in the election packet are necessary or applicable to every race or election. Ask exactly what yuu need to read, wiiat is required, and when it is required. Ask either the clerk or the recorder for a schedule of the pertinent dates for filing your campaign contributions and expenditures. While the filing of these reports is the principal job of the treasurer, it is a good idea for both the candidate and the campaign manager to be aware of them, These tasks should be placed on your campaign flowchart, calendar, or plan as a reminder.
Finally, I now also use a certified public accountant (CPA) in all campaigns. If I can't find one who will volunteer to oversee the reports, I use campaign funds to hire one. Having a CPA on board is actually a great comfort to the volunteer treasurer and helps reduce the overall stress of a demanding campaign cycle. The CPA and the treasurer should work together closely.
Contributions and F.xpenditures
Your treasurer and the CPA should be sticklers for detail. The opposition will be examining your contributions and expenditures (C&Es) filings lor any
"Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated, simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity."
—Charles IVlingus
THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
The Campaign Team
i 13
mistakes Lo report to the state elections office. If a mistake is found, it is bound to make the local papers. That sort of damage is totally preventable.
After the C&E forms have been filed, local papers generally do a story on who spent how much on what. If you are running a modest campaign and your opposition is funded by outside money, make sure that information makes it to the media. Running a visibly hard-working campaign with modest funds gives people the sense that you are fiscally responsible. That trait is desirable in office, and people will make the connection.
Although it is difficult to work on a campaign where the opposition has unlimited funds, it can also work in your favor. In a small community election that involves no TV ads, there is just so much ad space to buy in the newspaper and just so much direct mail that can be sent to homes without it becoming pretty clear that the election is being bought. In one campaign I ran, we were outspent five to one by the opposition, and we publicized this spending discrepancy to our advantage. When the newspapers ran the usual C&E article, many in the community were stunned by the amount of money coming in from outside interests. Since we had a pretty good idea of how much they were spending, wc were ready when the press called for our reaction. Supporters wrote and sent letters-to-the editor for those who missed the newspaper articles when they first appeared.
In that particular race, the opposition was convinced that the accounting in our campaign was wrong and sent people to the recorder's office on a regular basis to check our C&Es. This is where having a meticulous treasurer pays off. Finally, convinced of foul play, the opposition called the paper and suggested there must be something wrong. When the press called me, I explained that we were in fact spending a normal amount for a small-town race and it was the opposition whose expenditures were excessive. We got another great, newspaper story.
Committee to Support
Given the importance of a good treasurer, what do you do if you can't find the right one for you? Not to worry. You have two options. First, you can place a short list of carefully selected supporters (six to nine) at the bottom of all your literature and ads. This "Committee to Support" should represent a good cross-section of the community. Although some of these people might be working on your campaign, this is not your "campaign committee.'' The primary job of this group is to give your cause credibility by lending their names. Depending on the issue, the "committee to support" may include people in business, environmental groups, real estate, labor, and so on.
Using a "committee to support" works well if you have broad-based support up front; however, it does not work at all if your support is marginal. I once worked on a campaign that was so controversial that I could get only three people to sign their names to the committee-to-support list. Rather than have such a short list, which didn't cover the political spectrum of the city, I dropped the notion of listing the committee. In i'act, it helped the campaign to discover the level of controversy so early in the campaign. Information of this sort should not discourage, but rather help set the course.
Let me caution you here. When you are working on a very controversial campaign and have a listed "committee to support" at the bottom of all your literature, you take the risk of opponents to the campaign getting to one or more of those who are listed and undermining your public support. The newspapers also may call these people and grill them on the cause. This can get a little dicey. I find it best to
use a "committee to support" for
,      ,      , ,., . "Puttina a bunch of people to work on the
relatively umcnown candidates or °
,.              .        ...... same problem doesn't make them a team"
dithcult yet u ncontroversial mitia- 1
..         '                   i         u    i — Gerald M. Weinberg (The Psychology of
tives or measures such as school a         J J
iv v-u      f   a- Computer Programming)
or public library funding. 1 5 &/
Another option you have if the
"perfect" treasurer cannot be found is to simply press on. Look for someone
who is thorough, honest, easy to work with, trustworthy, and committed to
your cause or candidate. Talk to your personal accountant or the person who
prepares your taxes. CPAs have great community credibility, and they may be
willing to provide report preparation on a pro bono basis or at a reduced rate.
The Campaign Manager
The campaign manager is the single most important position in a campaign. Where other jobs have finite responsibilities and time commitments, the job of campaign manager is open-ended. It is a lot to ask of anyone, especially on a volunteer
"Even the highest towers begin from the ground."
-Chinese saying
basis. For this reason it is usually the first and sometimes the only paid position.
A campaign manager will interact with your volunteers more than any other person
in the campaign, so good communication skills are a must, especially phone skills. The duties of the campaign manager vary greatly, depending on the number of individuals working in the inner circle. In general, he or she will do such tilings as attend coffees, debates, and events with the candidate and
M n THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
The Campaign Team
i 15
set up sign-in sheets while lending moral support. The campaign manager also must give candid feedback Lo the candidate without being indelicate.
If you are running a countywide partisan election campaign, having a manager is critical. You need someone to oversee it all and to be a source of support for the candidate. If you're working on an issue-based campaign, you can serve as the campaign manager with the use of this handbook. Although 1 believe it is a mistake to run for office without a campaign manager, if you are running for office in a small city, you can probably get away with it. Whether you're serving as your own campaign manager or have hired one, you still need capable people to head up various campaign tasks such as lawn signs, canvassing, and letters-to-the-editor. The most effective campaign teams are those with volunteer team members supervised by a strong manager.
Potential Sources for a Campaign Manager
I highly recommend teachers as campaign managers. They are generally smart, organized, articulate, and personable. They are able to speak to large groups of people and ask for things in simple, understandable ways. They tend to know computers, have a nice collection of presentable clothes, work hard, and are generally politically savvy. They are also likely to be available all summer. If you choose wisely, a teacher who is a campaign manager will force you to get everything ready during the summer so that your fall campaign will go much easier. The drawback of using a teacher is that he or she may be overwhelmed with school responsibilities in the fall and less available to the campaign.
Other potential sources for campaign managers are development directors for local charities, private schools, or nonprofit organizations. These people might consider short-term work for a candidate, and they will have a proven track record. Other leads: people who have worked on other political campaigns, for a United Way campaign, or for a Heart/Lung Association fund drive; and those who have organized local parades, 4-H fair shows, concerts, or county fairs.
In general, a good campaign manager is hard working, organized, intelligent, self-confident, and loyal. And, because appearance is important, this person should reflect the values and style of the candidate or campaign.
Maintaining Control
Recently 1 was an adviser to a campaign where the manager became problematic; he was parking illegally on city-owned land and then hassling the police with a "do-you-know-who-l'm-working-for?" attitude. To make mat-
ters worse, volunteers were complaining to the candidate about the campaign manager being unnecessarily rude. The candidate was at the end of his rope and called me to help find a way to let this volunteer go.
Although a candidate does not need this kind of stress, firing a volunteer manager can bring more headaches than it cures. So short of firing the manager, what can the candidate do?
First, the candidate always has the option of reorganizing the campaign so that the "manager" has less involvement and responsibility. Second, the candidate could deal with the campaign manager and the situation in a clear and straightforward manner. He or she could kindly explain how others were interpreting the manager's actions and how they were reflecting negatively on the campaign and the candidate. Because campaign managers are so closely affiliated with the candidate, there is an assumption that their activities are condoned by the candidate. A problematic situation like this must get immediate attention. Campaigns not only allow the community to see how a candidate will perform both publicly and under pressure but also allow the candidate to get some experience in dealing with awkward situations
We ve run into a couple of problems,
and people. Once in office, difficult peo-
but nothing minor."
-Brenda Collier
pie materialize all the time. If none of this works, the volunteer m ust be fired.
When running for state legislative office, be prepared to pay the campaign manager handsomely. A good manager will bring many skills lo the table and can mean big money to your campaign. Individuals, organizations, political action committees (PACs), and lobbyists want to contribute to "winning" campaigns, and your manager is a big indicator. A strong, experienced, well organized, hardworking manager wiii bring an air of confidence to a candidate and campaign team. A candidate should listen to the campaign manager and follow his or her advice.
Ten Tips for Campaign Managers
1. Know the budget and have control of the checkbook.
2. Allow only one person to do scheduling for the candidate. This must be someone who works well with the candidate and is highly organized.
3. Manage the team/consultants and monitor their progress.
4. Hire professionals to develop campaign literature and television/ radio spots.
5. Be positive, supporting, and encouraging to the candidate.
THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
The Campaign Team        M 17
6. Raise money—lots and lots of money.
7. Loyalty is more important than experience.
8. Never waste donors' money.
9. Be organized.
10. Do not waste volunteers' time.
The Campaign Chair or Co-Chairs
When working on an issue-based campaign, the messenger is the message. Who heads it up is therefore directly linked to the success of the campaign. Here you have the choice of using either one person serving as a campaign chair or two people serving as co-chairs. Campaign chairs should be noncon-troversial leaders in your community and may either serve in "name only" as a figurehead or as the actual campaign co-coordinator. Mostly they are the face of the campaign. They meet the media, they are part of the war room, and they work the endorsement circles of the community—the Rotary Club, the Chamber of Commerce, business leaders, and more. They gain power and stature when they seemingly have nothing personally to gain by the passage of the measure, So avoid using someone as a campaign chair who has a vested interest in the outcome of a campaign, such as a county commissioner for a county tax base.
Choose your co-chairs carefully. Well-"Loyalty is more important than respected community leaders with a
experience." strong community network are best.
—Bill Meuleman Their community relationships are part of the network the campaign will lean on to raise money and activate volunteers. They should balance each other, in gender and in interests. For a county measure, one may be from the rural area with ranching or farming ties, the other from the city with business ties. Selection of your chair or co-chairs is completely dependent on the ballot measure
If the right chair or co-chairs cannot be found, don'I. use a campaign
chair, but be sure to have top people able to respond to the press and willing to debate the opposition.
Finding Volunteers
Finding and directing volunteers is almost the same for each campaign task. Although the tasks vary considerably, only a small modification is necessary to organize your volunteer force for each specialized campaign activity.
Regardless of the activity, there are seven important things to remember about using volunteers:
1. Don't waste the volunteers' time. Have everything laid out and ready to go the moment they walk in the door. Begin and end on time. Do not encourage late arrivals by delaying the start of meetings.
2. Be prepared with anything they might need. If the task is to stuff envelopes, make sure there are enough stamps, sponges, pens, staples, and other necessities.
3. Call them ahead of time and let them know what they need to bring, such as extra staplers, clipboards, good walking shoes, a truck, etc.
4. Be clear about their tasks, expectations, and time commitments. Give clear written instructions and deadlines. This is especially important for those on phone banks.
5. Pick the right people for the job. Don't ask out-of-shape people to canvass hillsides with a 6 percent grade; don't place counterculture people as canvassers in conservative areas.
6. Keep volunteers informed, and support them. When you call, let them know how the campaign is going. Be sensitive to their schedules.
7. Treat your volunteers as you would highly paid employees.
it is a serious mistake to value volunteer time less simply because it is free. Disorganized campaigns lead to irritated and frustrated workers who may not return if things seem poorly run more than once. Some of the very best volunteers will not come back after even one bad encounter. To avoid such problems, the manager should assemble clerical teams to help set up other tasks, such as stapling lawn signs in preparation for the lawn sign team or looking up phone numbers for phone bankers. This preplanning is vital to creating a volunteer-friendly campaign, helps ensure the success of campaign activities, and allows the campaign to place people in jobs where they will work best.
Matching Volunteers to Skills
Although a small campaign can be run without volunteers, it would be a mis-lake to do so. When people work for a campaign, they become invested and want to see that investment pay off. Also, involving people in the process brings more interest to government and
the political system. There is, however,      "Nothing is particularly hard, if you
one caution: If potential workers indicate     divide it int0 smaUj0bs."
an unwillingness to do a particular activ- —Henry For
ity, don't make the mistake of begging
and pleading to get help in that task.
I once placed a woman on the phones who told me she didn't like to phone. I found it hard to believe that in this day and age anyone would have
18 g THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
The Campaign Team fl 19
"In life, as in any game whose outcome depends on both skill and luck, the rational response to bad. odds is to try harder!'
—Marvin Harris
trouble talking on the phone—plus I was desperate. What a mistake. She was painfully uncomfortable calling people she didn't know and projected a poor image of the campaign. I couldn't take her off once 1 saw my error, because that would have called further attention to the problem, making her more uncomfortable. I left her on the phone for about a half hour and then told her that I had finished my work and asked if she would mind if we shared her
phone. She gratefully gave it up. Similarly, if a volunteer reports that he doesn't like to canvass, believe him. It is better for the campaign to have people doing tasks they enjoy.
Here is a tip for placing people who say they would rather not call or canvass: Some who do not like to work phones actually do not like to make "cold calls"—that is, they do not like to call people who may be opposed to the candidate or measure. Quite often, these same people may be willing to make calls to identified supporters, such as in a get-out-the-vote effort. Similarly with canvassers, some do not like to canvass because they dislike knocking on doors and talking to the residents. However, these same people may be willing to do a literature drop, a door hanger, install lawn signs, or other tasks where knocking and talking are not involved.
Supervise volunteers so workers who do not do well on a task are not called a second time to help in the same task. For instance, if a volunteer is struggling at a phone bank, simply note it in the spreadsheet you use to keep track of volunteers or on the volunteer's 3-by-5-inch contact card (see Chapter 3, "The Volunteer Organization"), so that campaign workers will not mistakenly call the person again for that task. Similarly, if an individual is great at a task like phoning, keep him or her away from other campaign activities to avoid campaign burnout. Use volunteers where they excel.
The same kind of supervision is necessary for each volunteer activity. For example, if a canvasser returns without notes for lawn signs, no impressions of voter attitudes, and having only partially covered the assigned area, perhaps canvassing is not the best job for that person. Note this in the volunteer data system. Be sure to make a note as to why, and move that person over to something like lawn sign placement and maintenance. If it can be avoided, do not place volunteers in jobs where they will have a bad time or reflect poorly on the campaign. Attention to these kinds of details helps volunteers be more successful and keeps them returning to help in future elections.
Potential Volunteer Sources
Those involved in grassroots campaigning must find people willing to help. Finding volunteers can initially seem daunting, but remember, the only people you can be certain will not help you are those you do not ask. The following is a list of places to look:
Your family, friends, and business associates Women's rights groups
Former candidates, office holders, and their volunteers Local service groups Labor unions
Teachers or school associations
Any special interest groups dealing, for example, with the environment, human services, hunting, and fishing
"Nonpolitical issues are the most political,"
—Bill Meulemans
In nearly every election there is an issue so controversial that voters will act solely on the basis of the opposing positions held by the two candidates. These issues create voters who become "ticket
splitters because they allow an issue to influence what would otherwise be a straight-line party vote. Issues that lead to ticket splitting can motivate a voter to work or vote against a candidate rather than for a candidate.
In general, issues that create ticket splitters can translate into both volunteers and money for your campaign. Here is a list of some groups and issues that are more inclined than most to let a single issue influence their votes:
Veterans
Sportsmen, fly-fishermen, and hunters
Fnvironmenta lists
Timber and logging advocates
Choice
Land-use advocates Seniors
Tax and antitax groups
Gay rights and anti-gay rights activists
Public union employees
Identifiable work groups such as teachers and firefighters Advocates for gun ownership
20 5 THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
Volunteer Sign-Up Sheet
In addition to finding volunteers in the groups listed above, you can create a form (see figure 1.2) for sign-ups at coffees, debates, and gatherings once the campaign is under way.
VOLUNTEER SiGN-UP SHEET		1 would like to volunteer for the following (please check all that apply):							
(i     ■ )	Home Phone		721	Clerical	Lawn Sign Location		.SSI	Endor. ad?	E-mail
									
									
									
					i				
									
									
									
									
									
									
									
		\							
									
				-					
									
Figure 1.2 Example of a Volunteer Sign-Up Sheet
"Public business, my son, must always be done by somebody. ..if wise men decline it, others will not; if honest men refuse it, others will not" —John Adams
3
THE VOLUNTEER ORGANIZATION
IN THIS CHAPTER
• Methodology
• Phone Banks
» Phone Bank Locations
• Clerical Workers
• Time Allotments for Volunteer Tasks
No matter where you find your volunteers, a campaign must, have a system to organize, direct, and assign responsibilities. The system 1 describe here can be used either with index cards or with a spreadsheet program such as Excel. The methodology as presented in each of these activities really works. If you use it as outlined, you will be able to utilize you r volunteers better and run a more effective campaign.
Methodology
Here is how to keep track of campaign volunteers:
Using volunteer sign-up sheets (see figure 1.1), remittance envelopes (see figure 4.4), and lists from other campaigns and support groups, you can begin to amass names of people willing to work, contribute, host a lawn sign, and write letters-to-the-editor. If your campaign is beginning cold, the first thing to do is to contact other campaigns
of like-minded people or similar efforts to      „„,      ,. , .  ,. ,
1 liese mines are good in Little determine whether those campaigns ., . ,
measure and evil in large: veast, salt,
will give you their list of supporters.
r,    "     „   ,.       r ■    ,   ,    ,r    -,       and hesitation.
Contact all cr your friends, local family m,   „, ,
—The lalmud
members, people on committees or organizations in which you participate,
53
THE CAMPAIGN MAMAGER
The Volunteer Organization
business associates, members of your church and of any clubs you belong to, and members of organizations with similar political leanings. Build a database as quickly as possible.
If you are using a spreadsheet program, list all of your contacts, from your initial cold calls as well as from cards, remits, and sign-up sheets generated by your campaign. This will be your master list. Here are the column names that should run along the top of your master list: last name, first, spouse/partner, street number, street, city, zip, phone. Volunteer work and services categories (which can be filled in with yes or no) include phone work, canvass, clerical, lawn sign, lawn sign install, LTEs (Letters-to-the-Editor), and endorsement ad. Finally a column labeled $ indicates whether a volunteer has also contributed funds, and a column labeled notes may contain brief comments (see figure 3.1).
Although there is a column for donations ($), remember, this sheet is for volunteer activities. The $ column simply tracks which of your volunteers have also contributed money. Since states have specific filing requirements for campaign donors, it is important to keep track of donor information
$: Donation fimount & Dotes, Receipt?,
Thank you
Partner's Name (Cross-reference if different)
Address
Kotes
Phone/Cell:
Home:
Work:
fax:
email:
lililPi
t
jure 3.1 Example of an Excel Spreadsheet for Keeping Track of Volunteer Workers
FiH^re 3.2 Example of a 3-by-5-Inch Contact Card
apart from your volunteer spreadsheet. An example of a donation spreadsheet can be found in Chapter 4, figure 4.14.
If you are using index cards, place all information for each volunteer on a single card (see figure 3.2). Because index cards cannot be sorted by category as easily as spreadsheet entries, you need a system that will give you volunteer information at a glance. Before I moved all my systems to Excel, [ color-coded my cards with colored stickers. Working from the upper right-hand corner toward the left, fold the stickers over the card's fop edge so that they look like half circles
on each side of your card; this way the color-coding can be seen from the top oi the index box at a glance. For each person contacted, an index card will be generated. Keep ail cards together in one box.
The color-coding indicates which campaign activities the volunteer will work on, such as lawn sign placement, phone banks, canvassing, or clerical work. Use a color scheme that works for you and your campaign, but keep in mind that using more than four colors can easily crowd a 3-by-5-inch card.
"It is one of the beautiful compensations of life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.'
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
56 IJ THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
The Volunteer Organization
1 57
The "notes" section of your spreadsheet or card is important. This is where you note such information as "Won't canvass hills"; "Don't call early a.m."; "Don't call after 8:00 p.m."; "Horrible on phones"; and "Has three staple guns." Also use this section to make a note when someone has been rude ("Do not contact again"), so that other campaign volunteers needn't be subjected to it. After hundreds of phone calls, it is impossible to remember such details if a record is not kept somewhere.
Organize Volunteer Activities
Once information is in your spreadsheet or on the index cards, you're ready to set up volunteer activities.
If you are using Excel, follow these directions carefully: The spreadsheet containing the information about the volunteers will say "Sheet T' in the tab at the bottom of the Excel window. Right-click the "Sheet 1" tab and rename it "Master" or "Raw Data." It is important that one sheet remain intact, in case subsequent sorting goes awry and the original information has to be retrieved for the list to be rebuilt. Naturally, as your pool of volunteers grows, you will add names to the Master sheet, and over time you will add notes and make address changes, but you never want to actually sort this list for any activity.
Once you have renamed Sheet 1 as "Master" (or whatever name you choose), go to the top and click on the empty corner in the upper left-hand
corner of the sheet, between the row beginning with A and the column beginning with 1. This will highlight your entire master list; now click edit, click copy, click the tab for Sheet 2, click the same empty square in the upper left (now this sheet: will be highlighted), click edit, and click paste. You now have a duplicate of your master list that you can sort and play with all you want.
If you want to set up a phone bank, highlight everything with text (you cannot use the blank square in the upper right-hand corner this time, because Excell will only sort a defined area). Click data, click sort, and under "Sort by," select the letter of the phone bank column. Then highlight the cells only of those who are willing to phone, and copy them to a third sheet, which you can label "Phones." Go through this list and delete all but the name and phone number(s), and add a column labeled "CB?" (call-back). Obviously, if I am just contacting people to see if they will help in a phone bank, I don't need the information in all the other categories listed on my master list. Be-
"Yoa can't have divided authority around a campaign headquarters,
—James Farley, Campaign Manager for FDR
fore printing this page, be sure to insert gridlines (on the page setup menu), as they make the list a lot easier to read. Also increase the width of the rows, so that you can easily write information as needed. Repeat this process for whatever activity you wish to undertake.
When using the index-card system to organize campaign volunteers, create campaign activity cards with 5-by-8-inch lined index cards set up as shown in figure 3.3. The following process works for activities such as phone banks, clerical work, canvassing, and lawn sign placement or maintenance. Once you have the 5-by-8-inch cards prepared, copy the names and phone numbers from the appropriate 3-by-5-inch cards onto them or a sheet of paper. (The 3-by-5-inch cards should never get far from their box.)
For both spreadsheet and index card systems:
Whatever the activity, have a number of dates lined up for it so that each volunteer is called only once for scheduling. When calling for an ongoing activity such as canvassing, have four or
"With their budgets warped towards media spending, candidates and their organizations are led to measure the progress of their campaigns only in terms of dollars raised and tracking polls. Many [candidates] lose due to their failure to organize large numbers of people in their campaigns"
—Morton Blackwell, The Leadership Institute, May-June 1998, newsletter
|     ACTIVITY: CANVAS 10/14				
NliMt	PHON€ #	CB?	9:30 RM-1 8:00	1- 2:30-5:00 m
				
				
				
				
				
				
				
				
				
				
				
Figure 3.3 Example of a 5-by-8-Inch Canvass Activity Card
58 g THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
The Volunteer Organization Q 59
five dates and times, so if one date doesn't work, another may. If a volunteer ean do none of the times offered, it is important to determine why and to note that on the card or spreadsheet. If it is a temporary schedule conflict, note when the conflict will be resolved. However, if il, sounds as though the volunteer will never do the activity, offer another campaign job. Keep this person on the phone until it can be determined what is going on. If it is clear that he or she will never volunteer, that person's name should be removed from the volunteer list. For now, however, the name remains on your working list with a line through it so that you will remember that you called. If you do not do this, you may forget and call again.
A couple of days before the activity, call back every volunteer who agreed to work and place a check in the "CB?" column. It is best to actually talk to the worker on the call-back, so leave a message only as a last resort. On the call-back, do not ask workers if they still intend to help. Do not even call to remind them directly of the upcoming volunteer activity. They said they would do it, and the tone of your conversation should reflect that verbal commitment. Plus, if they are very organized, they will resent the call. Instead think of this call as a small rattling of the cage and make it about something else: Remind them to bring a clipboard, or ask if they mind doing hills, or check to make sure that they were given the correct meeting place or the correct time. Whatever it is, it's your fault or it's about a small detail that wasn't addressed in the first, conversation. You're just checking to make sure the information given previously was correct. If the volunteer has forgotten, the call serves as a reminder. If the person inadvertently made other plans, this is your opportunity to reschedule. Potential no-shows, discovered by a phone call, are incredibly easy to reschedule.
Applying the Methodology
Every campaign consists of basic campaign activities, such as:
Running phone banks
Canvassing the voters Developing campaign events Designing ads or other media
Organizing clerical support (including thank-you notes) Preparing, installing, and maintaining lawn signs Raising money
Each of these activities is volunteer intensive. You can apply the techniques described above to find and keep track of volunteers, but each activ-
ity requires specific techniques. The method described above will be applied throughout this handbook to organize each activity.
Phone Banks
Phone banks can be used throughout a campaign and are the most, efficient way to retrieve information in a short period of time. They can be used to get a head count for a fund-raiser, to get lawn sign locations, to raise money, and to get the campaign more volunteers. If you plan to do a get-out-the-vote (GOTV) effort on election day, vou will have to identify (ID) voters who intend to vote for your candidate or cause. T'his can be done while canvassing, but il is easier and far more efficient to do it by phone. The GOTV effort itself is primarily done bv phone. When signing up volunteers, assure them that they will receive training before actually working on the phones.
Generally. I schedule a phone banker to work lor one hour and fifteen minutes (fifteen minutes for training and then one hour on the phone). Almost anyone will give up an hour or so for a campaign they believe in, and if it turns out that the volunteer is bad on the phone, an hour is plenty. However, if I am desperate or conducting fast, important calls, as in a GOTV effort, I will put seasoned callers on the phone for up to two hours. A caller who has worked for me in the past will let me know if the full two hours is too long. I then have others scheduled in to replace a caller coming off the phones early.
Have two to three shifts each evening. Volunteers must arrive fifteen minutes before their shift for training. No one likes to go on the phone cold, so people rarely miss training when it's offered and expected. Should time allow, consider doing a role-play with your volunteers—having one volunteer preterm! to call another.
Each phone bank should have a "lead." This is the person responsible for unlocking, training, cleaning, and closing up the phone bank. Training begins by handing a phone banker a brochure arid an instruction sheet, which should include prepared scripts. If the campaign is using volunteers to con duct a poll, a prepared script must be fol lowed to the letter; however, in all othe; phone bank activities, a caller who ad-libs will generally do best.
Once the volunteers have read the instructions, do a walkthrough of what is expected on the phones and explain any peculiarities the phone system may have (such as dialing 9 first). Tell volunteers where the bat hroom is, and let them know that you will be providing
"Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker
will be sorry''
—Mark Twain
60
THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
'.'. . it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.. ','
—Samuel Adams
water. Have a list for the lead of all the details that need to be shared with a new volunteer before he or she starts working the phone.
After a fifteen-minute training session, volunteers begin calling. The first twenty to thirty minutes that volunteers are on the phone, the lead should circulate, answer questions, and take water to people rather than making calls. The lead will have only ten or fifteen minutes between shifts, as the second crew will arrive for training fifteen minutes early, or forty-five minutes into the hour of the previous shift's calls. This way, exactly one hour after the first shift starts, volunteers get a tap on the shoulder from someone on the next shift, and they are off the phones.
Never tell people that you want them for a specific amount of time, then push them to stay longer. This is how a campaign can lose volunteers. When you ask someone to work for you, you have made a verbal contract with him or her for a specific job and a specific amount of time. Don't nudge.
Once the second shift is in place, happily making calls, supplied with water, and all campaign questions asked and answered, the lead must then call all those listed to volunteer on phone banks for the following evening. Giving a quick reminder of place and scheduled time for work avoids no-shows.
Note: Do not expect your phone bank people to look up phone numbers. Use a clerical team of volunteers to do that ahead of time.
Phone Bank Training
The following is an example of what you might prepare for your volunteers who are phoning for the campaign:
Thank you for your help. Tonight we are cold-calling people who live on arterial streets in hopes of beefing up our lawn sign list. While the lists you're calling have the same party registration as our candidate, they have not been previously identified as a supporter, just so you know, that may make some of the calls a little harder. Please make a note on your list next to the name of the voter whether he or she will take a lawn sign, and if not, whether that person will be supporting our candidate.
Boxes 3.1 and 3.2 are examples of two approaches for a phone script. What you ask for will vary according to the phone bank. You could be calling for lawn sign locations, money, volunteer workers, a head count for
"Hello, this is (your name). Tonight I am volunteering to help the Alan Bates campaign- As you may know, Alan is running for reelection to the House, and I was hoping )tw would consider having one of his lawn signs in front of your home."
If no, thank the caller and ask if Alan can count on his or her support in the upcoming election.
If yes, verify address and ask if there are any special instructions for where and how the homeowner would like the sign placed. Then say:
"Someone will be coming by to place the sign about six weeks before the election. We will also have some maintenance crews checking signs from lime to time. However, if you would occasionally check the sign and set it up if it falls over, that would be very helpful. When the sign is placed, there will be a note left on your door so you can contact the campaign should it disappear or be vandalized. Thanks for helping us out."
Box 3.1 Example of Phone Instructions and Script for Lawn Sign Locations
Before You Pick Up the Phone—
1.   Be proud of what you are doing. You are working for a cause you believe in. You are on the front iine of a campaign.
2    Think about what has motivated you to give, up your time to work for the candidate (or ballot measure). People will ask how a candidate stands on a particular issue. While you cannot speak directly to that, you can share why you are working for this individual (or cause).
3. Identify yourself only as a volunteer working for the campaign. Tn general, you want the candidate's name to make it into the consciousness of the voter, not yours, unless, of course, you know the person.
4. No matter what else happens, get something from the. individual before you get off the phone. "You can't canvass, ever? How about a lawn sign?" "You have a bad lawn-sign location? Do you have a friend who might want one?" "Can we use your name on the endorsement ad?" "Would you make a contribution?" Whatever. Y'ou want them in on the campaign with that single call, or to know how they will be voting. (This is helpful information for the campaign.)
5. And thank you for taking the time to help in this important cause.
Box ?■ 2 Example of Phone Bank Instruction
62 g
THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
The Volunteer Organization
"Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir mens blood.... Make big plans, aim. high in hope and. work"
—Daniel II. Btirnha
an event, or voter ID (that is, finding out whether or not a voter supports your campaign). Think about your mission, and prepare a short introduction
for the caller.
Phone Bank Locations
It can be difficult to locate enough phones for an effective phone session. I have found that real estate offices work best because people love to have company when calling, and they usually have five or more lines in the same
room. Law offices also may be an option, but in the typical office, callers wouldn't be able to see each other. Also, many law offices will be off-limits because of confidentiality concerns. Sometimes campaign headquarters for a bigger race (such as a presidential or gubernatorial contest) will let you use an office. You might also try labor unions and physicians' or insurance offices. In the past, many businesses that supported a cause or a candidate would open their doors for phone banks after hours. However, the advent of caller ID has made it tougher and tougher to find such locations. Still, it never
hurts to ask; on one campaign I was running, a Realtor who was working for the opposition let us use his pirones because we were friends.
A word of caution on real estate offices: In the last campaign cycle, while we were working phones al a real estate office we had used for years, one of the agents dropped in to pick something up. The next day I received a call from the broker, who said that the agents in his office were apoplectic because one of our callers was from another real estate office, and they worried that this "competitor" could avail herself of secret documents.
Scripts
Wherever your phone bank is located, the important part of campaign phoning is to have an effective message. You should have scripts made up in advance for each campaign activity. While it is preferable to have callers ad-lib, they generally need a prepared script for the first few calls, It gets much easier after that. I also don't have anyone ask, "How are you doing tonight?' The reality is that the volunteer doesn't care, and the person on the other end
"There is as much greatness of mind in acknowledging a good turn, as in doing it."
—Senecf
knows it. When I am calling for money, the calls will be a bit longer and more involved, so I usually start by asking the person who answers if they have a moment to talk. However, with volunteer recruitment, the calls are so short that I just cut to the chase. Here are some sample scripts for typical campaign phone sessions:
"The whole is greater than the sum of its parts."
—BuckminsLer Fuller
lawn Sign Location. "Hello, I'm a volunteer working for the Alan Bates campaign for state senate. Tonight we're looking for locations for lawn signs. Will you be supporting Alan in the general election? Great, could we place a lawn sign? Let me verify your address. Someone will be coming by about six weeks before the election to place it. We also have a crew who will be maintaining these signs; however, if it needs some attention, maybe you could help with it. Great. Thanks."
Special Activity. "Hello, I'm a volunteer working for the Alan Bates campaign for state senate. Did you receive the invitation for the campaign dinner this Saturday? The restaurant needs a pretty accurate head count, so we're trying to get an idea of the number of supporters who will be attending the dinner for Alan. Will you be joining us?"
"It is better to wear oat. than to rust out."
—Richard Cumberland (17th century)
< amassing. "Hello, I'm a volunteer helping in the Peter Buckley campaign. We are hoping to canvass the city this Saturday with a last-minute door hanger and need about eighty-five volunteers.
There will be no door-knocking, just great exercise. Can you help?"
Another, "Hello, I'm a volunteer working for the 'Verger for Senate' campaign. Our notes indicate that you might be willing to canvass. Is that correct?" [Answer] "Great. I have a number of dates for some upcoming canvasses. Do you have your calendar handy?"
(iOTV for Absentee and Mail-in Ballots, "Hello, I'm a volunteer from the Jeff Barker campaign. We're down here working on phone banks tonight to turn out as many of Jeff's supporters as possible. As of a couple of days ago, your ballot had not yet been received at county elections; is it possible you still have it at home?"
64 g
THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
Voter II). "Hello, I'm a volunteer working for the Alan Bates campaign. As vou may know, Alan is the Democratic candidate for state senate. Do you know if you'll be supporting him this November?" [Yes, No, Need more info]
Undecided
With any of these scripts, if I call and discover that someone is undecided or leaning, I ask whether the person would like more information from the candidate or campaign committee to help in deciding. Finally, whatever a potential supporter might say, I ask my volunteers to make a note so that the campaign can follow up if need be.
Negative Response
Get off the phone as quickly as possible and make a note for the campaign.
Clerical Workers
The clerical team is an extremely important part of your campaign. Normally you think of people sitting around, addressing, stamping, and stuffing envelopes. While these tasks might make up the bulk of your clerical team's work, you should think of this group in broader terms.
Wherever I can break activities down into more manageable units, 1 do so. For example, on the day that lawn signs go up, you cannot expect your lawn sign team to arrive early in the morning, staple lawn signs, organize
lists, and then head out for two hours of stake pounding. Each of these functions is very different and should be treated differently.
Your clerical team can come in days ahead of time to staple lawn signs or bolt them to the stakes, depending on the type of sign you use. They can come in on still another day to help organize the lists, maps, and locations of where those signs are going.
Your clerical team is crucial in keeping your campaign tight and organized. Use them creatively wherever they can help with your workload or with the organization of an upcoming activity. Here are some examples of how the clerical team can be used:
Staple lawn signs at the corners (if using poly tag) Attach lawn signs to stakes (if using corrugated) Look up phone numbers for an upcoming phone bank
"It's not very difficult to persuade people to do what they already long to do"
—Aldous Huxley
"We are here to add to what we can to life, not to get what we can from it"
—William Oslei
The Volunteer Organization fl 65
Assemble maps for a canvass
Attach inserts in the brochures for a canvass
Write thank-you notes for money, lawn sign locations, or to volunteers
Stuff, stamp, and address a mailing
Prepare items for a fund-raiser, such as a yard sale or auction Set up for a campaign gathering—decorate, print name tags, etc.
To set up a campaign activity requiring clerical workers, contact people who have indicated they will help with clerical work. If you need additional volunteers, try senior groups that support you, the League of Women Voters, and your friends and neighbors. Given how much fun a clerical work party can be, it is usually pretty easy to turn out a crowd.
A clerical work party is a social time in campaigns; it's a time to chat with friends while helping with a cause everyone supports. It's a time to share war stories about canvassing, talk news, gossip,
or whatever while having coffee and cookies and doing a mindless task. These meetings are enjoyable and highly productive for the small effort involved.
It is important for people to be comfortable while working and sitting for two or more hours, so be sure to have enough table space for each volunteer. Do not do clerical work in an already cluttered house. Because no one's back is getting younger—and many of the clerical volunteers are older—i take the time to put together a comfortable work area. Avoid having people work on their laps in soft, overstuffed couches and chairs; they will not be as productive. This is akin to cleaning house or doing yard work in flip-flops—you can do it, just not as efficiently.
Have some snacks around—coffee, tea, cookies, and the like—but not on the table where work is being conducted.
Have everything set up. Do not waste your volunteers' time.
Do one activity at. a time. If the task is to get out a mailing or to staple lawn signs, do just that. When the task is done—and usually they're done ahead of schedule—don't bring out one more thing for people to do. Remember, as with any other task in a campaign, you have made a verbal contract with your workers. Once they are captive workers in your home, to ask them to work past the designated time or beyond the designated task creates hard feelings. Workers who complete a task early and then go home feel good
66
THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
The Volunteer Organization
67
about [heir participation and feel that they are helping in a well-organized effort.
Make sure that you have all the necessary materials at each station, so that people are not idle. Have extras of everything you need—staplers, sponges, stamps, envelopes, telephone books, rubber bands, or whatever else the task might require.
Time Allotments for Volunteer Tasks
Below are some general guidelines for what volunteers can do in a designated amount of time. From here, you can calculate how many people you'll need to accomplish a task in the time available. For the task to be completed by a certain date, work your way backward from that date so that you have enough time to complete the task given your resources and task goal—number of calls lo make, signs to put up, homes to canvass, and so on.
Phone Banks
In general each volunteer can complete twenty to thirty calls per hour, depending on the nature of the calls. In a GOTV effort, people can make fifty calls during a ninety-minute shift. So, for example, if you want to make 4,000 calls by election day and have only one phone bank location with six phones, you will need peo pie on all six phones, for two ninely-rmnute shifts, for seven nights. Naturally, if you have more phones or another phone bank location, the number of calling nights goes down and the number of volunteers per shift goes up.
Canvassing
Because Oregon has vote by mail, our precincts are huge, with approximately 3,000 voters per precinct, or 1,400 to 1,500 homes. Precincts typically have about 400 registered voters in 120 to 200 homes, You can use voter lists to get
an accurate number of houses in each
"The feeble tremble before opinion, .,, ,. . , .
' 1 wo types of canvassing are used tor
ihe foolish defy it, the wise judge it, , ,    . .
, '',        _        „        " our purposes here: a Knock, and a simple
the skill ul direct it. ,
drop without talking.
—Jeanne Roland
Knock. Depending on how hilly and tightly compacted a neighborhood is, canvassers can cover ten to fifteen houses per hour. That means that a precinct with 120 to 200 houses would
''Luck is the crossroads where preparation and opportunity meet."
—Anonymous
require umr canvassers working two lo three hours each to cover the distance.
Drop. A literature drop can be done quite a bit faster than a knock canvass. With a drop, again depending on street grade and the proximity of homes, a canvasser can cover thirty to forty-five homes in an hour
Clerical (Direct Mail) A mailing of 500 requires a fifteen-person clerical team working one hour to stuff, stamp, seal, and address envelopes.
"The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts."
—Malcolm (iiadwell
Lawn Signs
One lawn sign team—a driver and a pounder-can put up about twelve lawn
signs an hour. So, for example, if you have 200 lawn signs to place, vou will need sixteen people (eight teams) working two hours each
FUND-RAISING
IN WIS CHAPTER
• Early Endorsements = Early Money - Early Media Buys
• Campaign Budget
• Ofrert Mail for Money
• Special Events 8 Holding a Special Event
• Candidate Calls to Raise Money
• Calling for Money for Ballot Measures
• f/ie Campaign Finance Committee
• Campaign Finance Committee Packets
• Tips for Successful Fund-Raising
• Fund-Raising Ideas That Take Less Than One Month of Preparation
• "Wey, Spender"
• r/je World's Smallest Brochure: Direct Mail That Works
• Keeping Track of Donations
Although this handbook suggests a number of ways to stretch your campaign dollars, no matter how many volunteers or friends with special talents you may have, eventually you will have to spend money to get your message out. Production and media buys require upfront, cash-in-hand transactions. The U.S. Postal Service will not send direct mail on a promise, and most places that print anything for campaigns require payment when you pick up the product. Although volunteers can cut your debt
"Apart from the ballot box, philanthropy presents the one opportunity the individual has to express his meaningful choice over the direction in which our society will progress"
—George Kirstein
69
THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
Fund-Raising
load, the larger the campaign, the more these volunteers become a valuable resource not to be squandered.
The bottom line is that if you want to get your message and your candidate's face into the public view, you must raise and spend a certain threshold of money to be competitive. What that threshold is depends on your race, the voting population, and which campaign activities you intend to implement.
I have worked on campaigns where money was no object and others where every decision was a financial trade-off, and, yes, it's more fun to work on campaigns with ample funds. Most important, money can buy you the opportunity, ability, and freedom to respond immediately to anything coming at the campaign.
While there are always stories of winners being grossly outspent, history indicates that the inverse is more often true, especially as you move up the food chain. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, in the 2002 midterm elections, "just under 95 percent of U.S. House races and 76 percent of Senate races were won by the candidate who spent the most money" ("Money Is the Victor in 2002 Midterm Elections," November 6, 2002).
In the eleven close Oregon House races in the 2002 general election, only four who were outspent survived, and, of those, two of the losers had extenuating circumstances where no amount of money would have delivered the votes.
Both the message and the quality of candidates (or issues) matter when it comes to raising money. However, campaign organization is a major factor in determining whether contributors are willing to "invest" in your campaign throughout the campaign cycle. Relationships that develop as a result of the candidate, the campaign team, your message, and your organization will bring in early money and early endorsements from individuals, companies, political action committees, and formal organizations.
Early Endorsements = Early Money «= Early Media Buys
Early money is also a way to communicate to the public that a cause or candidate has the necessary support to pull off a win. Also, throughout the campaign, major donors can serve as another type of communication
tool with the electorate. For example, in Oregon, individuals who give more than $50 must be listed separately on the contributions and expenditures forms (C&Es) filed with the secretary of state. If this is true in your state, look for well-respected people whose names can
"Too often leaders are soft on issues and hard on people. We need to be hard on issues and soft, on people.
—Charles Maclean, Philanthropy Now Consulting
draw votes and ask them to give an amount that will get them listed in a prominent way in the local paper, which in turn may bring in money from their friends and business associates. Obviously this amount varies with the type of race. A $250 contribution may be news for a city councilor or alderman in a small town, but not in a large city mayoral race or congressional district race.
Unfortunately, contributions from individual donors tend to arrive late in a campaign, as things begin to heat up. When supporters see the campaign m the paper and on television or hear it on the radio, they know that this takes money. What they may not know is that media time must be bought weeks in advance. Early money is critical to a successful media campaign. That is why many candidates take out personal loans to get their campaign roiling.
Know the law: In some states you may not legally begin collecting money until you have filed with the county clerk, city recorder, or secretary of state. However, from the moment you decided to run or work on a ballot measure, you can begin calling and lining up pledges that will come in as soon as you file.
Campaign Budget
It is pretty easy to put together a cursory budget sheet based on the activities you intend to conduct throughout the campaign; all it takes is a few phone calls.
Figure 4.1 is an actual budget sheet from a 1998 city council race, which I updated for 2003 by calling around. While the original brochure was black and white, I have listed costs for a full-color brochure. If your budget is tight, using black and white instead of color wili cut the printing costs in half. In 1998, local campaigns were not given the option of being m the voters' pamphlet, which normally carries a fee oi $300, This race covered a city of 19,000 people and 8,000 homes. There was no IV or radio advertising.
Figure 4.2 is the budget from a countywide, issue-based campaign. The county covers about 2,000 square miles and has about 180,000 residents and some 100,000 registered voters. Because of the size of the county and limited volunteer help, lawn signs gave way to 4-by-4-foot and 4-by-8-foot field signs placed along highways.
In 2002, hotly contested Oregon House races came in around $225,000 each for the general election. On the high end, a Portland-Metro area campaign bumped up against a half million, and on the low end a couple of races in the outlying areas spent less than $150,000.
72 [J         THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER	
SAMPLE CAMPAIGN BUDGET	
(Five week city council race, population 17,000,	
one newspaper, no TV advertising)	
Campaign Activity                         Cost in Dollars	
Brochure	
Layout and design	110.00
Printing (8,000 full color)	2,936.00
Ads (3)	
Layout and design	225.00
Newspaper: 3 ads run three times each	1,500.00
Lawn signs	
Design	100.00
Printing	
(250 @ $2.52 each- 2 color-two sides)	630.00
Stakes (250 @ $20/bundle of 50)	100.00
Hardware	30.00
Voter lists from county for absentee, GOTV	50.00
Direct mail: 1 piece, postcard	
Postage, layout, mail charge	1,240.00
Photocopying, misc. office supplies	60.00
Candidate photo session	165.00
Total $	7,146,00
Figure 4.1 example of a Campaign Budget for a Candidate in a Small-City Race
To gel. an estimate of how much money your campaign will need, consider talking with people who have previously run a similar race. Some will
have budgets with predicted and actual money spent. The county clerk or state election office should have C&E forms on file and a little time with these records might giire you an idea of where to best allocate your money. The following sections show how you might go about determining a budget for specific campaign activities.
"It's difficulties that show what men are'.'
—Epictetus, Greek philosopher
Issue-Based Campaign Budget
Direct Mail
Fundraiser Ietler-1,000 pieces Design
I Printing & mailing
General mailer - full color, 50,000 pieces Design
Printing & mailing
Genera! mailer - b&w, 50,000 pieces Design
Printing & mailing
Targeted maiier-b&w, 25,000 pieces Design
Printing & mailing
Walking/info piece -.5.5x11. color, 30,000 pieces Design Printing
Precinct analysis Voters' pamphlet Big signs (200)
GOTV
Voter registration database from County GOTV inactive reports (4x100) Data consultant
Media advertising
TV ad development: 4 ads @ $1,000 each Cable buys Network buys
Radio development, 5 spots @ 250 each
Newspaper buys
Ashland
Medford
Other advertising
Insert in chamber newsletter Car/Business signs, 500 pieces Campaign Management Office supplies Celebration party
TOTAL ESTIMATED BUDGET:
$300.00 $1,500.00
$300.00 $10,000.00
$300.00 $9,000.00
$300.00 $4,000.00
$300.00 $2,000.00 $900.00 $300.00 $5,000.00
$100.00 $400.00 $3,000.00
$4,000. $6,000. $12,000. $1,250. $4,000, $3,500. $9,000.
.00 00 ,00 00 00 .00 .00
$75. $200. $10,500. $200, $200.
$88,625
00 .00 00 00
.00
00
Figure 4.2 Example of a Countywide, Issue-Based Campaign Budget
74 O
THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
Fund-Raising
75
Brochure
1. Find another brochure with a design and layout you like.
2. Get a price quotation from a graphic designer for something comparable that's camera ready.
3. Determine which precincts you will target: using voter registration lists for those precincts, calculate how many brochures you'll need to print. Call a printer and get a price quotation; you can always have more done later, so don't get carried away. Remember that the number of registered voters and that of actual homes are two different things. You need enough brochures so that one will go to each home regardless of how many registered voters live there. To get the actual number of unduplicated households, try calling an electric utility company, the county clerk, or a mail house.
4. Call a photographer and ask how much a photo shoot will cost. Things that affect the cost of a brochure:
Color costs: the choices, in descending order of cost, are full-color, spot color, and black-and-white.
Paper can have a dramatic impact on cost as well as printed quality. Be caieful not to use pupei that will absorb the ink too much. Does it need to be folded or cut? Bach of these brings additional charges.
Lawn signs
Use steps similar to those listed above for the brochure. First, determine the total number of signs you will need. I have worked on campaigns with as many as one lawn sign for every thirty homes and others where we had as few as one for every sixty homes. It really depends on whether you can get the locations for signs and whether you're In an urban race or one with an urban/rural mix. Does the race warrant, a large number of signs? Again, one way to determine the number of signs you need is to call someone who conducted a similar campaign covering the same geographical area and ask how many signs were put up. While you're on the phone, ask for their list of lawn sign locations.
Once you know the number of signs, gel the same number of stakes plus a few more. Signs run around $4.00-55.00 each with stakes and the miscellaneous stuff you will need for them. Unlike brochures, short runs for signs may take as long as two weeks to print, and they can be costly. For example.
"It's not how much money you raise. It's how you spend your money."
—Jeffrey Gildenhorn, former candidate for mayor of
Washington, D.C.
in southern Oregon, a run of twenty-five signs costs $13 a sign, whereas the cost per sign for a run of 500 is $2.45. So get enough printed the first time.
If you need hardware or staple guns and staples to attach the signs to the stakes, price these items and list the cost. If you end up using staples and staple guns, be sure to call any friends you have in construction and ask if you can borrow their staple guns. Better yet, ask them if they will help to put up the signs and bring the staple gun to use. Label all borrowed tools.
If you have no locations for signs, you can buy lists of registered voters Írom the county and call those living on arterials for possible locations. Ideally you would get locations from other campaigns, but in my first race for mayor that wasn't an option. Volunteers went down the voter registration list, cold-calling those on arterials—a brutal but very effective technique.
In general, try to think of every little thing you will need to do to complete a specific activity. After you have done these tasks, take an hour or two and call around for some prices.
In a small community, a fairly reliable ballpark figure as to the amount of money you will need to raise is $1 per household in the voting district. If you have strong opposition, you will need more (say. $2 per household); if you have weak opposition, you'll need less. Remember, this figure is for households, not voters. The type and number of media buys you plan to make will greatly influence the amount you need. Similarly, the number of direct mail pieces you send will influence the final budget figures. As your target population increases, you will find an economy of scale. For example, an Oregon House race with 40,000 voters will cost anywhere from $3 to $20 per registered voter. A county race of 100,000 registered voters may come in around $80,000 or 80 cents per registered voter. Budgets are more a function oi the race than anything else.
Fverything you do in a political camj^aign requires money. While many of the people who work for you will also give you money, the bulk of it will come from people who are not directly involved as volunteers.
i never apologize or feel like I am begging when I ask for money for a candidate or measure. I assume that the potential contributor wants my candidate in office (or wants the benefits of the ballot measure) and is willing to backup that desire with money. When 1 ask for money, I think of it as providing an opportunity for the voter to get involved at a level other than the voting booth. 1 also look at a request, for money as less demanding than a request for an individual's time. The reality is this: If you can find excellent
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THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
"The highest, use of capital is not to make more m.oney, but to make money do more for the betterment of life:
—Henry Ford
candidates to serve in office implementing programs that you support, more power to them; do all you can to help get them there.
In Oregon, anyone who contributes to a political campaign may file for a state incviite tax refund of up to $50. If a husband and wife file a joint tax return, they can get a refund of $100- Sadly, only about 16 percent of citizens take advantage of this. The refund tends to level the playing field for grassroots campaigns. If vour state has a similar program, find out about it and get this information to your potential donors.
Figure 4.3 is another example of a budget sheet you can use or modify for your purposes. Many local campaigns are too small and underfunded to have a campaign headquarters (other than in your home) or even staff. However, I included a staff section just in case you need it. Feel free to photocopy this page and modify it to fit your budget needs.
Direct Mail for Money
While direct mail can help create a relationship between your campaign and the voter, it is also an opportunity to raise money where those relationships are established. Given that efficient direct mail requires a mailing list of an
already identifiable group of voters, I prefer to see which lists I can get and then formulate a letter or piece that will appeal to those voters. Remember, your direct mail is only as good, as the list to which tt. is sent. Carefully match your appeal to the people you are targeting.
In a direct mail piece, you might include a targeted letter, a campaign brochure, and a remittance envelope (figure 4.4). Direct mail can be used simply to align your candidate with an issue such as a concern for jobs where unemployment is high, parks and playgrounds where there are none, or anti-growth in a neighborhood where a big development is planned. Be sure to color-code your remittance envelopes with your direct mail
KUDGET FORM
AMOUNT
CAMPAIGN ACTIVITY
"My practice is to go first to those who may he counted upon to lie favorable, who know the cause and believe in it, and ask them, to give as generously as possible. When, lliey have done so, I go next to those who may be presumed l.o have a. favorable opinion and to be disposed to listening and secure their adherence.
"Lastly, I go to those who know Utile of the matter or have no known predilection for it uud influence them by presentation of the names of those who have already given."
—Benjamin Franklin
figure 4.3 Sample Budget Form
tenure		Billboards or field siqns	
' t avout & design		Rental space	
< Photography		Design & layout	
Piintinq		Printing	
		Lumber	—,
		1 Staff	
'   Ad iavout		CPA or bookkeeping (contract)	
iThotoqrapiiy		Attorney (contract)	
if! wou!d run a separate		Campaign manaqer & other staff	
ptint advertising		Salaries	
ij-ndeset sheet and include		Insurance, taxes	
'the number cf ads, the			
;^7g of ads and the cost		Television	
inf each foi the		Production	.—
Inumber ot runs. Put		Buys	
lihetotal forali here.)		(Again, use the ad rep of	
		each station to set up a	
•Research		schedule and budget	
		according to exposure you	
Direct mail		want. Put total here.)	
:(Do this for each piece)			
Layout and design		Radio	
Printing		Production	
Postage		Buys	
Lists and labels (or)			
i  Mailing house (thev handle		Office supplies	
labels & postage)		Postage, pens, software	
		Telephone, fax	
; Polling		Staples, envelopes, etc.	
Benchmark poll			
Tracking poll		Headquft.rteis	
			
GOTV		Volunteer support	_—.-
Voter ID lists		Food, refreshments	
Absentee lists		Staples, envelopes, etc.	
(list it ail)			
		Fund-raising expenses	
Lawn signs		Invitations, layout, printing	
Design & Layout		Postage	
Printing		Decorations	
		Prizes	
Misc. printing			
jumper stickers !			
			
_Body_badges			
-Jpanvassers & volunteers)			
uJ^lerhead, envelopes			
THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
Fund-Raising
Ü 79
Enclosed;
_____$1000
____$500
__S250
_ S100
_ $50
___S25
______Other
I/we volunteer tec
_Canvass
___Host event
Phone bank
____.Stuff Mail
_Display lawn signs
_ Put up lawn signs
SL_n Maintenance
□ Use name(s) as supporter
□ email address:
' JLJ STAT WRFSFS.TAT.VE
Tile following information is required m order u> comply with Oregon Campaign Law:
Name__________..... .____________Phone ____
Address____.._____________._._____._.__
City, State, Zip_.___________________________.___ ,__
Occupation__________ ..._______....__._______
P!i_e make checks payable 10 Committee to _ci Alan 6ate<. Contributions ir.ay quality for an Oregon tax credit of $50 per person filing :i single return, oi S1 (JO per couple filing a joint lUurn.
Authorized l>.
jEletl Dr. Alan Bales, Sally it
Figure 4.4 Example of a Remittance Ev line for an e-mail address.
vclope. Don't forget to include
pieces, so you know who is responding to what. That way vou get some feed- ; back on which letters are most effective. By running a marking pen along the edges of a slack of remittance envelopes a campaign can cheaply, quickly, and easily color-code envelopes.
Direct Mai) Tips for Success
There are all kinds of opinions on the length, (be type of paper, and the look of a direct mail piece. While direct mail is used widely to move voters toward a candidate or issue, it can also be an inexpensive and effective way to raise money. Here are some things I've found in soliciting with direct mail.
10.
7 have only made this letter rather long because I have not had time to make it short'.'
—Pascal, 1656
Use quality paper stock and printing. Keep graphics and fonts sim pie and clean.
People in lower economic groups and those with less education respond in greater numbers to a longer "the house is on fire" solicitation. This group gives less money and votes less, so be sure you ha.ve targeted correctly before spending lots of money on a multipage solicitation.
Wealthy, well-educated Republicans respond to letters that are no longer than two pages with lots of "this is what I've done, this is what I will do." A single page will work fine for them.
Well-educated, affluent Democrats respond in greatest numbers to short, single-page letters explaining the community needs that you will address and how their contribution will make a difference. Only solicit targeted lists. Most people using direct mail to raise-money will send to prospect lists (sometimes thousands of voters) in order to generate a "house list" from those who respond. The first mailing loses money, and subsequent mailings to the "house list" make money. This works well for big campaigns, but local campaigns often cannot send to enough people to generate a large enough house list to make money on subsequent mailings. If you have no targeted lists, spend the money and mail to as big a class of voters as possible to make money on subsequent mailings. For example, mail to everyone in your political party in your targeted precincts.
Once people respond to the first mailing, solicit them again. For those responding the second time, solicit them again. After three letters, go back to your house list,
A direct mail piece followed up by a phone call from the campaign substantively increases your response rate.
Always include a remittance envelope and a P.S. The P.S. should not be a throwaway. This is often the only thing that is read in a fund-raising leLLer, so make it count.
Personalize the letter and envelope if at all possible. Use a size and color of envelope that does not scream junk mail, such as 6 V2 by 5 inches. Have volunteers hand address and use a stamp, even if it's a bulk stamp.
80 g THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
Fund-Raising jj 81
Finding Targeted Mailing Lists
Throughout this handbook are tips and suggestions for establishing relationships with special-interest groups in your community or region. Such alliances can really pay off in mailing-list dividends. Think about who would be most: interested in seeing you get elected or seeing your measure passed. Will other candidates or office holders turn over their house lists to your campaign? Consider asking someone who previously ran for the office you are seeking, especially if an incumbent is leaving. Think about other organizations too: Which ones would sell you their mailing lists? Some possibilities of lists that could generate money:
Teachers, especially if you're working for a school or library bond measure or running for school board
Environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club, fly-fisherman, League of Conservation Voters, Friends of the River, clean-water groups, greenway organizations, Critical Mass, or any organization that sends a newsletter to a specific group of supporters Women's organizations such as Planned Parenthood, National Organization for Women, or Women's Political Caucus Your church
Civic clubs, firefighters, law enforcement groups Historic preservation groups
Determine the Amount of Money You Will Need for Direct Mail
1. Decide how many mail pieces you intend to send throughout the campaign.
2. hook at some other direct mail pieces you like and get a cost estimate for layout and design.
3. Decide which groups you are mailing to, and then determine the number of households that will receive the piece. For example, if you want to send a direct mail piece to your top five priority precincts but want to send it only to members of the Green Party, members of the Peace and Freedom Party, Independents, and Democrats, call the county clerk to get a count for each of these group members in those precincts. Because you want a household count, be sure to ask for unduplicated households. Often the clerk's office will download all the necessary information onto a disk for a nominal charge, and you can deliver it to a mailing bouse where the merge-sort can be done.
"Every experienced campaigner knows that money follows hard work. It is not the other way around" —Margaret Sanger
Use this number to figure your printing and mailing costs for each piece; 50 to 65 cents each is a good ballpark figure. However, economies of scale do count here.
Multiply the per-piece cost by the number of direct mail pieces you want to send and add a bit more. That will make up your direct mail budget line item.
Special Events
Special events are campaign-sponsored activities intended to raise money and support for the campaign, such as a coffee at a supporter's house or a campaign-organized luncheon, dinner, or picnic. Although I have had many successful special events for campaigns, compared with the candidate calling supporters directly, they raise very little money and take untold amounts of campaign time. The people who attend are
usually supporters who have already given and have every intention of voting for the candidate or cause.
That said, it is important to stress that fund-raisers are not just about raising money Special events are also for public visibility and education, for involving volunteers so they are more committed to the campaign and candidate, and for promoting "friend-raising" by strengthening the bonds volunteers and guests have with the candidate.
When approached as an opportunity to advertise the candidate and cement relationships, special events can be worth the necessary resources. But don't underestimate the commitment involved. You need to be cautious about the strain special events put on the campaign committee, the volunteers, and the candidate. If someone other than the campaign committee is sponsoring the event, as is often the case with a coffee, you need to be ready to help that event be a success.
"It's nice lo have some money, but it's pressing the flesh that s going to win this election."
—Jeffrey Gildenhorn, former candidate for mayor of Washington. D.C.
Ensure a Good Turnout
The one thing you must avoid if you schedule a special event is a poor turnout. If it looks like a fund-raising event will have marginal attendance, I invite all my volunteers to attend for free. Numbers are more important
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than money when holding a special event in political circles. Whatever the attendance, you need to be certain that the people who do attend don't have a bad experience. If people can't find the location, can't find parking, or were inadvertently left off the reservation list, they are likely to blame the campaign. You never want to lose a supporter over an avoidable organizational error at a fund-raising event. Take care of your supporters by taking care of details.
Holding a Special Event
A good rule of thumb for planning special events for fund-raising is that it takes one week of preparation for every ten people you expect to attend. Obviously, this time frame becomes tight in a three-month campaign, but the rule underscores the fact that ample preparation time must, be factored in for a successful event. The preparation takes place in four stages.
1. You must define the purpose or purposes the event is to accomplish.
2. You must plan the event.
3. You must promote the event.
4. You must conduct the event.
Tips for handling each of these stages are discussed below: 1. Determine the Purpose and Type of Event
Be clear about the purpose of the event. Is it to attract donors, raise money, raise support, (hank volunteers and supporters, or just to get the word out on I he measure or the candidate? Special events can, of course, have more
than one purpose, but you need to focus on one purpose before you can pick the event. Focus on the main purpose when choosing the type of event; then see whether other purposes might be accomplished as well.
"Where there is no vision, the. people perish'.'
—Book of Proverbs, 29:18
Fund-Raising ££ 83
the high school music department for great talent). Restaurants are often closed on Mondays, making it a perfect night for your fund-raiser.
I have also had great success with intimate affairs at people's homes. In this approach the host produces the invitations and provides the food, if the person hosting the event is new to this sort of thing, it's important to check in frequently and help as needed. These events usually involve a well-known person providing a lavishly catered meal for a well-known candidate at a fairly hefty price. I try, in this scenario, to be selective about whom 1 invite, although usually the price wall select who will attend, and the invitees know that. We have brought in as much as $6,000 in our small area at this type of dinner.
If I am working for a relatively unknown candidate, 1 do not have a cover charge or a "suggested" donation, for two reasons: First, because the candidate is new to the political circuit, people will stay home rather than give money to a candidate they do not know. Second, I want people to give more than I could possibly charge for such an event. For example, if you charge $100
for a lavish event at someone's home and yet many attendees can give more, the campaign will only get the $100 cover. To lend credibility to my political newcomer, I will bring in a well-known political figure, such as the governor, and will schedule two events back-to-back in two different cities. The first can run from 6:00 to 7:30 in one city and the second from 8:00 to 9:30 in another. To make sure there will'be plenty of money flowing, I arrange for one or two people at each gathering to announce that they have just written a check for $ 1,000 and would encourage all to give as generously as possible, in one campaign we raised $10,000 in three and a half hours with this approach; there was no suggested contribution on the invitation.
"Never think you need to apologize for asking someone to give to a worthy object, any more than as though you were giving him. an opportunity to participate in a. high-grade investment'.'
—John D. Rockefeller, Jr.
Dinners. I have had great results hosting dinners as fund-raising events. I contact a supportive restaurant and ask whether the owner will donate the dinner at cost in the restaurant. I then sell it to the guests at retail. Generally the restaurant can't afford the whole affair, so I go to another eatery and ask whether that owner will donate the dessert, another for a donation of the coffee, a local vintner for the wine, and so on. You can ask a local musician or band to volunteer talent to make trie occasion special (consider looking at
Coffees. I have found that coffees sponsored by a supporter can be a good special event. I will add, however, that they can also be a miserable failure. To he successful they must, like all special events, be closely supervised. Since the campaign is not the sponsor, the critical factor is who hosts the coffee for you. If the sponsor is a local leader, such as a county commissioner, state representative, mayor, president of a college or university, a business leader, philanthropist, or anyone with a following, there will be a good turnout.
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i 85
Most, people do not really like to go to political fundraisers such as coffees, so the drawing card should be the combination of the candidate and the host of the coffee. Regardless who hosts the event, the campaign should oversee the invitations and be ready to help with follow-up phone calls to ensure good attendance. A host who invites sixty people only to have three show up may fee] humiliated because he or she let you down. Or the host may feel the candidate is responsible for the poor turnout. Either way, the candidate and the campaign manager have been deprived of one more night at home or of time that, could have been spent raising money by phone, preparing for a debate, or getting volunteers for a canvass.
A few years ago I started the practice of having one person whose sole campaign job was to oversee coffees. This person should work closely with the campaign scheduler and serves as the campaign's liaison to any host who wishes to sponsor a coffee but does not need to attend war room meetings. The coffee coordinator should be well connected in the community and, ideally, have ready access to lists that may help the hosts in beefing up the invitation list. The coffee coordinator helps with sending invitations, call-backs, and any other tasks that can help the coffee be as successful as possible.
If at all possible, have the candidate call the people invited to the coffee, or at least some of them. This will ensure a donation if they are going, and if they can't make it, it is an opportunity to ask for money or support.
The candidate's call would go something like this:
"Hello, Sam? This is Al Bates. Say, I just got a list of all the people invited to Shirley's coffee, and when I saw your name, I had to take a moment to call and tell you how much I'm looking forward to you being there. It should be a lot of fun. Bring some tough questions for rnc, will you? Great, see you there.
Using coffees effectively will bring in money, but, more important, they are a great resource for finding campaign workers and lawn sign locations. So if you are going to have them, pay attention to the details and make each one as successful as possible.
Auctions and Yard Sales. Another good fund-raiser is an auction. You and your campaign team can go to businesses and supporters and get a wide variety of donations. For example, ask four different video stores to donate one children's movie, and then put them all together for one auction item. Your campaign volunteers can donate baked goods for the auction. It may work well to have the candidate or the spouse serve as the auctioneer. I have used a popular high school teacher for this task who is funny and can really work the crowd. Be creative and you can have a fun event that actually brings in money. A good auction can bring in as much as $6,000 in a small community.
"I've learned to use the word impossible with the greatest caution"
—Wernher von Braun
A yard sale is another option. If you're going to plan one, make it an event. Get a huge yard and lots of donations, old and new. Advertise the great stuff well in advance. Yard sales can be very good fund raising events because almost no money is needed to set one up. However, they require plenty of time. An effective yard sale will take days to set up. two days to run. and two days to put away. Because a big yard sale can be grueling work, be sure not to schedule one during other labor-intensive activities such as canvassing. A good yard sale can bring in $2,000. Since most of the money comes in on the first day, I strongly recommend you advertise it as one day only. Should you decide to do two days, cut the second day so it ends by noon or 1:00 p.m. Be sure to buy pizza for your volunteers for lunch from the proceeds.
Involve Attendees. One event I held in a small community was a dessert bake-off. I called specific supporters in that area and asked them to bring their very best dessert. I charged an entry fee for all but the bakers. The campaign provided the coffee (donated), and I recruited other locals to serve as the judges. I made up ribbons for different awards, such as "Dessert Most Likely to Keep a Marriage Together;' and each entry won a prize. Because it was held in a small community, all who attended knew each other. Everyone had a great time, and the only cost to the campaign was the rental of the building.
General Considerations. Whatever the type of event, the location is a big consideration. Is it big enough? Too big? How about the atmosphere? For indoor events, never use a huge hail or room, unless you are expecling a huge crowd. When selecting locations, I look for places where rooms can be closed off in case of poor attendance. No matter how many people come, I want the event to look like it's well attended and successful, leaving attendees with the impression that just the number expected came. In selecting a restaurant for a dinner, try to find one that has a medium-sized room with another adjoining i I that can be used or closed off as needed.
Consider your budget when deciding what type of event to have. Then figure roughly what it will cost the campaign and what income it is likely to generate. You also need to estimate the commitment necessary from the candidate, the
"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important."
—Bertrand Russell
o
THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
Fund-Raising
"Fatigue makes cowards of us all','
—Vince Lombard!
campaign commiltee, and your volunteers. Don't forget to consider the economic climate in the community. A fifty-dollar-a-plate dinner in a town where the last factory just closed might not be a very good idea even if it would make you money. When considering an event, always ask: Does this make sense? Does it fit? Does it feel right?
2. Plan the Event
Planning an event is an extension of choosing the event. AH the considerations that informed your choice of the event must now be put into an action plan. In
other words, it is time to sort out the details. For instance, some events will require licenses or permits from local government. They can be a factor in the decision to hold an event, but once the decision is made, someone has to make sure the license or permit is obtained. Similarly, the location, which was a factor in decidi ng on the type of event, must now be secured. The theme of the event, whether it is a human services luncheon, environmentalist dinner, or a school auction, now influences the details of the event.
To run a successful special event, it is critical that you know who your audience is and how to reach it. For example, are you planning a dinner to support your library? If so, you need to get a mailing list from the Friends of the Library.
Once you know whom you want to reach, you must decide bow to reach them. Printed invitations with a telephone follow-up might work well for a formal dinner. However, if the event is a yard sale, just advertise it in the paper or place flyers around town. Whatever the means, people must be assigned to accomplish it. Invitations must be printed; flyers must be designed, printed, and distributed; ads have to be written and delivered. All this takes . time and people, and you will need to plan accordingly.
A good way to make sure the details are taken care of is to put the event on a timeline, just like the one for the whole campaign, only smaller. Scheduling in all the tasks and placing the event on a timeline requires someone ■ who is in charge. That person needs to have volunteers assigned to all aspects of the event. Like the campaign itself, successful special events are the product of organization. If you assign the leadership of a special event to one person, provide ample volunteer help, develop a timeline, and plan a budget; you will have a successful event.
While budgets are an extra step, making one will not only help you get a ; handle on expenses but will also remind you of things that need to be done. For example, listing the cost of the room expense may remind you to check ■ the date of the event to see what else is going on in the community at that ?
time. If you're hosting that dinner to support your town library, you don't want to find out right after you printed the invitations and rented the hall that it is on the same night as the American Association of University Women annual dinner at the college. Paying for the ads for your auction may remind you to check whether the hospital auction is on the same weekend. Here is a list of the things that could be included in a budget:
Site rental
Food
Drinks
Rental (sound system, tables, chairs)
Printing
Supplies
Mailings
Entertainment
Professionals
Parking
Advertisements
Decorations
Insurance
Fees
Use permits Liquor licenses Clean-up
Awards, door prizes Thank-you mailing
Although someone in your organization is in charge of planning the event, when it comes time to implement the plan, provide additional help in the training and staffing of volunteers. Training and staffing requirements must be met before the actual setup begins.
In addition to having trained helpers available, you must plan for the supplies you will need. Often supplies must be ordered well ahead of the event,— decorations, for instance—and these should go on your special-event timeline. Also, things that will cost you money—here again, decorations are a good example—are listed in your special-event budget. If you keep going back to the budget and to your expense list, you will be reminded of things you might have forgotten.
Keep in mind that in the planning of an event, some things that do not appear in your budget or timeline may nonetheless be critical. For instance, legal issues such as prohibitions against holding political fund-raisers in public
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U 89
"Action is eloquence."
—William Shakespeare
buildings must be considered. On a more mundane but no less critical level, be sure to have duplicates of essentia] items. If a slide projector is needed for an event, it is wise to have two projectors on hand, or at least two bulbs. How about extension cords and an extra microphone? Also have duplicate lists of all the important phone numbers of the people you are depending on, such as the vendors, caterers, entertainers, staff, and volunteers. These lists will also help you remember all who need to be acknowledged at the end of the event.
3. Promote the Event
To promote a special event properly, you must have a target audience in mind. Consider the income level and age of your target audience. Once these details
have been established, consider how best to reach them. Your first task is to determine where to get lists of the people in your target audience. If you have a narrow group in mind, such as teachers, doctors, or human-service advocates, you can often get mailing lists from the special-interest groups these people belong to or support. Ifvour audience is broader, as it would be for a neighborhood bake sale, you can take the list from a general source such as your campaign's county walking list.
Once you know whom you are trying to contact, you must decide how best to do it. Some possibilities are:
Invitations Flyers
Radio and television ads
Press releases
Posters
Newsletters
Handbills or flyers
Calendars
F.-mail
The content and design of any such announcements must be attractive, professional, and clear. Include the date, place, lime (beginning and end), and cost, and provide a map or clear directions for getting there. Note whether any of the cover charge is tax deductible or refundable. For instance, if the event costs $25 for the attendee but your cost per attendee is only $10, then the difference. $15, is a straight campaign contribution. Instead of including the math in the ad, simply put a footnote at the bottom stating what amount of the price is deductible.
4. Conduct the K vent
When it is time to conduct a well-planned and well-promoted special event, the most important thing you can do to ensure success is to set up early. Everything should be ready forty-five minutes to an hour ahead of time. As the organizer, you need to keep focused and calm. Your volunteers will take their cue from you, and the message you convey must be calm efficiency. It is a nice touch to have a packet for volunteer organizers with their names on it. Include the overall plan as well as the names of the individuals responsible for each of the volunteer activities. I set up packets similar to the campaign committee packets (see figure 1.1). Although they take a while to write arid assemble, volunteers love this format, as it keeps materials well organized.
Once people start to arrive, your focus is on hospitality. How you greet people and work with them will set the tone of the event. Allow adequate time lor the candidate to circulate. Do not schedule or allow the candidate to "help" with the operation of the event. The candidate should not be doing things other than meeting the supporters. Name tags will help the candidate when greeting the guests. Be sure to have attendees place the name tag on the right side of their breast so that it can be read discreetly as it moves closer to the candidate's line of sight when he or she is shaking hands.
Remember to thank everyone, even the people who sold you tilings. Everyone involved—volunteers, guests, and vendors—is forming an impression of the candidate and the campaign, and you need to do everything you can to make a positive impression. That includes a good cleanup, even if you have rented the facility, so make sure there are volunteers who will stay to clean up. As an organizer, never leave an individual to clean up titone. Stay until everything is done.
Candidate Calls to Raise Money
Direct contact by the candidate remains the quickest, cheapest, and most effective way to raise money, it is critical to the success of a campaign. Kemeinber, as the candidate, you are willing to do a job and volunteer your time at a task that few want to do. If people support your core values and ideas, they must show that support by contributing to your campaign, thereby helping you get your name out. Do not sound apologetic. You are doing the community a favor.
While the campaign manager can call for moderate amounts of money, the calls to major donors should be conducted bv the candidate or a close family member, such as a spouse, a sibling, or a parent. It is very difficult for people to turn the candidate down on a direct "ask."
Set up some time each day to make the calls. It is important that calls be made from a prepared list that includes phone numbers, addresses, party
90 g
THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
Fund-Raising
91
"A great leader is seen as servant first, and that simply is the key to his
exeat.
—Robert K. Greenleaf
registration, giving history, personal notes about the prospective donor, and a suggested amount for the ask. Be sure to have accurate information on what name the candidate should use when speaking with the donor: Is it Katherine, Kathy, Katy, Kate, or Kay?
Calling for Money for Ballot Measures
When fund-raising for ballot measures, it is sometimes easier to set up a goal for a specific item, such as a full-page newspaper ad. Let people know what
you are trying to buy and how much it will cost so they can contribute accordingly. For example, I might tell people that 1 am trying to raise $1,500 for a last-minute ad campaign and ask whai, they can give toward it. If you are going to use a phone bank for fund-raising, use just a few people who are committed and are identified with the measure in the community. Provide each with a list of the people you want to call that includes their giving history along with their phone numbers.
Since people prefer to sign on to something that's going to fly, 1 tell potential donors that we are X dollars away from our goal. Keep track as pledged dollars roll in, and if the campaign hasn't received the check within a week, make a quick reminder call.
Voters do not look favorably on candidates who cannot live within their fund-raising abilities, so while waiting for fund-raising to catch up with spending, consider setting up business accounts with as many of your vendors as possible. Although TV and newspapers require that, campaign advertisements be paid in full before the ad runs, printers, typesetters, and other
vendors may allow you to run an account, and pav monthly or at the end of the campaign. Although the money is technically spent, it does not show up on your financial reports until the campaign has received an invoice.
"The palest ink is better than the most retentive memory'.'
—Chinese Proverb
The Campaign Finance Committee
A campaign finance committee is critical to a successful fund-raising effort, especially if the candidate is running for a county office, a state house or senate seat, a congressional seat, or any statewide office. The committee can handle all of the activities described above, or it can be responsible for telephone follow-up on direct mail solicitations. Depending on who is serving on the
"Lives based on having are less free, than lives based either on doing or being."
—William James
committee, it can also be responsible for developing and soliciting major donors. If you are running for an office that covers a fairly large geographic area, you may want more than one finance committee, but within a city, county, or state house and senate district, one will do.
Selecting Finance Committee Members
A great fund-raising committee begins with a strong chair. Your chair should be energetic, charismatic, aggressive, and outgoing and someone who likes asking for money. The chair should have no other campaign tasks during the time of this fund-raising effort. He or she must have great follow-through abilities and a reputation for getting things done. You do not want your campaign to have to use precious time to clean up after a
mess has been made, so choose this person carefully and work closely with him or her to make sure things are going according to plan.
The chair. like all members of die committee, should have experience in raising money or in sales. People who have been involved in fund-raising efforts for other political campaigns, charities, nonprofits, churches, civic organizations, academic institutions, foundations, or clubs make excellent committee members. Look aiso for people who are involved in politics because they feel passionately about an issue, such as school funding, environmental causes, pro-life or pro-choice, labor unions, gun ownership, health care, land use, housing, and so on. Those who have a history with a specific interest group will be able to raise money from others with similar interests.
book for members who have personal resources, who have a name that means something to your constituency, and who work hard. 'Too often campaigns and organizations make the mistake of bringing people on board simply because they have a big name. When there are people serving on the finance committee in name only, other members who are working hard may feel resentment, which can cause the committee to break down. While big names work well on the "Committee to Support" outlined in Chapter 1, thev should serve elsewhere in a campaign only if they're willing to roll up their sleeves and work in the trenches like everyone else.
Using the Finance Committee for Direct Mail Follow-Up If you are using a finance committee to increase returns on a direct mail solicitation, begin by sending a letter of solicitation to people who have previously supported the candidate, supported similar candidates, or supported
92 0
THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
Fund-Raising
issues embraced by the candidate—especially if Ihey are different from those of the opponent. For an issue-based campaign, send the letter to people who have given to causes or organizations that best reflect the ideals of the ballot measure or proposition.
For local campaigns, which are often strapped for time, money, and human resources, I like to keep the work and scope of the fund-raising effort at a low enough level that it can be managed by a small group of dedicated volunteers and completed within a short time frame. This committee works independently of the candidate's efforts to raise money and, depending on the composition of the committee, may or may not include major donors. It is always preferable to have major donors approached by the candidate or someone close to the candidate. However, if members of the finance committee personally know a major donor, use that connection.
When I chair finance committees, I evenly divide members into groups of three or four and have each team select a name for itself. For example, one could be called the Animals, another the Vegetables, and the third the Minerals. These teams compete with each other for prizes that depend on how many dollars each team brings in. The prizes are usually nothing big but tend to make things more fun—such as coffee from a local coffee house (thanks a iatte). At the end of fund-raising efforts, I have bigger prizes for the team that raises the most money, such as donated pottery or art work. Each of the teams should have a team captain who calls team members on a regular basis and keeps everyone competitive and happy in a friendly way. The team captains report back to the chair.
Campaign Finance Committee Packets
Providing an effective organizational structure for the campaign finance committee not only results in a more successful effort by committee members but also keeps people coming back to work on other campaigns and efforts. This is really a tough job for people, and while some are better than others, an organized effort on your part helps both the seasoned and the novice fund-raiser to be successful. Creating a packet as shown in figure 4.5 keeps members organized and the campaign contained. Clearly, these are
"The first thing you naturally do is teach the person to feel that the undertaking is manifestly important and nearly impossible... That draws out the kind of drives that make people strong, that puts you in pursuit, intellectually.'
—Edwin Ft. Land, founder.
Polaroid Corp.
not scraps of paper to leave lying about. They often contain a donor's giving history and personal information.
Details must be attended to in creating these packets just as they must be in preparing packets for the war room. Both the campaign committee and the finance committee are the most important in the campaign. Their members contribute time, resources, energy, and sometimes prestige to your campaign. While the campaign committee provides the organization and leg work, the finance committee helps raise the funds to make everything possible.
In preparing campaign finance committee packets for each member of the committee, include each of the tiered sheets shown in figure 4.5 and detailed in figures 4.6A-H, modified to fit your needs. To give these sheets substance for presentation and durability during the campaign, print them on a heavy paper (no lighter than 80-pound vellum Bristol) and alternate in a two-color scheme—avoid loud or garish colors. Each packet includes eight pieces of paper, in different lengths to create a tiered effect, as well as campaigner cards (figure 4.7), donor cards (figure 4.8), and a sheet that reads "Friends I Will Call" (figure 4.9).
Each of your finance committee members is given a campaigner card (figure 4.7) that will be used to enlist two additional people to assist in the fund-raising effort. This method of recruitment increases the finance committee threefold and often brings new faces to a campaign. Campaigner cards can be printed on regular weight paper.
The donor cards are for potential contributors who were mailed a letter of solicitation (figure 4.6D) but have not yet responded by mail. You or the chair will prepare these cards for committee members. To do so, make as many donor cards as there are people who have been solicited by mail, minus the number who already responded, and place a name label in the corner with as much information as you have about the potential donor (figure 4.8). Donor cards must be printed on card stock, because once they are divvied up, committee members handle them a lot while attempting to call from home, the office, or a cell phone while on the way to work.
Once my original finance committee members have enlisted their additional workers (figure 4.7), the candidate should mail a letter to the full committee welcoming them on board, thanking them in advance for their commitment to work on the campaign, and reminding them of the first meeting (figure 4.10). Include with this letter the "Friends I Will Call" sheet (figure 4.9) and a copy of the "Telephone Campaign Overview" (figure 4.6B).
t
■ ^ J THE \SK" ... STEPS FOR SUCCESS
LETTER SENT TO SUPPORTERS CASE FOX SUPPORT
TELEPHONE CAMPAIGN OVERVIEW
' Finsr« I ^
I'his is where li
HOW TO MAKE A SUCCESSFUL CALL ANSWERS TO COMMOM\ ASKED QUESTIONS ANSWERING MACHINES
It voudoiVl knnw the supporter .iiv.1 it is vour tv^t i-unurt tiem-pt, hang up. li you know the ^importer .veil pun ugh to .., .....i,„a !0,™vmimimc.ind number on the tips (and
gyre 4.5 Example of a Campaign Finance Committee Packet
CAMPAIGNER RESPONSIBILITIES
/
Date
Personally make a financial commitment to the	
campaign.	
Auead Kickoff at (location) to pick up	Thurs.
Donor Cards and participate in training.	Sept 15
	6:30-8:30
Personally assist in tile solicitation of contributions.	Sept 5-Oct. 6
Turn in completed Donor Cards to the campaign.	ongoing
There will be a Call Night/Pizza Party for campaigners	Tuesday
to get together to make their calls as a group.	Sept 27*
Campaigners are encouraged to attend.	6:30-8:30 PM
Turn in last ot completed Donor Cards at Victory	Thursday
Party.	Oct. 6
	6:30-7:30 PM
(Below the date heading place when each of these activities will lokeptacj. A rule of thumb is thai the campaign should run no longer than three weeks, and the call-in pizza party^ happens halfway into the campaign).
1 Cut to create a tiered look in the packets.
%ure 4.6A Sample Text for Campaigner Responsibilities Sheet
TELEPHONE CAMPAIGN OVERVIEW
The finance committee kickoffis {place, date here with time). EVERYONE is asked to ' attend. This is where you will pick up your Donor Cards (approximately 35), get m< detailed information and training about the campaign, and meet your team members. The Donor Cards will have names of those individuals who have a history ofgiving to thi,; campaign or similar causes. During the three-week fund drive, campaigners will call these • supporters at their convenience.
There will be three teams consisting of approximately six campaigners and one team captain.
Teams compete with one another for a variety of awards and prizes.
Cards are turned in to the captains or the campaign as they are completed. This is do
either directly to your team captain or to the campaign office.
There will be a Call Night/Pizza Party on (day and date) for the finance committee to get together to make their calls as a group. Callers are encouraged to attend. A party is scheduled for (day and date). Ail remaining cards must be turned in on this evening. The winning teams will be announced and honored. We will all be winners ; point, and so will the campaign.
Fun is a requirement for this campaign, so plan on having a good time for a very good cause.
IMPORTANT INFORMATION All Donor Cards must be returned (even if they haven't been called). Please do not give Donor Cards to supporters.
THANKS FOR YOUR TIME AND SUPPORT!!!
Figure 4.6B Sample text for lelephone Campaign Overview Sheet
CASE FOR SUPPORT
| -fijis page is where you most clearly outline what your candidate (or issue-based campaign) stands for. It may be an opportunity to outline the differences between the candidates or to simpb' make your case without regard to the opposition.
Depending on whom you are soliciting, this sheet may change to accommodate a different focus or emphasis. For example, if you are targeting a Sierra Club mailing list with a letter and follow-up phone call, you may want these notes to include the candidate's stands on environmental issues or past votes if the candidate previously held an office. If you are calling' members of a teachers union, you may want to include the candidate's stands on school issues aid libraries. For the Chamber of Commerce membership or Rotary Club list, you might focus on the candidate's strengths around business issues. And so on.
It will keep your caller more focused if you match this white paper with the potential donor's interests. You can best determine those interests by knowing the origin of the mailing list. If you are simply calling a list of general supporters, have a number of important community issues itemized here and your candidate's stands on them. If you're working for an incumbent, list accomplishments while in office.
''Stire 4.6C Case for Support Sheet
LETTER SENT TO SUPPORTERS
i r
(Thh page should include the complete solicitation letter s ■   ■    -j and still allow room for the above heading)
letter sent to potential donors- Reduce it so it will ft on
a single-page ú
EUjTUt^MeCŠ for mayor
It is sometimes effective to list your big-name people on your letterhead. If you ate working in a countv, you may choose to list support by city. Remember, these arc not necessarily the same names that form the campaign committee.
Work with your committee to draft the body of your letter. You may include:
1. Who you are and your background/roots
2. Why you want the office you seek
3. Ways to impress upon your supporters that the undertaking is manifestly important and nearly impossible (this brings out the best in people)
4. No more than two or three issues that will really matter to your readers
5. include a "Donation Card"
{Remember!
Campaigns are about emotion. The tetter should be kept to one page if possible. Include a remittance envelope.
Figure 4.6D Sample Letter Sent to Supporters
ANSWERING MACHINES
if you don't know the supporter and il is your first contact attempt, hang up. If yon know the supporter well enough to get a tall-back, leave your name and number (and if you think it's a good idea, the reason for your call).
If you don't know the supporter well and it's your second or third taped
greeting, rather than give up, leave your name, volunteer status, reason for tine call, and
phone number:
Example:
lit, this is _
^calling at__o 'clock en (day of the week).
I'm volunteering fur (name of campaign) in hopes that you would consider a gift to help support... (place short message here—it could be the candidate's name and office or it could be something that the candidate stands for that will resonate with this particular donor. For example: management of forest land or fly fishing or choice issues or libraries. This must be worked out ahead of time with your volunteer caller and/or noted on the donor card).
F'i e tried to reach yon a number of times by phone and although I am giving up reaching you in person, I'm not giving up on the idea that you'll support (name of candidate and office sought).   I'll ask (name of candidate) to send you another return envelope. We would be. so grateful if you would use it to support (again, place an issue here that will resonate—appeal to interests over intellect. For example, you might say, "to support bctler management of our forest resumees through (candidate's name]").
This is an extraordinarily close race with a lot at stake, and we can only win with help from people like you. If you have any questions, please give me e call at_.
3. On the donor card write that another blank return envelope needs to be sent to the supporter and get it back to the campaign as soon as possible. A nice touch is lo include a short handwritten, signed note, such as: "Sorry, I missed you."
4. If leaving a message does not fit your style, perhaps you could send the potential supporter a note and enclose it with an envelope from your folder. Ftease note on the donor card that you have done so.
GOOD LUCK!!!
figure 4.SE Sample Answering Machines Sheet
ANSWERS TO FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Sample questions: s
Didn "t I already give to this candidate (campaign) ? t;
Previous gift information, when available, should be on the donor card or printouts, it; depending on which you are using. It's OK lo give the information to (he donor, but \olunteer I it only when you have a purpose. For example, donors gave S50 to a similar candidate or | cause and you want them to increase their gift.
/ give money to my PA C at work, and they 're already supporting this candidate.
"That's great. However, if we can show that the bulk of our money conies from individuals, such as you, rather than PACs, it encourages others to contribute also. While PAC money will help, we depend on direct support from individuals to pull off a win in ; November."
/ don V know much about either of these candidates. How lire they different?
Have two or three key issues that clearly show the difference between your candidate and the opponent and place that here. These key issues should be appropriate for the donor list you are soliciting.
How does this candidate stand on
Think of two or three issues that might come up in a phone solicitation. This is the place to touch on a couple of key issues that might be of concern to the community. However, volunteers should use caution in discussing campaign issues in too much detail.
However, for the caller to have more background, your "'Vase for Support" sheet should cover the issues in greater depth.
Who else supports this candidate?
Include a short endorsement list here of organizations and well-known citizens that support the candidate.  Prepare here! For example, if you're calling Realtors, don't list an > antigrowth group to the potential supporter. Instead it might include members of the Chamber; of Commerce, the Rotary Club, or your downtown association. Again, fit the endorsements with the people being called.
[ 7.
HOW TO MAKE A SUCCESSFUL CALL
BHFORE YOU PICK UP THE PHONE:
I   Be proud of yourself for working on the front lines of a campaign. Many talk a good game, but you act.
2. FgeLcamaradcrie with the person you're calling. In nearly every case, the person has previously given to an organization supporting our efforts, directly to our candidate, or to another candidate who embraces ideals similar to our candidate's.
3   Remember what motivates you about (the candidate or ballot Measure) and why you agreed to pitch in with the campaign.
4. Decide how much you will ask for. If you know the person and their giving capabilities, don't be afraid to be bold. Otherwise you might say that people are giving $50 on average but that any amount would be welcome and put to good use. I often just let the people tell me what they want to give. (''What should I put you down for?" Offering increments of $25, $50, $100 works well.) It is important to get an amount.
MAK.1NG CONTACT WITH 1 HE DONOR:
5. Identify yourself by name and as a volunteer, and ask for the donor by her or his first name.
6. If a couple is identified on the donor card and vou don't know which one cares about the campaign, an effective approach is lo give your name and say you're a volunteer working for (name of campaign) as part of a fund-raising effort to get (name) elected. Then ask whether it is X or Y or both who support the candidate. Then ask to speak with that person. Say you'll call back if the person is not then available.
Show the donor thai you are sensitive to the possibility thai your call might come as an intrusion. For instance: Do you have a minute to talk now? If the answer is "no," ask when it would be convenient to call back. Note the call-back time on the donor card, and then follow through. If the answer is "yes," you're on your way! Refer to the letter sent out by our campaign.   Included in your packet is a "Case for Support" paper that will help guide you.
Figure 4.6F Sample Text for Answers to Frequently Asked Questions Sheet
I Figure 4.8G Sample Text for How to Make a Successful Call Sheet
"THE ASK" ... STEPS FOR SUCCESS
1. Strategies for The Ask: -.4
The campaign should have some issues that are important to the donor. For example, if ;i the donor's name came from a NOW list and choice is an important component in the campaign, use this information. Use the information about where the donor's name came * from to build a relationship.  Whether the source is the Chamber of Commerce, a school union, an environmental group, a women's activist organization, or even the town you live in, use this information. .\H
Find ways to connect with the potential donor. For example: In a countywide race you j may live in the same town as the prospective donor and recognize the last name as a parent'1, with children going to school with your children. "hi, I'm a volunteer out working for [name] tonight. As a parent of the Jacksonville School District, I'm supporting [name] ■ ■ because of her leadership within our community schools. Tonight we 're raising money ( to send [name] to the Board of Commissioners, and we're hoping you will join our effort f Would you consider a pledge of $50 toward the campaign?" .1.
A very effective technique is to tell the donors how much you are trying to raise for a .••<• specific campaign function. For example: "Hi, I'm a volunteer helping [name of j campaign]. We're trying to raise $12,000for some TV spots that have to be bought now < for the November election. Would you be willing to make a pledge or send a gift to 1 support our efforts?" If they say yes, ask what you can put them down for. If they say no or are curt with you, ask if they would rather be removed from the mailing list
2. Once you have made the request for money, let the donor respond. Do not distract the donor with nervous small talk. Just be silent. Remember: after the ask, the first one to speak, loses. If the donor declines the ambitious amount you've suggested, ask if he or she f would prefer to break the gift down by half and give twice. If that doesn't work, fall back
to a more modest amount.
3. If the donor indicates that he or she will probably make a pledge but hasn't decided hov, much, suggest that the campaign can send another envelope as a reminder, and the donor j can send whatever amount he or she feels comfortable with. .1
4. Finally, verify the address on the donor card, and ask if the donor has any objection to being acknowledged m an endorsement ad. Please note the response on the donor card, j and use the card to record any other information that has even the slightest chance of being ! useful, such as issues that lire voter cares about, if he or she wants to work for the campaign or would [ike a lawn sign.
5.  Thank everyone, including lurndowns, for their lime.
Figure 4.6H Sample Text for "The Ask" . . . Steps for Success Sheet
Elle Daniels for Mayor
Building a Better Community campaigner card
Finance Committee Member
1st Campaigner's Name__
Address____
2nd Campaigner's Name___
Address _
.Phone
_City _
. Zip
. Phone
- City .
- Zip .
Figure 4,7 Example of a Campaigner Card (Print three to a sheet of paper and cut to size, i
FRONT:
Daniels for Mayor . PO Box 1
Asn/and. Oregon 97520 ;>55-2Q03
Amount Pledged_: ^__
Payable:        Send envelope and information sheet Pay half now, .half later.       ■ '      • .: Other Arrangements
• Visa - ..      "Mastercard # • ' ■"• '
Place donor label here. Include: : Name (include partner or spouse)
Address
Phone number
Email . Giving history
Turn Down '-.v; :     Contact/At tempts:    1 "
^Expiration Date _
_ BACK:
Campaigner::; .Please mi out card, front and back, and return Email address___
New address (street or box, city, zip)   ~~—  — —
New Phone number (cell phone?)_ _
Out of. town; expected return ;date   '  '-: ."'-•->-"
Contact later; date to- contact
Wrong phone number: present number unknown
u.tumdown, reason given
Comments - <
with your weekly-reports.
Figure 4.8 Example of a Donor Card (front and back). These are printed on card
Fund-Raising        ä 105
FRIENDS 1 WILL CALL (Business-Social)
Name		
		
Address ___		
City	Zip	Pledge
Caller's Name,
Name		Phone
Address                            .__—-		
City	Zip	Pledge
important:   please bring this list to the campaign k1ck-
otFsowecan check for duplications.__--------
Figuie 4.9
Sample Friends I Will Call
The "Friends I Will Call" sheet is important because finance committee members list their friends or co-workers who they believe are supportive of the cause. Obviously this does two things: It increases your donor base, and it gets friends to call friends. This form should be filled out and returned to the campaign before the kickoff party to give the campaign an opportunity to remove any duplicates of names that are already in the mix for a call from the committee. Because many sheets end up arriving on the night of the kickoff (no matter how much you plead to have them back earlier), have a couple of campaign workers on hand to check these lists against your existing donor cards and the other names on the "Friends I Will Call" sheets. Remove duplicates before members begin their calling. This is important because people who hate being called once for a solicitation can get downright nasty on the second or third call in a single evening; plus it makes your campaign look disorganized and committee members go ballistic.
Once donor card duplications have been removed and duplications within each of the lists eliminated, return each "Friends I Will Call" sheet to the volunteer who generated it so that he or she can make contact with those on their list during the fund-raising campaign.
Include in each finance committee packet paper and envelopes so callers can jot a quick thank-you note to the donor after the phone contact (figure 4.11). This provides the added benefit of allowing for a personalized message while the conversation is still fresh in everyone's mind. It's most effective if this is done between calls; if left to the end, it usually does not happen.
This personal and efficient touch works. Use nice paper cut in half and a small envelope (4l/2.by53/<i inches). Prepare and include a few thank-you notes generated by the campaign for the committee and word them in such a way that they will not need a salutation—only a signature. Whether personal or prepared, completed thank-you notes are paper-clipped to the donor card for mail preparation- don't forget to include a remittance envelope (figure 4.4).
Because callers are more successful when they have plenty of information, finance committee packets should include a lot of detail about the candidate or issue-based campaign. Obviously, callers do not have to read everything in the packet, but those who do are often more at ease in the task. Here, as with canvassing, discourage volunteers from answering specific questions about a candidate's stands on issues. Although a caller can share his or her motivation lor volunteering in the effort, specific
"I am deeply touched—not as deeply touched as you have been coming to this dinner, but nonetheless it is a sentimental occasion!
—John F. Kennedy at a political fund-raiser
106 Q
THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
Dear Bonnie,
Thank you for volunteering as a campaigner for the Daniels for Mayor campaign. This fnnd-raising effort promises to reach an all-time high in dollars raised and fun to be had.
Please poll out your calendar and write the following dates and times down.
ALL EVENTS ARE LOCATED AT CAMPAIGN HEADQUARTERS LOCATED AT 525 BEACH STREET
CAMPAIGN KiCK-OFF CALL NIGHT PIZZA PARTY TURN IN PLEDGE SHEETS VICTORY PARTY...LAST OF PLEDGE CARDS TURNED IN
THURSDAY SEPT. 15 6:30~8',30l>M MONDAY SEPT. 27 6:30-8:30PM ON GOING THROUGHOUT MONTH
THURSDAY      OCT. 6 6:30-7:30PM
Now that you have these important dates written down, take a second to look over the enclosed information. 1 have included a campaign overview to let you know just where we are going with all of this and a "Friends I Wili Calf sheet.
Please pay special attention lo the "Friends I Will Call" sheet. This important list will accomplish two things. It will help you think of friends and acquaintances you could call who may be interested in supporting File Daniels for Mayor. It will also allow us to cross-reference those individuals with the list being called to eliminate the chance of call duplications. Please send it to me as quickiy as possible or bring it lo the campaign kick-off.
If you have any questions please feel free iu contact me at work (somber) or home (number).
Thank you again,
Figure 4.10 Sample Letter Welcoming Finance Committee Member to the
Campaign
questions can best be answered by directing the donor to cali the candidate directly.
It's a nice touch to personalize each of the finance committee packets by putting the caller's name on the front, even if it's in the form of a printed label; it tells the volunteer that he or she is important and is being counted on.
On kickoff night, when each committee member is to receive a packet and a stack of donor cards, the candidate and the campaign manager should . be present. The candidate says a few words of thanks and inspiration, and; the manager gives an overview of the fund-raising effort.
Callers are to make the calls within a three-week period, usually from home. However, it is a good idea to set up a phone bank party midway. This
Fond-Raising
107
Dear Peter,
Just a quick note to let you know how great it was to talk to you tonight and to thank you in advance for your generous pledge.
Without support from people like you we would not be able to pull off a win this November.
Oh, I hope your son did well on his Spanish test.
Thanks again, Joan
Figure 4.11 Sample Thank-You Note from Campaign Finance Committee Member to Campaign Donor
really gives callers a shot in the arm, and most will complete their calls at this time. In general, people prefer to call in the company of others, and many save their calls for this night—so make it a fun evening with great food and drink.
It is important to remember that
the people being solicited in this manner are not major donors. Major donors are contacted by the candidate, his or her spouse, or someone else close to the candidate.
'You may never know what remits from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no results'.'
—Gandhi
Potential Sources for Names
candidate
candidates spouse and relatives
contributors to other campaigns
108
THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
Fund-Raising
finance committee friends of the campaign campaign staff
business associates finance chair clubs
professional organizations college class mates churches
issue groups the part}' unions
Tips for Successful Fund-Raising
1. Campaigns are about emotion, not intellect.
2. Be visionary; present a vision; address opportunity. People need to feel that investing in a campaign will make life better, both now and in the future. They should feel that your winning will strengthen the community. Make your case larger than the office you seek or the program you hope to fund.
?>. Invite donors lo invest, in leadership, solutions, and vision. Through a candidate or a campaign, people are making an investment in their communily. Generally, people contribute to a campaign or candidate because they believe that they will get something in return. Describe to the donor, the voter, the citizen what they will get with a victorious election. Use issues that are in front of voters.
4. Look for early money. "He who gives early gives twice" (Cervantes). Do not look at fund-raising as though there is just so much money and no more. Money flows like a river; don't think of it like a wet! or a pond. There's plenty of money ii you can show Lhat gifts will be used wisely. This applies to candidates and campaigns as well as schools, libraries, parks, and other issue-based campaigns for money,
5. Sell ideas and hope, not the candidate. You're offering something that the voter wants: opportunity, vision, solutions, parks, better
schools, less traffic, lower crime rates, cleaner air, whatever, book at your campaign as the vehicle for the voters Lo get what they want. Charles Rev-son, founder of Rcvlon, said. "In the factorv, we make cosmetics. In the stores, we sell hope." Never think of fund-raising as begging. If you're a candidate, you're putting yourself out there, at no small sacrifice, to do a job that people want done. If you're working for a ballot measure, you're creating opportunities for a community to realize a vision. There's a difference between an underdog and a losing effort. People want to help an underdog but usually will not help finance an effort
"It does not mailer so much where we are.... as the direction which we are moving"
—Goethe
!0.
they believe will lose. Presenting your campaign as an underdog suggests that people are investing in the American Dream. Stay on.your message. Your message should always be at the center of every appeal. Incorporate it into the "ask" while keeping the targeted donor's profile and interests as the focus.
Be organized. Because people equate organization with winning, by showing a strong organizational core you are more likely to get people to give.
Think community. Community campaigns are the most successful. A community campaign presents issues that people understand. It presents solutions, involves volunteers, and encourages investment in the future. Do not talk about the mechanics of the campaign. A campaign and a candidate don't have needs; the communily and the people in it have needs and challenges. The candidate or campaign should represent opportunity, solutions, answers, and the ability to meet those needs.
Don't be afraid to ask for money. Asking for money is how you fund a campaign.
Fund-Raising ideas That Take Less Than One Month of Preparation
Personal solicitation.
The "Friends i Will Call" sheet.
Dinner at a restaurant as outlined above.
"Sponsored by ..." Dinner or brunch at the house of someone well known. This is a variation on a theme of a coffee, but whereas coffees are usually free, a dinner has an admission fee.
Theme dinner. These are great fun. First, and most important, you need an incredible friend who is willing to open his or her home and do the preparation of food with other friends. A theme dinner usually will focus on a period in history (such as the turn of the century), an author or set of authors, an important leader, and so forth. For example, you might have an evening focusing on Jane Austin. One friend would research her life and prepare some text that may be read throughout (or between) courses of the meal. Others would prepare the meal that features the types of foods eaten at that time period, A theme dinner can also center on many authors. In this case, your really great friend might prepare favorite dishes of certain authors or dishes featured in books—such as Like Water for Choco-
no j
THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
Fund-Raising
i 111
late. We have done this with high school girls and boys acting as the servants (dressed in black and white). You will also need different people to read appropriate passages from books that pertain to the courses being served. As these dinners are a real treat—almost like time travel—and lots of work, charge plenty. Make sure you sell enough tickets to make it worth your while before you head out to shop for groceries and spend days cooking.
6. Small auctions. 1 hey are surprisingly easy to conduct. You need volunteers who are willing to approach businesses and friends to get donations for a candidate. Combine donations to make more attractive prizes. Auction a pair of shoes from a local shoe store, or a backpack from a mountaineering supply store: find someone willing to give tennis lessons or golf lessons; ask a historian to donate a tour of your town's historic district; ask a pilot to donate a ride in a private plane; and so on.
7. Softball tournament. This requires lots of work and makes very little money but is great fun and a perfect project for that guy who wants to help, but doesn't quite fit in anywhere else. The admission fees go to the campaign.
Birthday party for the candidate. The price of admission in dollars should be the candidate's age in years.
Baffle. This requires someone to he completely on top of the event, someone who can really track where the tickets are. You need a big prize and some lesser prizes plus a bunch of people to sell tickets. Again, you can combine things to create a big prize, such as dinner for two, plus two theater tickets, after-theater dessert, and nightcap at a popular spot. 10.   A donated weekend in a cabin, at the lake, in the woods, or near a ski resort. Do you know anyone with a condo in Hawaii'!' If a travel agent supports you, he or she might be willing to forgo the sales commission and help with a really cheap fare that the campaign could afford to pay. Be creative.
An afternoon with ... Have a local celebrity or author put together entertainment or a reading. How about asking the governor to pop in as he or she is moving through town? Have some great donated pastries and assorted hot beverages on hand.
8
"Men take only their needs into consideration, never their abilities."
—Napoleon
"A person is known by his charity" —Irish proverb
11.
"We make a living by what we get, but we make a life bv what we give" —Winston Churchill
VI. Tasting and toasting. This is a theme coffee with an admission, it is just what it sounds like: wine tasting with finger food and a couple of big names present.
"Hey, Big Spender"
If you've read this far. chances are you don't have millions of dollars to throw at your campaign—maybe not even thousands. So what happens when you head up aballot measure or pull a petition against big money? Don't worry, there's hope. Big spenders may get a lot of press, but they don't always win. In fact, the Center for Responsive Politics reported that in the 1996 congressional races, only 19 of the 149 candidates who spent more than $100,000 of their own money won—that's less than 13 percent. Similarly, in the 2002 midterm elections, 19 of the 20 U.S. House and Senate candidates who spent $1 million or more of their own funds on their campaigns lost.
While deep pockets can't always buy a win on election day, they can buy name recognition. So, if you're running a campaign against someone with unlimited resources, you'd better have a tight message, a lot of volunteers, a well-organized campaign, and an edge. In this handbook you'll find a number of tips to help you compete with big money. However, if you know you will be outspent, pay close attention to developing a powerful message and communicating it in effective ways that resonate with the voters.
With the complexities of government more in focus for the voter in recent years, experience is playing a larger role in electing and reelecting candidates. While "Í don't know" can initially sound romantic and even charming, it wears thin with the voters as time goes on. Although there are exceptions, candidates who are vague about issues eventually will come across to voters as lacking substance whether they have lots of personal wealth or not.
In a special election in 1999, Audie Bock won a seat in the California State Assembly with $40,000, one direct mail ptece, a few lawn signs, and 100 volunteers. Her opponent spent $600.000, including $100,000 in the last two weeks on twelve direct mail pieces.
"Big money brings big problems"
—Bill Meulemans
"Nobody roots for Goliath."
—Wilt Chamberlain
m 5
THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
"A man's real worth is determined by what he. does when he has nothing to do'.'
—Megiddo message
In Nebraska's 1998 gubernatorial primary, Mike johanns, who was hugely outspent by his two opponents, won using the slogan: "This is about governing ,.. and I've done it." This slogan focused on the candidate's experience— something money cannot buy.
By contrast, an underfinanced Republican, Bill Redmond, of New Mexico, was elected to Congress in 1996 in a district heavily populated by registered Democrats not by focusing on his experience but rather on questionable ethical activities of his opponent. And his campaign used one other very effective trick. With a strong Green Party candidate, Carol Miller, in the running, the Redmond campaign sent a direct mail piece to Democrats urging them to vote for her, thereby splitting the Democratic vote.
In all these campaigns, the focus on message, a disciplined organization, volunteers, strategy, and communication pulled out not just difficult races, but. in the Redmond and Bock examples, seemingly impossible races, all while being outspent. While Redmond and Bock incorporated negative campaigning, in the Nebraska election Mike Johanns never went negative.
In my town, we effectively fought and won a campaign for a prepared . food and beverage tax to pay for an open -space program and wastewaler treatment plant upgrades against local restaurateurs. Realtors, and the Oregon Food and Beverage Industry. Although we weie outspent five to one, we had an effective message that resonated with the voters and hundreds of volunteers to deliver that message.
Five Reasons Why Personal Wealth Doesn't Translate into Winning Campaigns
1. Many voters feel that money is not an entitlement to hold a public office. Candidates must have substance, a clear stand on issues, and related experience.
2. A candidate who appears to be working hard to get into office will be perceived as someone who will work hard once in office. A candidate who buys everything lor support does not always appear to be working as hard as the candidate who can't buy so much.
3. Clear communication will beat money every time. The voter knows that if a candidate can clearly communicate during an election, theres a good chance that he or she will be a good communicator in office.
Fund-Raising
i 113
4. Because there is a perception that candidates with great personal wealth do not need financial support, they have a more difficult time raising money Money raised is itself a way to communicate with the voters: It tells them who supports a candidate and, in essence, why.
5. Similarly, there is a perception that candidates with great personal wealth do not need as much volunteer help—that they can buy strategists, pollsters, campaign managers, phone bank callers, canvassers, and envelope stuffers. Fewer volunteers on the campaign also means a smaller number of potential supporters from among the friends and family of existing volunteers.
Outside money can also be a liability. There is fundamental suspicion among voters when outside money tries to buy an election. This is most apparent in small communities that take on money measures that poke at large political action groups with unlimited resources to influence the outcome of an election. However, I have also seen allegations of outside money influence used to defeat statewide ballot measures.
So what if you have plenty of money and want to get elected or pass your ballot measure? Here are some tips:
1. If you're working to pass or defeat a ballot measure, remember, the messenger is the message. Carefully choose who will deliver the message to the voters. In the 1998 California general election, the Indian gambling proposition had the out-of-state Las Vegas casinos fighting it while the proponents used Native Americans to promote it. The casinos lost. During a recent tort reform ballot measure, lawyers used victims of drunk drivers rather than themselves in ads. Carefully consider your messenger and use one who evokes an emotion or a positive feeling with the voters.
2. Hit the campaign trail. Don't spend all your time with the high end of society. Get out and meet the public, kiss babies, shake hands, go to malls, get your face or issue out there. Do the walking and talking. If you're independently wealthy and financing your own campaign, you get to spend time with the voters rather than on the phone dialing for dollars.
3. Distance yourself from any legislation or policies that look like they will benefit your business, either directly or indirectly. A good politician will embrace issues that are good for the community, especially the community in the long run. That may not be good for your
.114 n THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
business in the immediate future, but it will be good for you as a candidate and office holder.
4. Being rich doesn't mean you shouldn't be informed on the issues, have a tight message, and be able to communicate it well to the public. Get your campaign organized, and don't apologize for your money.
5. Spend your resources as though you don't, have a lot. Use lawn signs, newspaper ads, radio ads, and direct mail. Even though you can afford it and it's easier, you should avoid communicating with the voters only through TV ads.
6. Don't run as a businessperson. run as a leader in your community. Talking about your business success can be misconstrued by the voter. Instead relate your business experience to serving in office. While people love to say government should be run like a business, that's not exactly true; streets make no money, sewer and water services make no money. Government is not about making a profit, it's about service to the community—it's business with a heart. Characterize the differences so voters know that you understand what they are.
7. Don't parade your wealth to the voters by saying how much you will spend to win. You never want to appear as though you're buying votes. It's far more important to the voters that you earn them.
8. Most important, always appear to be one with the average person. Integrate this idea as part of your core. Too often, those who are very wealthy project an image of being out of touch with the common person.
The World's Smallest Brochure: Direct Mail That Works
Most direct mailings have a rate of return of 3 to 6 percent without callbacks. Because a campaign does not want to send a direct, mail piece to raise funds that costs more money than it brings in, the challenge lies in designing a piece with a higher rate of return that is inexpensive to produce.
People have become very sophisticated at detecting junk mail. To increase the rate of return, the piece must first get opened; second, it must be read (at least in part); and finally, it must be compelling enough to motivate the reader to give. Anything in a business-size envelope (a number 9) with an address label, a bulk stamp, or a meter mark is suspect and apt to be thrown away without being opened. So the first
"Time is the most valuable thing one can spend'.'
—Theophrastus (300 B.C.)
Fund-Raising it 1 IS
task is choosing an envelope size for the piece that will make it more likely to be opened.
In 1999 the Reform Party created a direct mail piece that went out nationwide to 70,000 recipients. They drew a return rate of 4 percent by using an oversized (5 by 7 inches) courier envelope and an easy-to-read three-page note. The return rate of this piece was double the national average, and they realized a two to one profit (Campaigns & Elections, April 2000, p. 54). A mailing that large enjoys an economy of scale that few local elections can attain; in this case, it cost only 67 cents per piece, including postage. The cost of a mailing like this for a short run in a local election could easily be more than twice as much; in fact, postage alone (if using first class) would come in at 57 cents per piece.
While oversized pieces work well with some voters, they do not work at my home. The size that I most consistently open looks like an invitation or a greeting card from a friend; that is, 6 Va by 43/t inches. This size is large enough to hold a remittance envelope (without folding) and also will comfortably hold a half-sheet of paper folded in half. Given that a shorter letter is more likely to be read, do not make the mistake of folding an 8 Va-by-ll-inch sheet in four.
/ / ■« 7 REPRESENTATIVE 1 ..  / SATES' 2001
' . ■ "' ' REPORT CARD
The Oregon Business Association linked Representative Alan Bates among the top ten legislators ^       in Oregon: "courageous, smart, thoughtful."
The Oregon League of Conservation Voters gave Rep. Bates an 82% pro-environmmt rating.
The Oregon Education Association rated Dr. Bates in the 90th percentile for his advocacy of public education
"As a fmshtiuui legislator, he shined as he forged consensus legislation ensuring a healthy and imnpetilive workers' compensation market, in Oregon, ft was Dr. Bates who kept Ike interests ofthe insured ,md (he small businesses first. " - Coalition for Economic Security for Oregon
Because oflegislalion 'sponsored or strongly supported by Dr. Alan Ba'es Oregonians will have:
'   Increased access to higher eduction {Hli 2521j
A panent bill or rights (HR J040j
•   Reduced prcsc.nptio.ns costs tor servers \hS 33C'P i SB 819)
* Improved roods .-md h,qhvsay\ (comprehensive transportation package]
"   Government made more accountable through annual audit-, (HB 3^801
A deancr and safer environment jmoicury reduction legislation)
Figure 4.12 Front of the "World's Smallest Brochure"
Br. Alan Bates State Representative Oak Street
Ashland. Oregon 97520
Phone and to- |541| 482-1427 Email: repbatesSiniernetcdi.com
Dear Friends,
I wanted to take a moment to thank you for the opportunity to serve Southern Oregon in the legislature. When I first ran for State Representative [ never realized how much I would love this work.
Although veteran legislators told me I accomplished more than most freshmen—especially of a minority party—1 sometimes felt frustrated watching excellent bills (such as campaign finance reform) die in committee. Still, there were many successes of which 1 am quite proud. 1 have included a few in this mailing.
I believe my success was due not only to the support of so many in Southern Oregon who helped me get to Salem, but also those who continued to help throughout the session with emails, phone calls, and letters alerting my office to problem legislation.  With 5,000 bills to read we relied on those back home to help. We were not disappointed.
Mow, I need your help again. I've been told this area will be targeted in the next election and that I must expect a tough and expensive race. While I am willing to put in the time needed to win the next election, I know that hard work alone is no guarantee. To win, I need your support of both time and money.
Please, take a moment to return the enclosed envelope and, please, consider a contribution today.
Thank you,
PS. Political contributions (up to $50 per person, $100 per couple) are refundable on your Oregon tax return. That applies whether you file the short or long form.
Figure 4.13 Sam
pie Fund-Raising Letter Inside of the "World's Sma
liest Brochure"
Fund-Raising Q 1.17
Once the envelope is open, it is important that the piece offer plenty of information, be pleasing to look at, and have a weight and feel that says the recipient is important, without looking lavish or expensive.
The challenge then is how to make it all fit in a small format.
To accomplish such a package, my graphic designer and I put together what we call the world's smallest brochure: a half sheet of 8 J/2-by-ll-inch 80-pound vellum Bristol, folded in half. The front of the piece featured a photo of the candidate and a list of his accomplishments and ratings during his first term in the Oregon House (figure 4.12). The inside had another photo of the candidate and a letter with a PS. on the state's tax refund policy on political contributions (figure 4.13), each personally signed by the candidate in either blue or green ink (never use black), The back had an endorsement from the governor. Given the space constraints, we skipped the usual business letter practice of including the donor's address in the upper left-hand corner. Some letters had a "Dear Friends" salutation, and on others we used no other identifier than the recipient's first name to make it a personalized letter; this created more work, but was worth it. To keep everything looking sharp, the letter, envelope, and remittance envelope were ail printed on while.
To encourage the recipient to turn Ihe envelope over (one step closer to opening it), we had the representatives name and address printed on the envelope flap rather than on the front in the upper left-hand corner.
To test a "Dear Friends" salutation versus a personalized one, 1 divided the mailing into two parts. The first was sent to 500 people who had canvassed, had a lawn sign, or volunteered time to the campaign in some way. Although some had also given to the campaign, 1 did not have the donor list at the time of the mailing. This group had a letter that began "Dear Friends," which allowed me to have the whole thing printed, cut, and folded at a local print shop. Using a clerical team of sixteen seniors, we hand addressed, stuffed, sealed, and stamped the envelopes (using bulk, not first-class postage) in one hour and fifteen minutes. The mailing cost $400 (85 cents per piece)—for printing, postage, paper stock, layout, and remittance-envelopes.
Because the cand idate was a physician, I sent the second mailing to 100 local physicians that he knew, either personally or peripherally, using a letter designed to address their interests. This mailing was identical to the "Dear Friends" mailing except for four things: the text of the letter, the personalized salutation, a first-class stamp rather than a bulk stamp, and a computer-generated "handwriting" font on the envelope. A volunteer printed and stamped the envelopes. One side of the letter was printed at a local print shop, and I used my printer to add the personalized salutation and letter on
118 Q THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
the other side; I cut, and stuffed the letters as they came out of the printer. Increasing the postage from bulk to first class increased the price by 14 cents per piece but saved an enormous amount of time going to the post office and dealing with the bulk mail process. The cost of the second piece was $1 each, for a total of $100.
For the 500 "Dear Friends" letters, the rate of return was 19 percent with an average donation of $61. This $400 mailing brought in $5,745. The mailing with the personalized salutation and first-class postage stamp had a 53 percent rate of return with an average donation of $97. This $100 mailing brought in $5,125. The two mailings combined realized a twenty to one profit. We did not make follow-up phone calls for either mailing.
Keeping Track of Donations
One enormously helpful contribution a volunteer can make to a campaign is to keep the records of donations as they come in. By having these records complete and in one place, your campaign will save money in accounting fees and will have at hand the information needed for filing with the secretary of state or the elections department. Figure 4.14 is an example of headings you can use in a spreadsheet for keeping track.
Name, last	First: (signer namel	Spouse/ partner	Addi'esvTO box	Cay	Zip	Occupation fsiqner)	Donation amount	Dote received	T.Y.   j Phone*	
										
										
Figure 4.14 Exam Die of Headings for the Donor Spreadsheet. Your campaign must have the occupation of the person who signed the check and the date the check was received for filing purposes.
Ii
GETTING OUT THE VOTE (GOTV)
IN THIS CHAPTER
• The Essentials
• Identifying Your Voters: Voter ID
• Last-Minute Efforts to Persuade Voters
• Poll Watching
• Phoning
• The Absentee Ballot and Early Vote
• Vote By Mail
• Organizing the GOTV Effort
• Push Polls
ake no mistake; everything you have done up to this point is about the i GOTV effort. Everything. You've canvassed, mailed, advertised, phoned, raised money, and delivered vour message again and again and again. Why? To move voters and activate your base for support on election day. But voters get busy: Kids get sick, cars break
down, food boils over, an old friend calls. ... In short, life gets in the way, and somehow 8:00 p.ai. rolls around and best intentions to vote are out the window. Now, after months of campaigning, your job, your one and only job, is to remind, remove obstacles, and motivate your support to do their civic duty.
While canvassing is aboui. activating people who you think will vote favorably, a GOTV effort is about activating voters who you know will support
"[Push polls] breed cynicism about politics, and we believe they contribute to declining response rates for polls."
—Michael Traugott. American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR)
321
322
THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
Getting Out the Vote (GOTV)
323
"One thing the world needs is popular government at popular prices."
—George Barker
your cause. With your base you know because of registration, neighborhood, and historical voting patterns. With everyone else, you know because your
campaign has personally contacted them and has been told. Identifying how the swing and undecided voter will vote is called voter ID. Getting your support out on election day is called GOTV.
Whether voter ID is conducted while canvassing or during phone bank calling, the campaign must keep track of voter intentions (supportive, somewhat supportive, undecided, somewhat opposed, opposed) and secure a current phone number for election night.
The Essentials
Activating Your Base
Regardless of whether your campaign conducts voter ID. you must activate your base to increase voter turnout. Although your base vote has not received the same level of attention as potential swing voters, they have not been neglected either. Your base support, that is, party loyalists, have received some direct mail, have lawn signs, and have seen and heard your ads. In some cases, they have even been canvassed. When it comes to the GOTV, this group is extraordinarily important. Your precinct analysis has told you who among your base will vote with very little effort from the campaign and who needs to be reminded before election day.
Those who need a little prodding can actually be quite different depending upon their context. With these voters there are generally two groups. The first are those who live in areas of equal or slight registration advantage (up to 10 points) but are disengaged. The second group is also disengaged, but they are embedded in neighborhoods where their party (and that of the candidate) is greatly outnumbered.
For our purposes, you will have three strategies for your base:
1. Your hard-core voters, those who traditionally have high turnout rates, will need little effort from the campaign. Although it is a good idea lo canvass them with a drop piece on election day, if time, money, volunteers, and logistics are a problem, this activity could be
"Persistence in the face of adversity is what wins an election." —Patricia Schifferle, former Assistant to the Speaker, California
dropped. However, it will be important to track the returns from these precincts, because you are really counting on them. If it looks as though their turnout will be down, the campaign should be ready to activate them with GOTV phone calls. 2.   For your lazy yet loyal voter (high support/low to medium turnout) your campaign has canvassed, mailed, called, and canvassed them again. Now you need to stay on them like a fly on compost. If you're in a state that doesn't use vote by mail, your GOTV team will closely watch the polls and absentee lists to make sure these voters do their duty. If they don't, you will need to call them, 'these are the voters you must continue to activate in the days leading up to the election; remind them that voting early helps your volunteer efforts, and emphasize that their vote and their vote alone will make the difference in a win. For the precincts that are loaded with lazy voters, organize canvass teams to go in and rattle their cage on election day. In vote-by-mail elections, send canvassers in to pick up ballots and return them to the drop boxes for the voter. 3.   The third group is a little trickier. Voters registered in your party who live behind enemy lines will need very specific attention, as they are often the most difficult to activate. These voters should be treated like swing voters: They must get direct mail from the campaign, and they should be canvassed by the candidate. It is critical that these voters be part of your voter ID effort, as they are the least predictable of your entire party. Your swing analysis will tell you what percent will always voce party. Voter ID will tell you, by name, whom you can count upon. I recently worked on a campaign for a Democrat where nearly a!! the support was in areas of heavy Republican registration. During the GOTV, all party voters were called, but more than a third of them said, "Why are you calling me? I'm a registered Republican and always vote Republican" Since we were working from county registration lists that clearly indicated that their registration was Democrat, it was a little disorienting. The good thing about this group is that, if you identify them as supporting your opponent and then do not contact them again, they tend to be nonvoters.
Swing Voters
The next group of voters your campaign will identify are those who live in precincts with high numbers of swing voters. Recall that the precinct analysis has told you exactly which precincts they live in and how many of them you need to win. Because the campaign must have a clear reading of who will be supporting you, who is undecided, and who will not move, use the
324 g
THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
candidate, volunteers registered in the opposing party, and your best canvassers to knock in these areas. Your campaign must keep track of the voters who say they will support you and send persuasion mail to the undecided. After the persuasion piece has been mailed, the campaign should follow up with a phone caii to determine whether the voter's support can be counted on. If the answer is yes, two questions are asked: (1) Will you take a lawn sign? And (2) Can we use your name on an endorsement ad?
You want the swing voter to go public. These two simple and inexpensive "public" contributions to the campaign will guarantee a vote. Depending on the reason, if the voter says no to both of these questions, you should assume that on the issue of support, you have been told what you want to hear rather than given a guarantee.
The Pleasure of Your Company
It's always a good idea to be aware of other ballot issues that may affect your turnout or (hat of the opposition. If no other campaign is conducting a strong GOTV that will help you, do not let anything keep you from running a comprehensive one for your campaign. In a close election a GOTV is the difference between winning and losing.
If you're involved in an election where a controversial measure is also on the ballot, there may be a high voter turnout that significantly affects your efforts. For example, a few years back I was working for a progressive Demo crat who was on the ballot with two ballot measures intended to limit the rights of a targeted minority. Our campaign had a well-organized GOTV and we had conducted voter ID from September through November. The committee working in opposition to the two ballot measures also had a great GOTV effort, which helped ours even more. The state Democratic caucus was running tracking polls, and we knew we were neck and neck with our opponent. We also knew from polling that the two ballot measures were going down statewide. What we had not anticipated was the precincts of the sinners turning out in huge numbers to vote yes on these ballot measures, and, as long as they were there, they voted against our candidate as well.
Unfortunately, we realized too late that we spent far too much time identifying and getting out the vote where the proponents of the two ballot measures were also working. Had we left this portion of the electorate to the other campaign, more volunteer time and energy could have been freed up for voter ID and GOTV of our persuadables.
Disorganized and uncoordinated GOTV efforts can enrage hard-core voters. In Ashland, largely because of the statewide passage of the double-majority requirement in 1997, we have had a GOTV machine that rivals any
Getting Out the Vote (GOTV)
325
in the state. Voters are conditioned to vote early if they do not want to be bothered with activation calls during the week leading up to the election. However, in the 2000 general election, other well-meaning campaigns, specifically those working for candidates running for state and federal office, duplicated the efforts of hundreds of volunteers working on our campaign. Making matters worse, a local teacher, anxious to involve students in the electoral process, conducted yet another GOTV effort. As a result, voters were called three or more times in a single evening. It was ugly.
This kind of voter harassment must be minimized if at all possible. To avoid it, conduct cooperative GOTV efforts with other campaigns, or, at the very least, call and see what other campaigns intend to do. Call all campaigns that may inadvertently duplicate your efforts and carve up the county so that there is no overlap in calling areas. Contact high schools and let leadership and government teachers know how, when, and where their students can help.
Identifying Your Voters: Voter ID
Whether identifying voters by phone or by canvassing, you will need walking lists, These lists can be generated from the CO-ROM of registered voters you bought from the county, directly from the county itself, from a voter contact service, or from an organization that is endorsing your efforts.
No matter where you get your walking lists, you must first conduct a precinct analysis to know where to focus your voter ID efforts. Since you do not want to waste time on households where registered voters do not participate, prepare your lists so that only the two out of four voters—those who voted in two (or more) of the past four elections—are listed. These lists will need to be organized by precinct and then by street and street number.
The lists should be prepared so that streets are separated by page. Across the top of each page have: "Supporting," "Leaning support," "Undecided," "Leaning no support," and "Not supporting," or use a number rating system correlated with these categories from one to five that corresponds to the categories from "supporting" to "not supporting."
Once you have the walking lists, you will ID voters by canvassing, phoning, or both.
Canvassing for Voter ID
If you intend to ID voters while canvassing, you need to organize the walking lists to coincide with and match your canvassing maps. This is a lot more work than you might imagine. Do notletjusl anyone help you with this task! If you do, you'll spend days undoing and redoing. Once you match a walking hst to a canvassing map, place the list inside the canvassing envelope.
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THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
If you are canvassing to ID voters, you will need twice the number of canvassers normally required, or more. At the door, each of your canvassers must ascertain whether the house will be in favor, opposed, undecided, or leaning in some way. If voters are leaning toward support or undecided, your campaign
should be ready to follow up with literature or a phone call to bring them into your camp. If no one is home, you must have clean-up teams going out to re-knock or do the voter ID at phone banks to determine how people intend to vote. The idea here is to identify individual voters who support your candidate and compile a list of these supporters so that your campaign can track them on election day and remind them to vote if it looks like they might be a no-show.
"There is no knowledge that is not power,"
—-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Voter ID by Phone
Although it puts a heavy burden on the phone bank team, 1 tend to prefer voter ID by phone, for a number of reasons:
1, For some canvassed areas, only 40 percent of the households have anyone at home during the canvass. That means that the remaining homes have to be recanvassed of called anyway.
2. It is generally easier to get phone volunteers than canvass volunteers, and canvassing for voter ID eats up people.
3, Although canvassers can read body language and facial expressions to determine voter intent, voters are often more forthcoming on the. phone about their support, especially if they support your candidate or issue-based campaign. It's sometimes hard for voters to tell candidates or volunteers face-to-face that they will be supporting the opposition.
4. Voter ID by canvass will sometimes net individuals who are not registered to vote.
Whether by phone or canvass, your goal should be to target 10-15 percent of the total number of votes you need to win. As the area and voting
population increases, your voter ID et-"Winners never quit and quitters forts must also expand. Always start with
never win." the precincts that will give you the most
—Bob Zuppke.      return for the effort. For voter ID, that Illinois football coach      means going into swing voter precincts
Getting Out the Vote (GOTV) M 327
to look for swing voters and calling your embedded party registration living behind enemy lines.
If you are conducting voter ID bv phone, you can use walking lists. Be sure to include phone numbers if it is your intention to use the same lists for both types of voter ID. Should you decide to identify ali voters by phone and use canvassing only for activation and persuasion, yrou might as well prepare your calling lists in a format that will work best at the phone banks.
Pull precincts where you want to ID voters and sort by last name alphabetically and by phone number. If you sort only alphabetically, you risk repeating calls to households where people have different last names, if you sort by name and phone number, you improve your chances of catching and organizing duplicates in a way to prevent repeat calls.
To identify your supporters, systematically call every registered voter in the identified precincts. Remember, you are first calling areas that have a high swing voter tendency, so you will be calling as many voters as you can reach. Often, county lists do not have all of the phone numbers listed, so you may need to set up clerical sessions to look up phone numbers before your phone banks begin. Don't forget to check Web directory services. Phone banking to identify supporters goes much quicker than canvassing.
In your first round of phone calls, your campaign has a couple of choices: You can conduct blind calls or persuasion calls. In a blind call, volunteers ask questions about the candidates or issues but do not reveal for whom they are working. In a persuasion call, the caller immediately lets the voter know which organization is behind the calling effort. 1 prefer the persuasion call simply because it saves time by eliminating one step. If you start with a blind call and the voter is undecided or has a question about one of the candidates, your volunteer cannot field the question or attempt to persuade. Your campaign must be ready to follow that call with direct mail or another call from the campaign to try to persuade the voter.
If the first call is a persuasion call and your volunteer finds an undecided voter,      „.,,   , , . ,
lo do great and important tasks, he or she can immediately provide infer- , . ,
two things are necessary: a.plan ar mation that mav help move the voter to . ,   . „
not quite enough tone,
support your candidate or cause. A cam-
—Anonymo
paign can also use an endorsement group to draw voters in a persuasion call, such
as the National Rifle Association, a clean air coalition, teachers, nurses, and so forth. You can also use people from within a particular precinct to call their neighbors: "Hello, is this George? Hi, I'm Shirley Smith, 1 live just down the street from you...." Indirect supporters can be very persuasive.
328 g
THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
Getting Out the Vote (GOTV)
329
Last-Minute Efforts to Persuade Voters
1. Mail or walk a door hanger to your high-priority precincts reminding them to vote.
2. To swing precincts, mail or walk a persuasion piece that features an individual or group that normally would not support your cause or candidate (validators) to encourage voters to split their ballots.
3. Mail pieces designed to give information to the voters such as polling places, how to mark a ballot for your write-in candidate, whom to call if a ballot needs to be picked up, or whom to call for a ride to the polls. These are very effective and often rise above other direct mail clogging mailboxes in the last week.
4. While mail is easier, showing that your campaign is rich with volunteers can be far more effective, especially given the huge amounts of political mail seen in the last days of a campaign. Any big canvassing effort is bound to draw positive attention.
5. The night before election day, move lawn signs from one location to another. People get desensitized to lawn signs, but if a new one goes up in a neighborhood or, better yet, ten new ones appear, voters will notice.
6. Attach helium-filled balloons to lawn signs located on busy streets.
7. Hand paint specialty signs for a specific neighborhood and place them the day before the election. "Elect Mayor Daniels for a central bike path." "For more parks, elect Daniels." You want a personalized message for just that neighborhood that will present the look of an upwelling of new support. (1 have used the reverse side of old lawn sign stock for this.)
8. Have the local paper place a 3-incb-by-5-inch Post-it note on the front page of the paper reminding people to vote for your candidate or cause. Use a yellow Post-it, red ink, and a style and size of font that looks like handwriting yet is very easy to read. Our local paper has done this from time to time for local businesses—usually for oil changes. The first time I saw one. 1 could not believe how it popped out at me as I unfolded the paper in the morning. So we did one for a GOTV on a double-majority issue-based campaign in the 2003 primary. Although the Post-its must be printed somewhere else, our local paper will do the insert for $142 per thousand. It is very effective.
9.   Some local papers that place the daily in a plastic bag will sell advertising space on the bags. Like the Post-it note inside the folded paper.
this "message on a bag" goes to people wlro subscribe to and presumably read the newspaper—some of the more likely voters. Check with the newspaper to see if it can use different messages for different cities or areas within your voting district.
Avoid Untargeted Activities
A GOTV effort is most effective in elections where there is voter apathy and low voter turnout is expected. Through the GOTV you bring up the turnout of one segment of the population while leaving the support for the opposing camp alone. Still, every candidate I have worked for has wanted to stand at the entrance of the county fair, set up a table on the plaza in the heart of the community, wave signs at commuters, or hand out flyers in front ol a grocery store. Unless you are conducting an untargeted activity such as this in a community where your candidate has overwhelming support, it can actually work against your GOTV effort. Remember, getting-out-the-vote is about getting your voters to the polls, not all voters. Unless it is a double-majority election, reminding everyone that they need to vote is counterproductive.
One might also argue that there arc far better ways to use the candidate's time than standing on a corner during rush hour. Personally, I like to keep the candidate busy and out of my hair on election eve and election day. It's a great time to have him or her on the phone for GOTV or canvassing a high-priority precinct. 11 is also an excellent time for the candidate to call and thank supporters for their donations and volunteers for their time.
The GOTV: A Raft in a Hurricane
There comes a point in a campaign where you and your team have done everything you could possibly do. You have run a tight, well-organized campaign and raised enough money to get a clear, resonating message across to the voters. You may have been outspent bv an opposition that had better television ads, brochures, press, and direct mail. But as the election draws near and you prepare for the GOTV, remember that both your campaign and your opponent's are headed into the same storm. If your efforts have
placed you within striking distance, the GOTV is a great equalizer, often making the difference between a win and a loss, (n the end, the odds are best, for the team that is belter prepared.
Although there are many who would disagree, I have found that by the tinal three weeks of a campaign most voters have made up their minds.
"Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity."
—Louis Pasteur
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Getting Out the Vote (GOTV)
While campaigns send copious amounts of direct mail, especially toward the end, if you have not made your case by then, no amount of money or direct mail is going to change that. Don't misunderstand: There will still be voters struggling with the decision of whom to vote for, which is one reason a comparative piece is best left until last. However, by the end of a campaign, the effort is really about who can rally the most troops out of the bunker, regardless of how many happen to be in there. Effective last-minute direct mail pieces are more about relocking your base and rallying your troops to get out and vote than about moving voters from one bunker to another. Although there may be last-minute revelations that will swing campaigns twenty points, those are the exception, not the rule.
After the recall of Governor Gray Davis in California, voters were surveyed and asked (among other things) what impact the last-minute allegations of sexual harassment charges had on their support of Arnold Schwarzenegger. The surveys "showed that more than two-thirds of the voters had made up their minds more than a month before the election. As a result, the intense publicity in the last week of the campaign about accusations of Mr. Schwarzenegger's unwanted sexual advances appeared to have had little effect on how women—and others—voted" ({Catherine Seelye and Marjorie Connelly, "Signaling Voter Unrest, Schwarzenegger Cut Deep into the Democrats' Base," New York Times, October 9, 2003).
in the last month before the 2000 presidential election, polling numbers showed Gore and Bush bouncing in and out of the lead. At the time this was attributed to voter whim. However, after analyzing fifty-two polls conducted by seven polling firms, Donald Green and Alan Gerber found that the "preferences toward the candidates changed little" and that "the failure of certain polls to predict the closeness of the actual vote reflects sampling bias, not the electorate's capricious preferences" (Green and Gerber, "What Causes Polls to Fluctuate?" Yale University, August 2001).
After the 2002 general election in Oregon, one political consultant attributed Democratic losses in house seats with close registration numbers to insufficient direct mail and a general unwillingness among Democrats to send hit pieces. However, on closer examination of the eleven close house races, only four of the winning races sent more direct mail pieces, and only five of the winning races sent more negative pieces titan the opposition (data gathered from the political consultants involved in house races for both Democrats and Republicans, and the Oregon secretary of state).
While each race has its unique signature requiring specific action, the overriding features of losing campaigns are that they (1) did not communicate a clear message and (2) did not give due attention to the GOTV among last-minute campaign demands.
331
From day 1, all communication with the voter should be about two things: getting your base to care enough to vote, and moving swing voters and undecided voters to your camp. Keeping track of who moves (voter ID) and getting your base plus those who have moved to the polls (GOTV) is what wins elections, not copious direct mail.
As the final week before the election approaches, everything about the campaign should shift so that attention can be directed to the GOTV effort. That does not. mean media, direct mail, or solicitation stops; however, everyone on the team must be focused on filling the phone banks, bike fund-raising, GOTV should have its own team leader and timeline. To run a successful GOTV a campaign must:
1. Have 10-15 percent of the registered voters identified, including, hopefully, most, of those outside of the party base in identified precincts of swing voters.
2. Have enough volunteers and phone lines to contact both identified voters and base party voters living in precincts with high support and low and medium turnout.
3. Have a well-organized data system, with someone other than the GOTV coordinator or the campaign manager supplying the campaign with calling lists generated from registration rolls. In vote-by-mail states, this person would also be responsible for getting daily updates from the clerk's office of inactive voters (those who have not yet returned a ballot) for the week leading up to the election.
Once you have identified your supporters, your campaign must track them to see if they've voted. Tracking for vote-by-mail elections, early voting, or absentees can be done electronically. If you are tracking voters at the polls you have a couple of choices: One is poll watching and the other is working your list by phone and asking voters if they
have cast a ballot.
"I wanted to look nice if we won, and if we lost this would be nice to be buried in."
—Bob Borkowski, assistant coach, on why he showed up for a game in a black pinstriped suit
Poll Watching
Poll watching is a labor-intensive campaign activity that requires plenty of preparation. It can not be put together at the last minute, so prepare ahead of time. Find someone who will oversee this activity, and support that person with your volunteer base. Each poll watcher will need lists of people who hax'e been identified as supporters sorted alphabetically and by precinct. Ideally you would use a list of all members of the
332 0 THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
candidate's party, with supporters highlighted, although a list that includes only your identified supporters is fine.
Things to Do for a Successful Poll Watching Effort
1. Before the election, ask your county clerk or election official what is
required of poll watchers. Are there forms that must be filled out and re-"Its not so important who starts the       turned? Does the derk require training game, but who finishes it. conducted by his or her staff? In my
—John Wooden, former UCLA ... ■ ,    ,   ,.      c   , ,
' area, before the introduction of vote by-
basketball coach ., ..        ,     | r       ii     ,. u
man, it was legal tor poll watchers to
review the poll book, as long as they
didn't interfere with the work of the election board. However, in
some areas poll watchers can only listen for names as they are being
called out.
2. Provide poll watchers with an alphabetical list, a clipboard, pencils with good erasers, and a cell phone, It is also a nice touch to send them out with a folding chair or stool. It's a good idea to provide each poll watcher with more than one list so that when volunteers come to retrieve the list to start calling no-shows, time isn't burned transferring names.
3. Place your poll watchers in high-priority precincts (that is, where high numbers of your supporters have been identified), and direct them to note which of your TD'd supporters have voted throughout the day.
4. As the name of the voter is called out, the poll watcher will check the list of supporters to see whether that individual is among those who have been positively identified.
5. Relay this information back to phone banks, and approximately four hours before the polls close, supporters who have not yet voted gel a call from a volunteer urging them to get down to the polls.
6. Regardless of what you think about the outcome of the election, tell the phone bank volunteers to impress upon the voters how important it is that they get to the polls, that you predict a very close election, and that every vote will count. The supporter who hasn't yet voted must, have a sense of urgency to get to the polls and vote.
7. Offer rides to get supporters to and from the polls. If there is a sleeping baby or child, a volunteer may offer to stay in the voters home while the parent votes.
Getting Out the Vote (GOTV)
333
With the poll watcher, the phone bank, and the transportation effort, you will have a lot of people involved, and you may find that the best hope for pulling it off is to combi ne efforts with other campaigns.
Format for Poll Watching
There are two basic steps for the poll watching process:
1. Volunteers observe the voters all day—from the time the polls open to two hours before they close—in selected precincts to see who votes. Those who vote are marked off the list.
2. Two hours before the polls close, the final poll watcher of the dav takes the precinct list, to preassigned phone banks. There, callers divide up the sheets and call all identified supporters who have not yet voted and urge them to get to the polls before they close.
Note: If your poll watcher wants to stay at the polls longer, he or she can call in names by cell phone to the phone banks.
Precinct Captains
Each precinct where poll watching is to take place must have a precinct captain who is responsible for the precinct, team. Each captain has three specific duties:
, , The important thing m life is not
I.   Before election day. phone .      , ,     , ,
• the triumph but the struggle.
numbers must be looked up
—Pierre do Coubertin
and written on the precmct lists, and your identified voters must, be highlighted on the lists, if is best to assemble a clerical team for this activity. If the voters' phone numbers cannot he found, run a line through their names as though they had already voted.
If your campaign has not identified supporters before election day and the intent of your poll watching is to call all supporters in your highest-priority precincts, then be sure to put a line through the names of those who have voted absentee.
In the process of writing phone numbers, be sure not to separate the precinct sheets. This task should be completed no later than the Friday before the election. 2. The captain is responsible for recruiting four poll watchers and one standby. These five people need to be certified, trained, and supervised. Poll watchers should meet with their team captain the weekend
334 Q THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
before the election. Signed certificates for each poll watcher should be provided to the precinct captains at that time. Your county clerk or county elections office will supply you with all the information and forms you may need. 3. The captain must be present at his or her precinct when it opens at 8:00 a.m. and supervise the precinct on and off throughout the day.
Poll Watcher Responsibilities
1. Arrive a few minutes early at the polling place.
2. Give your signed certificate to the election judge, who is a member of the polling board.
3. Do not engage in conversation with the election board. You may. of course, answer questions, but do not discuss other topics with the board.
4. As voters arrive and give their names to the board, listen for the name and then cross it out on your list as they are voting.
5. Two hours before polls close, the final poll watcher should take the precinct list to the designated phone bank.
In close elections, (lie poll watchers and phone banks that follow will often
supply the margin of votes needed for a win on election day. However, because
of the amount of organization required and the labor-intensive demands of
this activity, few campaigns conduct poll
,,„ ....        , watching anymore. If at all possibLe. do it
Anything worth aotng is worm
,     .   „ ,.    ^ Voter ID, poll watching and GO'l'V make
doing frantically.
—Jane Tower
the difference between winning and losing in a close race.
Regulation of Persons At the Polls
As in all aspects of a campaign, it is important to know the law; however, in poll watching, it is imperative. The polling place has special regulations that cover everything from bow close individuals may stand to the polls if they are not voting and are not certified poll watchers to what topics may be discussed by those present. The campaign manager should contact the county clerk well beforehand and get the regulatory information to the precinct captains in written form.
Authorized poll watches arc allowed in the polling place and must sign a specific section of the front cover of the poll book. Only as many poll watchers are allowed as will not interfere with the work of the election board,
Poll watchers
may:
Getting Out the Vote (GOTV) i 335
Poll watchers must have written authorization from one of the following:
1. For the purpose of challenging electors at the polling place, either from the county clerk or a political party
2. For the purpose of observing the receiving and counting ot votes, from a candidate
"The only thing that hasn't changed is our ability to think differently."
—Albert Einstein
Take notes
Have access to poll books, so long as it does not, interfere with the work of the board
Challenge persons offering to vote at the poll Challenge entries in poll book Wear campaign buttons
Poll watchers may not:
Campaign in any way
Circulate any cards, handbills, questionnaires, or petitions Fail to follow the instructions of the election board Take poll books off tables
All membeis of the poll watching effort should familiarize themselves with the specific election law violations.
Phoning
Let's suppose that you do not have enough people to watch the polling places all day. Don't worry. I recently worked on a campaign where we came up with an approach that was very effective and less labor intensive than poll watching.
For this process you will need a good precinct analysis. Remember, your precinct analysis will tell you where your support is and show you where people have voted for candidates or causes similar to yours in the past. Your precinct analysis will also tell you where people live who will never vote for your cause or candidate. If it is clear that a precinct has traditionally voted against campaigns such as the one you are working on, don't canvass them, don't call them, don't activate them. Forget
"Democracy is a contact sport."
—Ray McNally of McNally Temple Associates Inc., in Sacramento, California
9
THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
Getting Out the Vote (GOTV)
337
them for the GOTV effort. Instead, look for precincts that have been split: those that have narrowly supported or narrowly defeated past campaigns similar to yours. These are the precincts you should call to 10 voters. Then on election day call only the identified yes voters, even though they may have already voted (figure 11.1).
As for those remaining precincts that have overwhelmingly supported past campaigns similar to yours, it is not so necessary to ID the voter. Yon know they will tend to vote your way.
On election day, while your people are going down the list of supporters in the marginal precincts calling the identified yes votes, they can call all of the voters in the high-priority precincts for an issue-based campaign, and for a candidate race, all who are registered in your party, if your campaign has time before election day, you may want to ID the voters in the high-prioritv
ilECTiON DAY PHONE SCRIPT
Hello, this is
I arn a volunteer worker for (name of the campaign). •
t im ca]w to remind you that the polls will remain open until 8 pm., and Iko to^mage vou to vote. This will be a very close election, and we re-Sv need your Import lot (name of person or ballot measure) to win.
Your polling place is located at--
Will yoa need transportation to the polls/
If transportation is needed, ,( they can call the following numbers:
Figure 11.1 Election Day Phone Script
precincts as well, but this is not as important. Look at the phone calling on the day of the election as your one last canvass in high-priority precincts. If your precinct analysis is accurate, you will turn out strong support that might have stayed home otherwise. Remember, here you are not changing minds, just the turnout.
When a caller reaches someone who has already voted, that person's name should be crossed off the list so that he or she will not be called again. For those who have not voted, it is up to you to decide whether you want to call them again later. If the election is close, you may want to urge them one more time to get down to the polls. However, in general, more than one call a day is an annoyance and is counterproductive.
One important note: Don't duplicate calling lists for phone banks. Each phone bank caller or phone station needs a separate and unique calling list.
The Absentee Ballot and Early Vote
Voting absentee used to be a service to the voter who was temporarily out of the area or unable to get to the polls. However, in many states, it has now become the vote of convenience- As ballots become longer and more complex, the busy and conscientious voter is choosing to vote absentee. In a recent California election, it took some voters more than an hour to complete their twelve-card ballot.
With long, complicated ballots, you run the risk of voter fatigue. Voter fatigue occurs when voters actually lose interest in voting as they spend more and more
time working through their ballot. Because local elections are at the end of ballots, down-ballot candidates and issues are often overlooked. If your candidate or measure is way down on a ballot, encouraging voters to register and vote absentee at home may help minimize the undervote for those races.
There are a number of reasons it is to your advantage to register as many of your supporters as possible to vote absentee or early:
1. Often campaigns don't heat up and get, nasty until the final three weeks. As voters are becoming more and more disillusioned with negative campaigning, their response is to stay home on election day rather than vote against the candidate slinging mud. If a candidate or party has a huge percentage of the turnout locked in before things get nasty, they're at a decided advantage.
"If the only tool you have is a hammer, yon tend to see every problem as a, nail."
—Abraham Maslow
338 g THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
Getting Out the Vote (GOTV) Q 339
2. If you know who will vote absentee or by early vote, then your campaign can concentrate on these voters well before election day, closer to when they actually will vote.
3. Nasty weather can affect voter turnout on election day.
In the 1998 midterm election, nearly half of the registered voters in Oregon requested absentee ballots. Of those who requested them, 73 percent returned them (see table 7.1). Of those who did not request absentee ballots, only 41 percent turned out to vote. The absentee ballot represented over 58 percent of the total voter turnout.
Although in the 1998 general election Oregon voters approved vote by mail for all elections, they could already register as permanent absentee voters in 1997, The lists of absentee voters were available from the county clerk for a
"Vote early and vote often.
-AI Capone
small charge, and about 40 percent of the names also had phone numbers listed. Having lists of those who will make up nearly 60 percent of the overall voter turnout is very helpful and means that with a little effort any campaign can reach a large group of likely votes, ID whom they intend to support in the election, send persuasion mail to the un-decideds, and make sure that those supporting your efforts return their ballots by election day.
In many states the option to register absentee is open to anyone for the asking up to the day before the election. Those who request absentee ballots within the three weeks before an election are the most likely to actually vote, "tour county elections office may be able to provide updated lists of those requesting absentee ballots as the election draws near. When someone makes the request, that voter should be immediately contacted by the campaign.
Most states that have absentee voting require that the voter make that re- / quest before each election, although in some stales, such as California, a voter who has a permanent disability can register to vote absentee always, unless they miss an election. Some states require that a reason for the absentee ballot be given before each election.
Some stales have "early vote." With early vote, the registered voter may go to a designated polling place between certain hours and vote just as though it were election day. Depending on the state, it can take place anywhere from four to forty days before an election. As with absentee voting, early vote gives a campaign an opportunity to lock in votes before the election. However, it does require that a campaign peak twice; once for the early vote and/or ab-
sentees and once for election day. Direct mail, advertising, canvassing, and everything else must happen earlier for these voters.
Voters love the convenience of absentee and early vote, and those who use these options tend to be among the most likely of the likely voters. For example, in 1996, early vote represented 40 percent of the voter turnout in some districts in Texas.
Whether your state or county has early vote or absentee voting;
1.
Check past elections to determine the number who requested or took advantage of this option. For those who requested absentee ballots, look at the percentage who returned their ballot and determine what proportion of the overall voter turnout these voters constituted. Note that this information may already be on the secretary of state's Web site, so check there first. (Web addresses for all elections departments can be found in the appendix of this handbook)
See whether a list of those who requested absentee ballots is available to your campaign through the county clerk or election office. Inquire about updated lists of those who actually vote absentee or early as the election draws near. That way you will not be continually contacting those who have already returned their ballots, burning up campaign money and time.
If the lists of absentee voters do not include phone numbers, set up a clerical team to look them up.
If you are in a state that offers early vote, hound your supporters to vote early
"Poll" Watching for Absentee Ballot Requests
Absentee ballots present some unique challenges to the grassroots campaign. Here is an inexpensive way to deal with absentee ballots if lists are not available from the county elections official.
Assign the task of the absentee voters to a team. One person must be willing to go the county clerk's office on a daily basis to find out who has requested absentee ballots. This person keeps a running list. The requests must be checked on a regular basis because voters who request absentee ballots will often fill it out and return it within a very short time frame. Once you know which voters request an absentee ballot, you must try to persuade
"You may be disappointed if you fail but you are doomed if you don't try."
—Beverly Sills
340 rj THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
Getting Out the Vote (GOTV) gj 341
them to vote for your candidate or cause. Forget the precinct analysis for absentee voters. For this group, you are not hoping that those who don't support you will not be voting. You know for a fact that most will vote. To persuade these voters, you have a number of choices.
1. Use direct, mail to persuade.
2. Send volunteers or the candidate out to canvass these voters at home.
3. Have the candidate, a friend, or a prominent citizen call.
4. Send a personalized letter from the candidate or from a well-known, well-respected local leader of the same party affiliation as the voter.
5. Use some combination of all these techniques.
Vote By Mail
Currently seventeen states are either using or considering using vote-by-maii elections. Vote by mail was originally introduced lo Oregonians in 1981, and by 1987 most counties in Oregon conducted vote-by-mail elections for local elections. The cost savings to taxpayers and the increased voter turnout are the two most tangible benefits of vote by mail. According to the Oregon secretary of state's office, the cost savings of the 2000 vote-by-mail primary election over the 1998 primary precinct election was nearly $600,000. "In general, the cost of eoriductingall-mail elections is one-third to one-half of the amount required for polling place elections" (Priscilla Southwell, "Five Years Later: A Re-Assessment of Oregon's Vote By Mail Electoral Process," 2003).
The principal argument against vote by mail is the potential for voter fraud, flowever, after more than a decade of using vote by mail, Oregon has had only four cases of fraud resulting in prosecution. One that I personally know about occurred when a husband signed his wife's ballot because she was in the hosphal. Getting people to vote at all in America is more an issue than voters committing a felony by voting twice for a candidate they support.
Real voter fraud, the kind that can have tangible results, is far more effective when placed in the hands of those who know what they're doing: a husband signing a ballot for his hospitalized wife is not in this category. The 2000 general election in Florida, where impediments seemed to have been contrived to prevent voter participation, represents the kind of election that needs attention more than vote by mail.
Black voters in Florida and around the country turned out in record numbers on November 7, Since then, many have complained
that. Florida election officials removed large numbers of minorities from state voting rolls, wrongly classifying them as convicted felons— and accused Florida officials of using police to intimidate voters in some areas. [Jesse] Jackson cited the reports of students from historically black colleges in Florida, who have said they went to the polls carrying voter identification cards and were told they were not on the voter rolls.
The Florida Supreme Court had ordered a hand recount of all ballots where mechanical counts had registered no vote for president. Many of those "undervotes" came from majority-black precincts, heavily Democratic, where aging punch-card ballots failed to record votes for president in mechanical counts. (CNN.com, "Black Democrats Angered by Supreme Court Ruling," December 13, 2000)
With little evidence of fraud, opponents are now claiming that vote by mail represents one more step in the progression of isolation in American society. Although this view is certainly understandable, and isolation is indeed cause for concern, a better solution might be to ban drive-up windows (as we did in Ashland for the same reason) than lo come after vote by mail.
Although higher turnout and huge savings to the taxpayer are strong endorsements for vote by mail, vote by mail also increases voter turnout among minorities, single parents, students, people who are paid by the hour, independents, young voters, and people who have moved within the last two years—all segments of society that are underrepresented for various reasons (Priscilla Southwell, "Survey of Vote-by-Mail Senate Election," April 1996).
Vote by mail also makes life easier for the GOTV effort for candidates and issue-based campaigns, which in turn helps communities secure funding for schools, parks, libraries, and needed improvements for government buildings. For state and local governments to provide the option of both absentee and poll voting with tax dollars is a costly luxury we should relinquish.
In mail-in elections, as with absentee voters, the county mails all ballots to the homes of registered voters within a specific voting district. In order to give voters ample time to review the ballot items, ballots are mailed about three weeks before the final election date
when thev must be at the county clerk's      „_    ..,„,,    ,. ,
J Trust in Allan, but tie, your camel.
office for tabulation. ,   , ,
—Arab proverb
For the purposes of your campaign (earn, the difference between a mail-in
and poll voting lies primarily in the timing of your election and the mechanics of a GOTV. In a conventional election, canvassing continues up until election
THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
Getting Out the Vote (GOTV) jj 343
day7, and nearly all of your ads appear in the three weeks before the election, With a mail-in election, the campaign must peak when the ballots are mailed, not the day they are due back. This means that all canvassing should be completed by the weekend following the Friday that ballots are mailed, and ads must start to run at least a week before the ballots leave the county clerk and peak during the first week voters receive them. Even though many voters will return their ballots immediately, your campaign should maintain a presence in the media until the day the ballots are due. You must be prepared to spend more money on ads to span the period from before the ballots are mailed to the voters up to election day.
"It's far easier to start something than to finish it."
—Amelia Barhart
GOTV and Voter ID
A GOTV effort for a mail-in election is remarkably easy and painless. With vote by mail, counties keep track of who has returned their ballots as they're received, and for a nominal charge they will print or e-mail a list of those who have voted (activity list) or those who haven't voted (inactivity list). For a GOTV effort, you want to know who has not. voted. Some county elections departments, however, are not equipped to separate the active and inactive lists. For these counties, your data person will have to remove the active voters from the lists as they come in from the county.
Although you want to conduct voter ID throughout the campaign, as the election draws near your team will have to buckle down and make sure tlrat all supporters within targeted precincts are identified.
Here is what you do:
Print a list of registered voters in your high-priority/swing precincts (you determined these when you did your precinct analysis). Have a clerical team look up phone numbers. Don't forget to check Internet sources for local phone directories.
Find phone bank locations and set up phone banks to begin calling the voters in your favorable precincts to ID them for support of your candidate or ballot measure.
If the voter is undecided and needs persuasion, this is the time to do it. Follow up all undecided voters with direct mail and phone calls from friends, colleagues, co-workers, the candidate, or prominent citizens. Stay on the undecided voters until you knoyv where they stand.
ID voters who should be supportive of your candidate or cause in lower-priority precincts based on party affiliation, age, income, and education. Be sure to keep track of whether their support is yes, no, or maybe.
Follow up maybe's in the lower-priority precincts and leave the no's alone everywhere.
"The people who win elections are those with the guts to keep on running when nobody else gives them a prayer."
—Christopher Matthews, San Francisco Examiner
It's in the Mail
Once ballots are mailed, all campaign efforts shift to the GOTV Hopefully the GOTV coordinator and the field director or volunteer coordinator has a pretty full roster for each night of the phone banks.
If not, it is now the campaign committee's responsibility to help get people to the phones. All of my committee members work at least one evening of phone banks, and i train them to supervise the activity. Although some consultants believe that phone banks should begin when the ballots are maiied to the voters, 1 like to give voters a chance to get their ballot in without a phone call. Although calling during the first week after ballots have been mailed will give you an initial spike on your ballots received list, any benefits that are realized by phoning early equalize by election day. More important, calling the first week after ballots are mailed puts a campaign at risk of running out of
volunteers and steam when you really need them—in the last week. This can be disastrous in a double-majority election, where 50 percent of all registered voters must return a ballot before ballots are counted. In terms of a GOTV effort, the last week is the most important, so fill those volunteer seats first.
Ten days before the ballots are due to the clerk, order an inactivity list (alphabetically by precinct) either from the county or from your data person. Again, if your county does not separate those who have and have not voted and no one on your team can remove those who have voted from the lists, line up a clerical team to highlight which ones have not yet voted: this will make calling a little easier for your phone bank team.
Set up another clerical team to look for voters who have said they will be supporting your candidate or cause and have not yet returned their ballot.
"The wise don't expect to find a life worth living: they make it that way."
—Anonymous
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ü 345
This is also a good time to transfer the looked-up phone numbers from the first list you were calling.
Set up phone banks to call and activate supporters who have not yet returned their ballots.
At this point your GOTV effort is two-pronged; not only will you call voters who have been identified as supporting you, but also you will make the calls to turn out your base.
To do this, print out lists of the voters in precincts where the base is supporting but not reliable on turnout. These voters will be called first. Precincts with a voting history of high support and high turnout are called next, to give them a chance to get their ballot in, thereby saving your campaign time. Finally, come back in for a second pass on the lazy base voters.
Each caller can contact fifty voters in a ninety-minute shift. Because you know how many callers you have for each night and how many inactive voters are in each precinct, it is not necessary to print all inactive voters in all precincts—you will need just enough of them to keep your banks busy each night. The next night, you can print out lists for new precincts with that day's active voters already removed. Remember, call only base and identified supporters.
In an Oregon House race I worked on in 2000, forty volunteers called '2,000 registered voters each night for seven nights straight. Still, those 14.000 phone calls did not reflect even half of the 35,000 registered voters, and many voters were called two and three times. While a GOTV effort in a state without vote by mail will focus primarily on support that has been identified, vote by mail allows your campaign to begin its efforts in precincts where your party historically underperlorms and to continue all the way to those precincts of high support/high turnout before going back in to work the high-support/low- to medium-turnout precincts. By working through precincts, campaign work is really cut to an efficient level.
For your base voters who are located in low-support/low-turnout precincts, if you have not ID'd them before the GOTV, you can sometimes conduct GOTV and voter ID in the same phone call.
First, you must determine whether the voter on the other end of the phone is supportive. I do this by simply asking. If the voter is not supporting, get off Ihe phone. Don't worry about activating no votes. For those called who say they are supporting your cause but, for whatever reason, still have their ballots, offer to pick them up. In this case, ask the voter to tape the ballot to the screen door or tuck it into the doorjamb, so a volunteer can quickly pick it up without knocking. I've found that most people don't want you to pick up their ballot. Nearly three-quarters of the people we call who
are supportive and still have their ballots, instead say that they'll drive it immediately to a drop-off box. Because I can never be sure that a voter's good intentions will be enough, I push
the voter just a bit more and say, "Hev, , . ,
, , ,   , Spend the time to make the
we have someone driving right by vour .
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., „ , „      „,        .,      time and money all the wav to the
you the trip. If thev say,  No, 11! do it,
-Tony Nunes, builder
"Out of the strain of the Doing, Into the peace of the Done."
—Julia Louise Woodruff
, ,   . " roof."
then 1 let it go.
For the final two nights, Monday until
9:00 p.m. and Tuesday until 6:00 p.m., have
phone banks going full tilt, and have runners lined up. More runners are needed lor Tuesday than for Monday night. Runners are people whose sole job is to go out and pick up ballots as phone banks turn them up. It's best to use two runners per car so the driver doesn't, have to park. The driver stops, the passenger hops out and retrieves the ballot from the screen door or the doorjamb, and off they go. Use runners efficiently: Divide the voting district into logical areas so that runners don't wind up spending an hour to pick up four ballots. As soon as a phone volunteer has a ballot to pick up, put the address and name on a card or piece of paper and route them. Conunue to do
this until a driver returns and there are enough ballots to pick up in another area. It is best for runners to have cell phones so that ballot locations can be called Lo the car as they come in.
On election night, with the polls closing at 8:00, pack it in at 6:00 or 7:00, depending on how many ballots need to be picked up. At this time, all callers become runners. The phones shut down and everyone goes out to pick up the last of the ballots.
Organizing the GOTV Effort
Although phone-bank systems are described in Chapter 3. some repetition would not be amiss here. The importance of having fully staffed phone banks on a GOTV effort cannot be overemphasized. In the example above of three phone banks going each night (one had two shifts often and two had one shift of ten), if each shift were short just one caller each night, that would amount to 200 calls per night or 1,400 calls over the course of the GOTV effort. To give you an idea of the impact this can have on the outcome of a race, consider that of seven close house races in Oregon's 2002 general election, all were won or lost by 2,700 combined, out of 280,000 voters. Even if you think
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Getting Out the Vote (GOTV)
Ü 347
you will win big, organize a strong GOTV effort. Remember, it is not enough to win; you want to shove the win down the opposition's throat. While George W. Bush proved you do not need a voter mandate to do what you want once in office, that is not the case for down-ballot candidates. For these candidates, a big win means power after the oath and the potential ot scaring away opponents in the next election. For issue-based campaigns, a decisive win will tend to dissuade opposition from referring the measure back out to the voters.
Make a spreadsheet listing all volunteers for the GOTV phone bank. The first column contains their names, and the next, their phone numbers. Then have a smaller column with "CB?" (for "called backed?") as the column header; later, a check mark is placed in this column on the printout after a volunteer tias been called back and confirmed that he or she will be there for the next day's phone bank. Next are seven columns with dates, one for each night of phone banking. Each phone bank will have its own spreadsheet, listing only the volunteers who will be calling from that location.
Below the dates 1 list the starting times of the phone banks. For example, the first bank usually runs from 6:00 to 7:30 km. and the second from 7:30 to 9:00 p.m. (figure 11.2).
The names on the spreadsheet are kept in alphabetical order. If your lists are short, this detail is less important, but in the example of the phone bank with two shifts of ten for seven nights, the campaign will have 140 volunteers working the GOTV in one location alone. As volunteers let the campaign know if they can do the early or late shift, the time slot is circled in red so that the lead or supervisor can easily see it. It is a good idea to include a blank sheet for people who volunteer to call after the GOTV begins. F.ach night of calling must have a lead person or a supervisor. The lead's duties arc as follows:
1. Arrive a few minutes early and open the phone hanks.
2. Have paper cups for water and red pens for marking precinct lists.
									
		Place lead names		LEAD NAME					
NAME	NA.ME	PHONEn	CB?	Wed. lb'l	Till». 11/2	l-'ri. 11/3	Sat. 11.'J	Sun. It{5	
				6:00 7:30	6:00 7:30	6:00 T30	6:00 7:30	6:00 7:30	6:00    7:30.
				6:00 7:30	6:00 7:30	6:00 7:30	6:00 7:30	6:00 7:30	6:00 7:30
				6:00 7:30	6:00 7:30	6:00 7.30	6:00 7 30	600 7:30	6 00 7"30
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
.   Bring enough phone bank instructions so that each caller in each
shift will have a set, .   Bring targeted precinct lists with inactive voters—this is provided by
the campaign
Have the master copy of all volunteers participating in the GOTV. (I have a satchel with cups, pens, and the GOTV master calling list inside. I secure the precinct calling lists before the phone banks start and either deliver the lists to the leads or have the leads pick them up. at which time the satchel is passed off as well. In outlying phone banks, I have the GOTV coordinator organize everything except the voter lists to call. These are e-mailed to the coordinator early enough for him or her to print them before the phone banks start.) Welcome the volunteers and give instructions (provided by the campaign).
Have callers begin, and then circulate and answer questions. Fill water cups and distribute one to each volunteer, refilling if necessary.
Once questions subside, call ALT, volunteers for the next evening's phone banks, using the master lists for the GOTV phone bank and checking off the CB column for each confirmation. Afterward, look over the CB column; any last-minute cancellations must be communicated lo the campaign as soon as possible so the spot can be filled. The next shift arrives fifteen minutes early for training. Begin anew, providing instructions to the next team.
At exactly 7:30, the next crew pulls the first shift off the phones and takes over at their desk, continuing to call down the sheets provided for the first shift.
Again, circulate, answer questions, pick up old water cups and distribute new ones, and be available for as long as necessary. Once questions subside, get on the phone and make GOTV calls until 9:00 P.m., when the banks close.
Clean up all remnants of the work crews: cups, pens, lists, and so on. The pens and the master call list are returned to the satchel along with any unused cups.
Lock up and get the satchel to the next lead or back to campaign headquarters.
Figure 11.2 Example of a GOTV Phone Bank Spreadsheet
A couple of years back, I ran GOTV for an issue-based campaign where the system was set up as outlined above. On the third night of phone banks my lead called and told me that three callers had not showed up for the first
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THE CAMPAIGN MANAGER
shift and four for the second. As this had never happened before. I contacted the lead from the previous night's phone banks and found that she had become busy with personal business and never made the calls to remind the next evening's volunteers as instructed. GOTV calling—especially on a double-majority election—is so tight that we had to set up a separate phone bank to make up for the seven callers we lost on that one evening. It is important always to call your volunteers and remind them of the location and time; if a lead does not get to the job, he or she must let the campaign know so that someone else can do it in time to ensure a full contingent at the next day's phone banks.
One other GOTV war story; In 20001 was running a campaign for a candidate for the Oregon House. We had phone banks set up at a real estate office we had used for many campaigns. However, just before the GOTV, we were informed that the campaign needed to find another location. It turned out that the local Board of Realtors had endorsed our opponent, and we were out. It's always a good idea to have a backup location just in case.
Push Polls
"Push Polls" are nothing more than a telemarketing technique disguised as a real poll to fool the voter. They are used primarily as a tool for a GOTV effort. They are called push polls because they are designed to push a voter away from one candidate and toward another. With push polling, specific voters are targeted and given false and intentionally damaging information under the guise of a legitimate poll; of course, there is no intent to conduct real research. Do not confuse push polls with push questions, covered in Chapter 2. Unlike push questions, where candidates are equally tested for negative and positive campaign issues and themes, push polling questions are biased and designed to have a negative impact on only one of the candidates. They hurt the Industry and legitimate polling firms.
Whereas a benchmark or tracking poll selects voters randomly, a push poll targets undecided or swing voters. As Karl Feld, of Western Wats Opinion Research Center, describes them, "Questions used in push polls often sound similar Lo those used as push questions to test campaign messages in legitimate polls. This is done intentionally to camouflage the true nature of the push poll" (Campaigns & Elections, May 2000, p. 63).
Should your campaign be the victim of a push polling effort by the opposition, call the media immediately for a press conference. Calling attention to this kind of misleading and underhanded campaigning is your best defense.