Everything You Need To Know To Be A Great Canvasser

Imagine a neighborhood with a strong team of leaders dedicated to spreading a progressive message and getting residents involved in making positive change. Maybe each person takes responsibility for a few blocks. Over time, they build a network of supporters there. Not only do they drop by and give people information on pressing issues, and ask them to take action—but they also build relationships with them. And they recruit new leaders from the neighborhood on an ongoing basis. When there's a crisis in Congress—or when election time rolls around—they can galvanize that neighborhood into action.

Now imagine there 20,000 neighborhoods from coast to coast organized that way, with all those leaders linked together, able to take action in concert to defend Social Security or elect a progressive majority in Congress. By reaching out systematically to our neighbors, we can build real progressive political power from the ground up. That's why we've placed neighborhood outreach at the core of Operation Democracy.

And we've learned form experience that this works: after the election, the leaders of our Leave No Voter Behind program told us again and again that one of the most important and rewarding things we did was build community—engage with people in the neighborhood whom we'd never met and plug them into politics.

Going door to door to create political change is a tradition as old as our country. It’s been around so long because one neighbor talking to another neighbor is one of the most powerful forms of campaigning out there. This door to door activism is called "canvassing" for short.

If you’ve never done it, canvassing is fun and easy – even though it might sound scary at first. It’s also a great way to get to know your neighbors.

Why canvass on this issue now?

If George Bush, Dick Cheney, and the Republican leadership are able to get away with the "nuclear option" they'll be free to nominate a string of judges so extreme they will set back progress on civil rights, environment, privacy, civil liberties, worker's rights and other issues by a generation.

But the nuclear option requires reinterpreting an age-old Senate rule, and to do it, they need the votes of 50 senators. To get 50 senators to support gutting a basic, time-honored democratic tradition -- requiring broad support for lifetime judicial appointments -- they are relying on the notion that this is an arcane procedural matter that most Americans won't even understand, let alone care about.

But if we can get the word out about the Republicans' plan, and make it clear to all of our senators that the American people are watching, we stand a very good chance of winning the 6 or 7 "swing" senate votes -- mostly moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats -- we need to stop them. Canvassing is one of the very best ways we can do this.

Here’s how you do it:

Note: This guide outlines how to canvass as a team, because going together is more fun, and it's very helpful for people who are new to this or a little nervous. But of course you can go out and canvass your neighborhood alone, and after you get going you might decide to do this frequently.

Step 1: Pick a time and meeting place

The best times for going door to door are 4 pm to 9 pm on week days. Week days are better than weekends because more people are home. The best meeting point is someone’s home. That way everyone can park their cars and you can have a group debrief afterwards.

Step 2: Get your materials together

Here’s all you’ll need:

• 1 clipboard per team member. If you don’t have any, you can also cut a 9 x 11 piece of cardboard and use a rubber band at the top.
• 2-3 pens per team member – people always steal them, so it pays to bring extras
• 10 flyers per team member.
• 1 copy of the canvassing script per team member.
• Extra credit: 1 map per team member. You can go to www.mapquest.com or www.maps.google.com to get a decent map of your neighborhood. Be sure you divide up the streets so you don't overlap. But you don't really need a map if you know the area.

Step 3: Confirm with your team members the night before

If you're the Team Leader or you're coordinating the canvassing day, you'll want to know how many people to expect, so be sure to check in with the team. Email is better than nothing, but phone conversations work best if you want to ensure people will actually come. And it's a good chance to see if anyone is having second thoughts because of concerns or questions you can address.

Step 4: Huddle Your Team

Before you get going, the leader should huddle your team together and spend 5-7 minutes giving an overview of the activity and then practicing.

To give an overview, you don’t need to be an expert on the issue, you should just go over the materials you’ll be using, what you’ll you asking people to do (make a phone call) and the tips below. You should also go over your team’s goal for phone calls -- 5 people calling both senators for each team member.

Once you’ve done a quick overview, you should then break into pairs and practice “knocking” on each other’s doors.

If they haven’t already, you should have members of your team make the call themselves so that they can tell people what to expect – and because we want all the phone calls we can get!

It’s important that you only spend a few minutes doing this overview. Some members of your team might want to spend more time going over all the “what ifs.” But you should be sure to let them know that the best way to figure this out is to actually do it.

Step 5: Go out and knock on some doors

You should split your team into pairs of two and give each pair a few streets. Within in the pairs, each person should take their own side of the street. That way you’ll be near each other to compare notes, but you’ll be really efficient with your time.

Be sure to set a time and place for your team to meet back up, so you can see how you did and exchange stories.

Step 6: Report your results. After canvassing, tally your results and give them to the team leader, who will enter them into our system from a link on their team home page (we'll post info here on how to login when it's ready).

If you're coordinating, don't let people leave without checking to see how their experience went--especially people who are new to this. Sometimes people who have unrealistic expectations can be discouraged even if they did great, and it can be incredibly helpful to give them some context to understand their success. And if people had a tough time, it helps to know that as a group you accomplished a lot, and to suggest something that might help them next time.

Top 4 Tips

• Relax and be yourself. Your biggest advantage is that people in your neighborhood will be able to relate to you, so use it. Smiling always helps with this.
• Remember, you’re not out there to argue or debate. We want to quickly let people know about the issues and then give them an opportunity to take action. So don’t waste your time debating with a conservative neighbor, it will just mean that you have that many fewer conversations with people who might want to call.
• Watch for supporters. Take down the name and address of people who are supportive -- they're people you will want to go back to on other issues. At some point we'll give you a way to enter to track these people in our database, but for now, hold on to the names for next time. And if someone is enthusiastic, invite them to join your team!
• Leave every interaction on a positive note. You're building relationships in the neighborhood, so be sure to end conversations on a good note – even if they don’t agree with you. Plus, this way you’ll be able to go to the next door with a smile on your face.

Return to the call-in day instructions page

Questions? Check out the Call-in day Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) or the more general Operation Democracy FAQ. Both pages have details about how to get in touch with us if your question isn't answered there.