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On the August 16, 2024 Friday Power Lunch, co-hosts Finale Norton, Carrie Short, and Katherine White explored the topic of how best to work with volunteers: What motivates them, what types of actions keep volunteers going, and how to make it meaningful for the volunteers, while ensuring that what they are doing is needed and makes a real difference.
Building on this week’s theme, our opening video addressed how organizers are always trying to get volunteers to get up off the couch and make a difference. We opened the podcast with our own mash up video of Whoopi Goldberg from Sister Act 2 singing a compilation of Get up off of that Thing and Dancing in the Street to videos of people dancing and cats & dogs doing what they do …Now, get up off of that couch and get to work electing Democrats up and down the ballot! View it here.
You can watch the entire program here and also listen to an audio version of the program on Apple Podcast or Spotify.
KRIS NELSON (Warren County Democratic Chair & Regional organizer of the Coordinated Campaign) is known throughout rural Virginia for her creative and caring approach to volunteer coordination. She also has a talent for building super volunteers. Finale and Kris spoke about her approach to empowering volunteers.
SUSAN LABANDIBAR, (Co-founder, Swing Blue Alliance) has compiled a list of actions volunteers can take in support of political campaigns and movements, and has graded them based on levels of engagement. Carrie and Susan talked about how these actions are perceived in terms of investment of time and personal risk-taking and how those perceptions might influence volunteer willingness to do them. List of 70 volunteer activities.
They also discussed the Canvassing Connector – Want to knock doors or register voters for a week or more? The Canvassing Connector refers you to vetted organizations in the swing states who will welcome your help. Click here
SUSAN LOESBERG (Vice Chair, Virginia Beach Democratic Committee) takes a grassroots approach to volunteer management. She finds unique and meaningful actions that sometimes fall through the cracks in campaigns and offers relational leadership to her volunteers. Carrie and Susan talked about the lasting benefits of using a grassroots approach. Susan explained the codes she uses when working with volunteers:
- Don’t waste a volunteer’s time. Be ready for them. Make sure you have everything that they need, so they’re comfortable, and they’ll come back
- Make sure volunteers receive the necessary information and/or training to be successful at the task they have been asked to do
- Gratitude. Make sure that these volunteers know that we are so grateful
