Relational Organizing for Local Races: Starter Toolkit

Topics covered in this article include:

Use Relationships To Supercharge Your Campaign

Who should be doing relational outreach?

How to include relational in your campaign plan

Adding a Relational Layer to Campaign Activities

TL;DR

Resources

Use Relationships To Supercharge Your Campaign

You can also find this guide (along with other great resources) on Campaign Academy

“Relational organizing” is a campaign term for something we all do naturally all the time. It means talking to the people in our lives about what we care about, what we’re excited about, and what we’re spending our time thinking about and working on. “Relational organizing” means doing this actively, with the goal of getting people we already know to take a specific action (for example, voting for your candidate!).

Research shows that a conversation between people who know each other is 2.5x more effective than a conversation between strangers. Contact rates (the rate at which attempting to talk to someone on the phone or at the door actually results in talking to them) are also significantly higher between people who know each other – you’re much more likely to pick up the phone or respond to a text message when it’s someone you know!

Whether you want to run dedicated events specifically for relational organizing, or simply add a layer of relational organizing to the other work you’re doing, relational is a powerful way to recruit volunteers, persuade undecided voters, and to mobilize people to actually show up and vote (or vote early/by mail).

Who should be doing relational outreach?

Everyone involved in the campaign or organization should be talking to their friends and family about the campaign and the election.

Campaigns spend lots of time and resources calling through voter lists and knocking on doors in order to reach people who will potentially be your voters. This work is incredibly important, and it’s easy in the course of this work to overlook the voters we already have immediate access to — our friends and family, and the friends, family, classmates, teammates, and colleagues of the people who are participating in our campaign. We should be mobilizing every one of these people – to vote, to volunteer, and to talk to the people in their lives and get them on board too. (Even if they don’t live in our district, they probably still know people who do.)

You have probably heard that a candidate should be asking everyone they know to donate. They should also ask everyone they know to talk to all of their friends– and their friends’ friends– about the campaign. That’s relational organizing.

How to include relational in your campaign plan

Relational can help with every part of your campaign plan, whether you’re recruiting volunteers, persuading undecided people, raising money, or mobilizing supporters to vote.

Volunteer recruitment: Your volunteers can ask their friends and family to also volunteer for your campaign, whether that’s attending campaign events, knocking doors, making phone calls, sending text messages, or talking to their friends and family.

Persuasion: Your volunteers should be persuading everyone in their networks that your race should matter to them, and that we can win, but we need them to vote for you. Volunteers letting their friends and family know that this race is important to them goes a really long way. You can also put together FAQs and articles that your volunteers can have easy access to, to share with their network as they see fit. Some pro tips include posting on social media, texting, sending an email to a bunch of people, and even making announcements about the race at social events like parties (yes, this can feel awkward – but you have a captive audience, so take advantage of it!).

Grassroots fundraising: Your volunteers can also ask other supporters in their networks to chip in money for your campaign, especially if they know people who are already supporting your campaign.

GOTV (Get Out the Vote): We know that asking people who we already know and who trust us to vote is the MOST effective way to actually get someone to return a ballot or show up to vote. Your volunteers should be asking every supporter in their network to vote for you and making sure they know when, where, and how. If there’s the option to vote early, they should take advantage of it.

Adding a Relational Layer to Campaign Activities

A great thing that any campaign can do is to practice what we like to call “relational hygiene” at every campaign event (whether they be meet and greets, phone banks, house parties, or anything else). The goal is to make sure we aren’t leaving any votes on the table.

Here’s an example of what this might look like (for our example candidate, Devon):

Devon has meet and greet events regularly with people in the district. Devon does a couple of things to make sure that she’s getting the most bang for her buck out of every event.

1. Add a sign-in to events

Devon makes sure that her team keeps track of everyone who attends events so that she or a member of the team can follow up with the folks who came. Team Devon uses a sign-in sheet, but you can also set up a laptop at the event that people can use to sign in. If you want to print out sign in sheets, you can use our template here!

2. Make a “relational ask” during the event

A member of the team explains to everyone that we have a lot of votes we need to make sure are not left on the table! Here’s a sample script of what to say:

Script for Organizer/Event Host

We are in crunch time. The most important thing we can each do is get AS MANY FOLKS AS POSSIBLE to vote for Devon. So before we get started, let’s find the votes we might not be seeing right in front of us.

- Have YOU voted yet?

- Think about your household-– Is everyone in your household voting for Devon? Text them right now to make sure! Ask them when they’re voting and if they know where to go. [PAUSE]

- Think of THREE people right now that you can message about voting for Devon– and do it!

[To help brainstorm – friends, family, people you work with, people you go to a religious gathering space with, people you do yoga with, babysitters, etc]

Shout out when you’re done!

[Cheer for people when they do it]

Devon’s team tailors this for the specific type of event they are at. If it’s a volunteer event, like a phone bank or canvass, it makes sense to do this at the start because everyone is already on board. If it’s a meet and greet or event at which Devon is speaking, they do it after Devon speaks or halfway through the event, once people have had the chance to be persuaded.

3. Follow up after the event.

Because Devon’s team collected sign ins at the event, the next day the team can call through everyone who attended! On the call, they thank them for attending, and ask them to think of 3 more people to contact and do it right then. They also check in on if they texted people the day before at the event, and how those folks responded.

Tl;dr: Make sure everyone who is part of your campaign is talking to their friends and family about the election!

There are 2 things everyone who is participating in your campaign should make sure their friends and family know about:

How your candidate being elected will impact them
How to vote for them (when, where, etc)

If your supporters or volunteers don’t know those two things, train them up and break it down for them!

Here’s a worksheet to help people brainstorm friends and family to talk to.

Resources

Here are some additional great resources to read, get inspired, and use to integrate relational organizing into your campaign.