In American politics the most powerful weapon are passionate and informed volunteers who pursue Neighborhood Organizing. An expensive campaign can always be beaten by a well organized effort to Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV) by free citizens with little money. Remember too, that to win in your precinct only requires that your efforts surpass those of rival precinct organizations. Passionate and informed volunteer can easily surpass other organization volunteers and most definitely professionals who are just doing it for the money. Specifically, passionate, coached, and supervised volunteers can each generate 50-150 new votes, while paid, professional precinct workers on average will not deliver more than 10-50 new votes.

Just one person is required to start Neighborhood Organizing in their local precinct. This person doesn’t even need to be the type who makes friends easily or is “popular”. All they need is the will and energy to get started.  They can use this website, i.e. TheVoicesOfAmerica.org, to learn the best practices for Neighborhood Organizing, while focusing on recruiting other citizens in their community to put the plan into action. While each political party may have a Precinct Captain for your local precinct, you can become the self-appointed Neighborhood Organizing Captain for the “We the People” movement focused on taking back our country from career politicians who are bankrupting our country.

To get started, invite everybody you know in your local precinct who might be equally concerned about the current state of our country. Start with your personal contact lists, relatives, friends, neighbors, work colleagues, members of clubs, and church lists (see the Faith-In-Action tab for perspective). Be sure to reach out to like-minded “Tea Party” or “9/12 Project” members who live in your precinct. You can also select people you might know (even slightly) from the county’s Voter Record list, who you think might be interested in joining your Neighborhood Organizing initiative. Use the Block walking or Robo-call scripts on the TheVoicesOfAmerica.org website (see “Talking Points” and “Robo-Call” tabs, respectively) as a guide to engage and invite these selected acquaintances.  Another approach might be to just “Robo-call” all potential like-minded registered voters in the whole precinct and ask them to join your Neighborhood Organizing initiative. 

Since most people like to think of themselves as “good citizens”, convince people that Neighborhood Organizing is not politics, but instead the highest expression of good citizenship. Even though only a few invitees may show up for your initial meeting, don’t be discouraged. Once you start Neighborhood Organizing, you will end up recruiting even more volunteers. Remember also that plans for the American Revolution started at a very small meeting! Before you know it, your group of “We the People” volunteers will have become the most powerful “political” force within the precinct. Try to identify a Neighborhood Organizing Coordination Team consisting of about 5-10 people. (See “Leaders” tab for composition and roles of this team.) Eventually, the ideal number of volunteers per precinct is about 10-20 volunteers.

Hold weekly meetings at a fixed time and at a central location. Use these meetings to instruct and inform volunteers on Neighborhood Organizing and to gain information from them. Importantly, decide on which volunteers will be responsible for the various streets in your precinct. The easiest way to train new volunteers how to do precinct block walking or to make calls is to have them join an experienced person for just one session. You will find that a number of your newly recruited volunteers will have done Neighborhood Organizing in prior elections for one of the political parties. Use these experienced volunteers to help teach the more detailed mechanics of Neighborhood Organizing, using our Presentation Slide Set II available for download from our home page. Experience shows that new volunteers will quickly learn the best practices and will be enthused to pursue them on their own. You can also have experienced volunteers conduct role plays at meetings, showing the right way and the wrong way to do block walking or to make calls. Generally, field workers will also teach each other through shop-talk at meetings. You will also find that a non-partisan, Constitution based, educational door-to-door voter engagement approach to Get-Out-The-Vote is far less threatening and intimidating for volunteers.