Organizing Party activities at the grass-roots level, the Volunteer Committee recruits and trains volunteers and then matches them with Party activities and manages the Precinct Captain Program.  The Volunteer Committee will 1) provide for centralized recruitment and coordination of volunteers and party activities, and 2) coordinate volunteers in each precinct to register voters, promote Party-endorsed candidates, and Get out the Vote (GOTV).

 

Volunteer Recruitment and Coordination

Volunteer recruitment encompasses identifying new, or returning, activists and potential activists and introducing them to the activities and elements of the Party.  Volunteer coordination comprises actions taken to match volunteers with activities that correspond with their expressed interests.

 

Who performs volunteer recruitment and coordination?

Volunteer recruitment is the responsibility of all party officers, central committee members, Democratic elected officials, and members of affiliated clubs and organizations.  Every Party activity provides an opportunity to identify and recruit new volunteers/activists.  The SCCDCC Volunteer Committee is developing two marketing plans to recruit volunteers. 

1.       The first plan is designed to introduce newcomers to the activities of the Party and encourage them to begin attending party functions. 

2.       The second plan is designed to encourage those who attend Party functions into becoming volunteers – to step out of the crowd and into the inner workings.

 

How are volunteers and events coordinated?

A Rolodex or similar index card system makes a fine volunteer management database.  In Santa Clara County, we use a database, which permits the tracking of volunteer interests by an expandable list of categories, including to which Party or affiliated organization they belong.  These descriptors provide the opportunity to match volunteers with events.  For instance, a volunteer who is an educator, or with an interest in education issues, could be matched with a school-board campaign, or volunteer to help at a debate on education methods.  The SCCDCC Volunteer Database provides a calendar function and tracks which volunteers have signed up and how many volunteers are still needed for the event.  When this function goes live on the web, maps and agendas will be available for events, and reminder emails will be sent to volunteers prior to events.

 

Precinct Captain Program

Personal contact with voters is the most effective way to get out the vote.  Our aim is to have precinct workers in every precinct in the county, with an emphasis on those precincts with the highest number of Democrats.  Within each community in Santa Clara County, there will be a community leader who will be responsible for recruiting and supervising the precinct workers within that community.  A city like San Jose will be divided into the ten City Council districts for precinct work.  We envision that every activist Democrat will take their home precinct to walk and each will recruit one to three friends in that precinct help make the walking manageable. 

 

The actual precinct walking involves going door to door to Democrat and Decline to State households in the precinct, introducing yourself as a neighbor and their local contact for Democratic election information, offering the voters material on the Democratic party and forthcoming elections, registering new voters and those who have changed addresses, and encouraging them to apply for permanent absentee ballots.  Each precinct walker will be provided with a script, which can be changed to an individual’s style.  Each will have a folder with information about the Democratic candidates, voter registration forms, absentee ballot applications, and volunteer forms.  The community leads will provide training of precinct walkers.

 

These grass-roots activities will result in positive recruitment, sustained enthusiasm and retention of volunteers past the election, and will create a feeling of community within each precinct.