[GPSCC-chat] registration drive challenge, Re: Agenda for Jan. meeting

[Brian Good]

Most of my activism these days is with two organizations--a worldwide educational 501(c)3 with
18,000 members and a California political group with 40,000 registered supporters.

Neither of these organizations could function effectively without our databases and internet tools
and our conference-call services with internet screen-sharing functionality.  The educational 

group's 20 committees employ volunteers Skyping in from all over the world, they maintain
elaborate internet-accessible data depositories to facilitate collaborative projects, and it keeps its 
base informed with a regular internet newsletter that invites people to volunteer for or contribute 
to particular projects.  In the political group we can create lists of our supporters sorted by 
assembly district or volunteer status or even by zip code.   Face-to-face meetings are fun, but
when I'm behind in my work and all of my work is on the internet, it's hard to justify the
travel time, let alone the meeting time.

I think I saw a list of 600 registered Greens in Palo Alto alone.  I've only ever met about ten of 
them that I know of.  If we had a proper database we could target email announcements of local 
functions to local members, we could inform our people statewide of the registration project, and 
we could stir up enthusiasm for specific projects.  

Paper and pencil have their place in collecting contact information on the street and at meetings,
but a culture of computer-phobia is guaranteed to alienate young people who want to get stuff 
done.   Using teleconferencing and internet screensharing, it's possible to teach even technophobes 
to volunteer collaborative effort to the cause without even leaving their homes.   If we want to
make change in the 21st Century we have to live in the 21st Century or we'll be left behind.



 

 










> To: sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org
> Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2012 10:33:03 -0800
> From: cls at truffula.sj.ca.us
> Subject: [GPSCC-chat] registration drive challenge,	Re:  Agenda for Jan. meeting
> 
> 
> Our registration efforts over the last ten years have been
> impaired by an inability to collect and organize and retain
> contact information.  New people write their names on a clipboard,
> and it sits in someone's garage for a year or two, and
> we discard it.
> 
> Normal political organizations use computer software for that
> task.  But we are not a normal political organization, we
> are uniquely reluctant to use computerized tools,
> Facebook, Gmail, and SMS notwithstanding.
> (The reasons *why* Greens prove uniquely averse to computer literacy
> are irrelevant, we just are, and we're not going to change.
> It took enormous, sustained, pervasive peer pressure to get
> us on Facebook, Gmail, and SMS.  That peer pressure doesn't exist
> for other network services, and there's peer pressure to *avoid*
> any service you have to learn about or understand to use well.)
> At the local campaign, county, and state levels, free tools
> have been provided and no volunteers found who would
> actually learn and use them.  I didn't even use the systems I
> installed, and neither did anyone else, not the custom system
> we had ten years ago and not today's world-wide standard, civicrm.
> Our state and national parties use commercial service bureaus
> instead, and that's expensive and risky.
> 
> They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing
> over and over and expecting a different result.
> Any renewed registration drive for our county must be
> designed for pencil, paper, voice phone, and photocopies.
> If our tablers have to touch a computer to record a new
> volunteer, that volunteer will be lost.  If our volunteers have
> to learn to use *any* software tools, they will drop out of
> that part of the project.  We would be insane
> to insist we're going to respond any differently this time.
> 
> Best,
> -Cameron in San Jose
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> >Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2012 08:13:41 -0800
> >From: Wes Rolley <wrolley at charter.net>
> >User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64;
> >	rv:9.0) Gecko/20111222 Thunderbird/9.0.1
> >To: Post South SF Bay discuss <sosfbay-discuss at cagreens.org>
> >Subject: [GPSCC-chat] Agenda for Jan. meeting
> 
> >As a political party, it is incumbent on the GPCA to protect its ballot 
> >access.  In recent years, that has fallen drastically.
> 
> >With a GPCA target of 100,000 new Greens to be registered, each county 
> >needs to take on it's share.  If you divvy up that large number based on 
> >current registration, Santa Clara County needs to register a little over 
> >4,000 new Greens by the November election.
> 
> >While Santa Clara County GP has an active tabling program, I don't see 
> >that this will bring in 4,000 new Greens... based on past history.  So, 
> >how do we get to that number?  I suggest that it needs new ideas and 
> >some organizational structure for getting beyond our tabling efforts.  
> >At least, we should have a committee to refine those ideas and agree 
> >that part of each monthly meeting should be a simple report on the 
> >current status of the effort... how many new Greens have been 
> >attracted.  Maybe, if we measure progress, we will have more progress.
> 
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