You’ve already set up your campaign, your survey questions and tags are good to go, and you’re ready to get out canvassing! But before your excited volunteers start hitting the pavement, get them set up for success by hosting a Reach volunteer training. Don’t worry, we have all of the resources you need to get started right here.
Pre-Training Checklist
- Decide how you’ll add new users: For Complete or Movement Campaigns, you can generate an invite code or link to add your users in bulk. Or, if you’re on Reach Basics, add your users ahead of time by phone number, or have a few volunteers at your training ready to add others to your campaign.
- Pick your PDF guides: We have a few different options for handouts you can give your volunteers, varying from super tech-savvy to tech novice. You can either print these, or put them up on a screen if you’re trying to save trees!
- Have the demo video ready: you can share our walkthrough of Relational Organizing with Reach ahead of time, or put it up on a screen during the training for your volunteers to watch!
- Gather your campaign materials: Come with any issue sheets, fact sheets, or other campaign handouts ready to go.
Hosting Your Training
- Start with the “why”: Talk about your broader field program, and how you want your volunteers to engage with voters for your campaign! This should be the biggest part of your training, and be sure to answer the following questions:
- What type of conversations does the campaign want volunteers having with voters?
- How can a volunteer approach someone?
- Which issues should your volunteers focus on? You can give them issue sheets or fact sheets so they can answer questions from the people they canvass.
- How does Reach fit in? Get your volunteers excited about meeting voters where they are by activating first time voters and voters in marginalized communities. Check out our Using Reach for Street Canvassing blog for more ideas about how to engage with voters.
- Get everyone in the app: Now that your volunteers know why Reach is important, it’s time to move on to the “what” and “how”. Have everyone download the app and create an account using the QR codes in the handouts, and add them to your campaign using the invite code you generated earlier (or by phone number for Basics campaigns).
- Learn how to Reach: If your volunteers didn’t watch the demo video ahead of time, now’s the time to check it out!
- Practice makes perfect: Once your volunteers have seen the demo, have them practice importing their contacts and messaging their Network if you’re doing a Friendbank, or have them practice canvassing each other if you’re practicing in-person canvassing techniques. If they have any questions that you don’t expect, that’s ok! You can check out the Reach for Users section of our knowledge base for feature-by-feature explanations.
During the Canvass
- Set a goal: Give all of your volunteers a target to hit before their canvass, whether it’s a number of conversations or total positive IDs.
- Send them out into the wild: Now that they’re ready to go, start collecting those IDs! Have your volunteers start importing their own contacts to canvass their friends and family, go out to street canvass, or door knock.
- Show your volunteers some love: Halfway through your canvass, send out an encouraging push notification to keep everyone engaged.
- Continue the momentum: As you’re wrapping up your canvass, get your volunteers to RSVP to specific follow-up shifts for more Reaching.
After a Canvass
- Shout out your top volunteers: Use the rankings screen to highlight your top volunteers, and maybe reward them with a t-shirt or some post-canvassing pizza!
- Follow up with your low-usage volunteers: Were they less comfortable talking to people they didn’t know? Was there a technical barrier with understanding the app?
- Let us know how it went: Post comments on our feedback page or email us at [email protected] if you had any issues.
