Connect with your Volunteers
It's much easier to ask someone to do something (like volunteer) if you already have established a relationships with them.
Particularly for volunteers that will be taking on significant responsibility (as so many small campaigns and issue organizing require), it is critical that you sit down and have an initial meeting with potential volunteers to learn more about them. In organizing work, we call this a "one-on-one".
A one-to-one is an intential conversation. It is not an interview, but a chance to learn more about your potential volunteers and what motivates them. It should feel like a natural two-way conversation, with one person leading and listening. For more information on a one-to-one and a guide to conducting them, click here.
In your one-to-one conversation, you should pay attention to 3 key things that will help you understand what motivates the volunteer and how to engage them in your campaign - their issues, interests, and values.
Issues are the concerns that are important to us. There are many issues that motivate us - good jobs at decent wages, health care for our families, and more. Often when we think of building a coalition or waging an issue campaign, they are centered on a specific issue.
Interests speak to our stake in a particular outcome. Our interests are what we get out of the issue and what are personal connection to it is. My issue might be improving educational opportunities in my community, but my interest is different if I am a parent, a student, or a teacher.
Values are the core principles that motivate us to act. One's issues and interests may shift over time, but values tend to be more unchanging.
Now, of course, you can't just sit down in a coffee shop with a potential volunteer and ask them, "hey, what are your issues, interests, and values?"
Rather, understanding these elements that make up each person and their motivation for progressive work is your job as an organizer. Take information you might learn in the course of an everyday conversation:
"I grew up on a farm"
"My kids are smart, but they're struggling in school"
"I went to college here because they gave me the scholarship I needed"
"We moved here because my wife got a job that gave us healthcare"
There is powerful information in those points of conversation that tells you about that person's connection to the campaign and what motivates them. It turns a volunteer into a real person with real personal values, rather than a cog in a wheel.