Training and Developing Volunteers

How should volunteers be trained, and in what areas?

A well-trained team has great power to convert votes. How should volunteers be trained, and in what areas?

Messages that are shared incompletely, or occasional incorrect practices that occur due to a lack of knowledge or training among volunteers, can be harmful to your campaign. By contrast, the strength of a well-trained and qualified volunteer team has a great power to convert votes.

The most important point to keep in mind is that leaflets, posts, and “likes” do not automatically turn into votes. All of these actions are merely reminders — a memory of your name and your number. What actually converts into votes is conversation: interaction and exchange with people.

This is why your volunteer team is so important, because they are the ones who will interact with large numbers of people. Whether in person, through phone calls, WhatsApp, or online chats, transmitting the message with confidence and security is essential. That is why the sparkle in their eyes, their motivation, and their willingness at the moment of asking for the vote make all the difference.

And in order to ask for votes, your volunteers need to:

• Be familiar with the ideas and key messages of your campaign;
• Know how to counter criticism, deconstruct malicious arguments, and challenge false news;
• Understand the general political landscape of the campaign;
• Have some knowledge of the competition and its weaknesses.

To achieve all of this, there is one fundamental action for your volunteer team: training sessions. Below, we share a step-by-step guide to organising an effective training session.

First of all, some key points to keep in mind:

Any collective meeting, beyond its practical or professional objective, is also a space for fellowship, exchange, and personal growth. Feeling a sense of collectivity and mutual respect is essential. Therefore, regardless of how you may feel personally, you must ensure that this meeting has good energy. At that moment, you are the leader, and it is your responsibility to make sure these sessions are motivating and mobilising.

If you are the candidate, your volunteer team is involved in this project essentially because of you. Therefore, your presence is more than essential. A candidate who does not pay attention to the volunteer team may give the impression that they do not value people’s efforts.

If there is a general coordinator or a volunteer coordinator on the team, it is important that they take responsibility for facilitating the event, including as a way of empowering them as leaders within the team. However, the candidate should be present and give a presentation about the campaign.

Introduction

At the start, the candidate or the volunteer coordinator should give a brief welcome. It is also important that everyone present has the opportunity to introduce themselves. Optional: run an ice-breaker activity.

Connection

This is the moment to build a sense of team and discuss motivations and political principles. It is worth organising a group activity in which participants can share who they are, why they are there, and what motivates them to volunteer for this campaign. This is also a good moment to carry out the public narrative exercise explained in this guide.

Awareness

Now that participants know each other and have shared their motivations, it is time to present the campaign and the candidate in a more concrete way. The candidate should speak about herself, her proposals, why she decided to run, and what her dreams are.

Mobilisation

This is the moment to present the team, explain the day-to-day workings of the campaign, outline the challenges it faces, and identify where support is needed. It is also the time to review political guidelines, arguments for persuading people to vote for the candidate, and, in short, all the information volunteers need in order to talk about the campaign. Take advantage of this moment to cover more practical issues as well, such as electoral regulations or accountability requirements, so volunteers know what they can and cannot do.

Closing and Commitments

Make sure everyone leaves motivated, with three key feelings:

• A desire to win the election;
• A sense of belonging to a community;
• The certainty that they are essential to the success of the campaign.

Specifically, it is worth asking each participant to share how they are leaving the meeting and what concrete commitment they will make to contribute to the campaign. For example: I will organise a meeting with my neighbours; I will dedicate two hours a day to making phone calls, and so on.

Tip: Ask them to share on their social media that they are now part of your volunteer team and why.

Ready? We’ve prepared this template with a detailed plan for organizing a volunteer meeting: