Make your volunteers feel valued and effective
As we’ve already seen, volunteers are a very important part of your campaign, and you can’t take them for granted. Try to consistently show how their work is making a real difference in the campaign.
Thank them publicly
After an event or a day of street outreach, make a post on your social media channels and publicly thank your volunteers. If you can tag them, even better. I promise they’ll feel special and proud to be recognised.
Share the wins
Whenever the campaign achieves an important victory (reaching the signature goal, hosting a very successful event, hitting a fundraising target), make sure to thank the volunteers and remind everyone that their daily work was essential to making it happen. You can do this in the WhatsApp group in a more personal way, for example by sending a voice note or a short, simple video recorded on your phone (sometimes text just doesn’t fully convey the feeling).
Include them in your communications
Try to give your volunteers space in your communications by posting photos where they’re present, thanking them in posts, and talking about the work the volunteer team does every day. This not only helps them feel valued, it also makes it visible that your campaign is built by a team of volunteers – which can attract even more people to get involved.
Here are a couple of examples:
- A video from the campaign of Pedro Kumamoto, an independent candidate in Mexico.
2. A post by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calling for volunteers.
Give recognition
You can start making things fun by setting challenges linked to campaign goals and offering simple recognitions to the winners. How about giving a certificate to the volunteer who collected the most signatures in one day? Or recording a personalised video for the volunteer who organised the most well-attended neighbourhood meeting of the week?
Wrap it up properly
The campaign is over! Time to send individual messages and group messages thanking everyone and celebrating what the campaign achieved – even if you weren’t elected. Once you’ve had a bit of rest from the campaign madness, organise an in-person or online gathering to say thank you and bring things to a close. Remember: you’ve started a community that will very likely outlast your campaign.
Why not listen to your volunteer team’s feedback?
This is the moment to collect their feedback and understand how the experience was for them; what worked well and what could have been better. This will always help you improve and keep working with them on future projects.
