11 Relational Organizing Best Practices For Your Political Campaign

Relational organizing is quickly becoming a staple of modern day campaigning.

The traditional cold campaign outreach was paid staff or volunteers reaching out to strangers. But with relational organizing, supporters leverage their pre-existing relationships. Then they can reach out to their friends, neighbors and colleagues.

Academic research has shown relational organizing to be the most effective form of outreach. However, it is a relatively new area.  Few have developed and documented best practices.

In the last two years we have worked with over a thousand clients at VoterCircle on their relational organizing efforts.

Through trial and error (we’ve made our share of mistakes!), we have seen what works and what doesn’t.

11 Relational Organizing Best Practices For Your Political Campaign

Here are our top recommendations to launch, build and grow a successful relational organizing program.

Start Early

Properly building out a relational organizing campaign takes planning. It also takes resources. Therefore, having sufficient time to execute is critical to success.

We recommend 3+ months for local campaigns, 6+ months for regional campaigns and 6–12+ months for statewide or national efforts.

Treat Relational Organizing Like Phone or Door

Put someone in charge and be methodical.

A relational organizing effort doesn’t run itself. For that reason, designate staff or volunteers to take ownership and responsibility. Because scaling your relational program is critical to success.

Similar to other outreach efforts, create a calendar. Make sure to have weekly and monthly goals for individuals, teams and overall.

Start Before Phone, Door, and Other Forms of Outreach

Based on the research, it is clear that relational organizing is the most effective method of persuading voters. However, it is not always possible to reach every voter in this manner.

If you start your relational organizing efforts early, you can remove everyone you reach in this manner off of your phone and walk lists.

Map Out the Electorate To Create a Relational Organizing Strategy

There is no point starting from scratch. Figure out the quickest way to reach the largest number of people.

Identify the key groups in your electorate:

• Churches
• Schools
• Youth sports
• Resistance groups
• County parties
• Community organizations
• Senior groups

Don’t forget to seek out groups that will benefit from the candidate winning or the bill/measure passing.

Influencers are Critical to Scaling Relational Organizing

We find one of the biggest mistakes that campaigns make is focusing on their volunteers instead of influencers for their relational organizing efforts.

While volunteers have time, many are not well connected in their communities.

We recommend recruiting influencers who are well connected and respected in their communities. Start with friends, family, staff, endorsers and donors.

Leverage Technology

There are a number of relational organizing platforms that will both assist you with this process and help you scale your efforts. Some of them even offer a free version for smaller programs.

Make sure to find a platform that will help you identify influencers and integrates with other campaign platforms such as NGPVAN.   

Involve the Entire Campaign Team and Leverage Every Campaign Channel

Unlike fundraising, phone, door or texting which can be run as discrete efforts, relational organizing should involve the entire campaign team.

This starts with the candidate and campaign manager and includes every team within a campaign:

• Field
• Digital
• Fundraising
• and Communications

Create Volunteer Relational Organizing Capacity

The best way to grow your relational organizing campaign is to convert your supporters into organizers. As a result, they will recruit more supporters to reach out to their friends.

This way, your campaign will not be bottlenecked by your campaign staff. However, doing so takes planning and resources.

Above all, the best way to convert a canvasser to an organizer is a personal one on one conversation.

Separate Recruitment and Conversion

To attract influencers to support your relational organizing efforts, there are two key functions – recruitment and conversion.

Recruitment is best done by outgoing and well connected individuals. Furthermore, they then recruit other individuals to leverage their networks, reputations and relationships to support your convert.

Once an individual has agreed to support your effort, you need organized and task oriented individuals to follow-up and assist your supporters in reaching out to their friends.

Make the Ask Individually and Follow-Up Personally

Relational organizing is a new concept to most supporters.

A mass email is rarely enough to recruit supporters. Therefore, make sure an individual asks either in person or digitally. This can be done at a neighborhood coffee, one-on-one, or by phone, email, text or social.

Most importantly, make sure the individual who knows the supporter best makes the ask. With high profile supporters, it is best to have the candidate make the ask.

Once the ask has been made, make sure to follow-up.

Run Relational Organizing Parties or Weekends of Action

In-person communication works extremely well for growing your relational organizing efforts.

However, recruiting supporters individually takes time. A great way to supercharge your efforts, especially early in your rollout, is to hold relational organizing parties or neighborhood coffees.

Relational Organizing and Your Campaign

In short, relational organizing can be an extremely effective program in your campaign’s arsenal. By leveraging relationships, planning effectively and mobilizing early, you can persuade more voters, improve voter turnout and WIN more races.

And If you have any best practices that we missed, let us know in the comments below. We are always looking to advance the field to make outreach more personal, effective and efficient.

Sangeeth Peruri was recently a guest on The Campaign Workshop’s Podcast How To Win A Campaign discussing how to engage and active supporters during COVID-19. Listen here.