One of the more challenging yet effective tactics for community mobilization is the phone bank. These days, most folks are used to communicating in more hi-tech fashion — whether tweeting, emailing, facebooking, texting, etc. — you know the deal. Caller ID, the transition from traditional land lines to cell phones, and righteous wariness of tele-marketers all make the job of phone banking about important social justice issues even more difficult.
Through all these challenges, our wonderful 2009 Democracy Summer interns are persevering and having great success reaching out to people all across the state, one call and one conversation at a time.
In just one week, these young organizers (with the help of our lovely staff) made 1,136 phone calls! MORE importantly, out of these calls, they got 134 people to take action for clean elections in North Carolina! This 12% success rate is double the 6% success rate I estimated before the beginning of the summer. When you look at the rate of “yes’s” for the number of people actually talked to, that 12% jumps even higher. One team alone made 318 calls in one week and got 56 “yes” responses for a remarkable 18% success rate!
Call me a techno-phobe or just simple minded, but I’ve always been a big fan of using the phone to build relationships with community leaders, plan events, and brainstorm strategies. It’s a personalized tool that is the next-best option to a face-to-face encounter.
I’m looking forward to seeing how our results evolve over the summer and how we can follow up with action-takers to build their involvement in the democracy movement.
One call at a time. It’s a marathon not a sprint. Great job Democracy Summer!
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