Without a doubt, the most successful political campaigns are the ones that reach the most voters.
There are many ways your campaign can reach voters, including social media posts, writing op-eds for your local newspaper, blog posts, or door-knocking. But perhaps that best way to reach the greatest number of voters with a personal touch is phone banking. Phone banking is the process by which candidates leverage the power of volunteers to reach out to a large number of voters to persuade them to vote a certain way or to donate to a specific campaign.
Phone banking offers a low-stress opportunity to get involved with politics. You can simply look at the script on your phone or computer screen while remaining attentive to the conversation. There is still the opportunity to add a personal touch by going off-script, without seeming too unorganized.
When trying to recruit volunteers for your phone bank, remember to advertise it as a low stress, safe, and socially distanced opportunity to feel like you are making a difference.
Before you search for volunteers, however, it is important to decide on campaign messaging for your phone bank. This involves creating a script that is easy for your volunteers to follow and provides the following information to the people you call.
First, you need to identify who you are. Make sure you clearly state your name and the office that you’re running for. Next, you need to tell the voter what you stand for, including causes you champion and issues you care about. Finally, you need to have an education piece in your script. What information can you give the person you are calling to persuade them to vote for you instead of someone else?
It is important your script is short, as you are calling people where they are in their lives (between taking the kids to soccer practice and making dinner for their busy family). Make it relatable, but concise. Give them information that leads into a call to action, all while making the phone call friendly and conversational.
Now that you have created a script for your phone bank, you need a list of potential contacts. The list of people you call should reflect where you are in the campaign season. If it is early on in your campaign, it might be in your best interest to create a list of known supporters and ask them to volunteer for your campaign. If you are more in the middle of your campaign, perhaps it would be wise to pull a list of persuadable voters, those who still need convincing to vote for you instead of the other guy. Towards the end of the campaign and close to election day, it is important to ramp up get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts, gearing your efforts towards encouraging your supporters to get out to the polls and vote.
Unless you can turn out your supporters to vote, nothing else really matters.
Next, you will want to train your volunteers. This can be done in-person or online via Zoom or Google Meet. Make sure your volunteers have all the information they need to be successful . This involves making sure they are fluent with the script and have access to any other information they might need while talking to voters.
It is important that you make your phone banking session fun for your volunteers. If you are doing it in person, hand out snacks and maybe even play some music in the background. Perhaps make a contest out of it, with the person making the most calls winning a prize. If it is an enjoyable experience, they will come back and call again for you in the future.
After the completion of your phone banking session, it is wise to debrief with your callers. This can be as simple as going around the room from person to person, asking what worked well for them during the session (including examples of when the script worked well and captured the attention of voters) and what didn’t work well (when the script fell short in expressing the goals of the campaign). This will allow you to tweak the script and/or change the training you provide before your next phone banking session. You will also get some great informal feedback on how your campaign is progressing.