Active Roots Consulting offers a unique and proven system for volunteer signature drives based on thirty years of signature gathering campaigns nationwide that collectively gathered over 2.5 million volunteer signatures.
ARC’s system equips a campaign with hundreds of templates and instructional materials to help jumpstart a campaign and maximize volunteer signatures. This extensive toolkit can save a campaign significant staff time and save a campaign hundreds of thousands of dollars given the skyrocketing costs of paid signatures.
ARC provides consultation on every aspect of the signature drive from the early exploratory stages to creating, launching, and maintaining a robust, positive, and well-organized volunteer signature drive. ARC can provide detailed work plans, daily hands-on consultation, and supporting materials and instructions for each stage of the signature drive:
The exploratory phase is the ideal time to determine the type of signature gathering effort the campaign would like to execute. Most campaigns run a hybrid effort with paid and volunteer signature gatherers. Some campaigns choose to run a robust volunteer effort to gather a significant percentage of signatures from volunteers. Other campaigns recognize that an extensive volunteer effort may not be realistic but want their volunteer effort well-organized and then want to leverage any volunteer efforts, even if limited, to show citizen support to the media, donors, and voters. During this phase, supporting organizations can begin many grassroots organizing actions long before a campaign PAC is created.
Active Roots Consulting offers a pro-bono hour of consultation to help with these early conversations. If additional help is needed, the campaign can hire ARC for an introductory five to 10+ hours to help with decision-making and help the supporting organizations ramp up their volunteer recruitment efforts. ARC can also help a campaign work with the paid signature gathering firm to help lock in a good price, but allow the campaign time to see how the volunteer effort performs before ordering the final number of paid signatures. These early actions and decisions can significantly impact the efficacy of a signature gathering drive.
Ideally, a campaign will begin planning six to 12 months before the gathering begins. This gives campaigns time to hire staff, set up the campaign headquarters and efficient office systems, create effective outreach materials, recruit thousands of volunteers, identify volunteer coordinators and office volunteers, recruit and activate endorsing organizations, and identify lucrative gathering locations and events.
Active Roots Consulting can work directly with key individuals and organizations and provide the necessary materials to help with this time-intensive and critical stage of the campaign. If this type of lead time isn’t possible, then ARC’s system can help to quickly build the necessary foundation.
For a robust volunteer signature gathering effort, the campaign should be ready to hit the ground running when the petitions arrive. To prepare for this moment, organizers can hold in-person kick-off meetings in all population centers statewide to build relationships and train volunteers on best signature gathering practices and ways to recruit more volunteers. These efforts can be supplemented with online kick-off meetings. Kick-off meetings should happen just before the petitions arrive. For the very first week the petitions arrive, organizers should have volunteers scheduled for gathering shifts statewide at the most lucrative locations. They should also plan to immediately distribute petitions, clipboards, and posters to anyone scheduled to gather at public locations and then mail petitions to everyone else who has simply signed up to gather from friends and family.
A strong start to the volunteer drive allows a campaign to measure the strength of the volunteer effort, so the campaign doesn’t order more paid signatures than necessary. A strong start also builds confidence for all stakeholders including the volunteers, donors, and endorsers.
Active Roots Consulting can help the campaign take the steps necessary for a formidable start and to create a plan for a speedy return on completed petitions, so we can assess the strength of the volunteer effort and see whether we will need to purchase additional paid signatures. ARC can also provide strategies for how to ensure that the volunteer and paid signature gatherers work together gracefully.
During the active signature gathering months, it’s important to run extremely efficient operations to ensure that filled petitions are submitted and processed accurately each week and to ensure that new volunteers are processed daily, sent or given petition packets within 24 hours of their request, trained on best gathering practices, and scheduled at lucrative signature locations and events. To ensure that signature numbers continue to increase, organizers constantly work to recruit new volunteers and to keep endorsing organizations engaged with signature gathering and volunteer recruitment.
Active Roots Consulting can help the office staff and organizers run a well-organized effort so that all systems are running smoothly, the supporting organizations are activated, and the staff is effectively recruiting, training, coordinating, scheduling, and celebrating volunteers.
