During the election campaign the flood of new helpers coming in to the party made me write a post, OMG! People want to help – what do I do?, which turned out to be rather popular. Now that the campaign is over, it’s important to keep those new helpers involved – and also to make the continuing flow of new members feel wanted and involved too.
Far more people have joined than have left the party since the coalition was announced, which is a promising sign for the future. There will though be some tough times ahead and a strong local base will help the party continue to grow. So what to do?
Here are my top ten suggestions:
- Organise events, have fun: well-run local parties and efficient election campaigns involve their inevitable moments of drudgery and boredom, so make sure that isn’t all you offer. Whether it’s adding an extra social event to your calendar or simply adding in a trip to a pub or cafe at the end of a delivery session, give people the chance to meet others and have a bit of chit chat.
- Communicate, communicate, communicate: regular newsletters to members and supporters should be a must. Alas, there are some places where sending out closely typed minutes of the AGM once a year counts as member communication. You know better than that, don’t you?
- Use the online world: email, SMS, Facebook, Twitter and the like have all been used effectively by people to help win elections, but they often really come in to their own for internal communication. They can make it easy and quick to regularly keep in touch and send out news – just what you need to make members and supporters feel valued, keep informed and know how they can contribute.
- Get training: when was the last time your local party ran a training event, whether it was in canvassing, how to be a local council candidate or learning the ropes of EARS? Whatever the topic, there’s plenty of scope to share skills and get a bigger team. So get training.
- Open up your committee meetings: some local parties have had great success by encouraging interested potential activists to come to local executive meetings or interested potential councillors to come to group meetings. It’s a good way for people to find out more about what might be involved – and has the bonus of making use of meetings you would have had to have anyway.
- More candidates please: at each round of local elections there are many wards where we do not put up a candidate for want of someone willing to do even the most minimal of roles. So if your party doesn’t have a record of 100% coverage, start sounding up people soon with the aim of a record number of candidates next time. Keep a particular eye out for encouraging a more diverse set of candidates too as standing for the council is often the first step towards getting more diverse local party executives and candidates at higher levels.
- Deliver leaflets: good quality, timely literature was at the core of all our winning general election campaigns. Get people delivering leaflets – but ask them deliver near where they live. Even if they live in the “wrong” (i.e. non-target) area, it’s better to get them delivering regularly nearby, building up the habit of helping, rather than saying, “We only want your help if you are willing to go elsewhere”.
- Tell them about Lib Dem Voice: one of the odd quirks about political organisation is that people often join parties because they are interested in politics and talking about policy – and then find there isn’t much of that going on in party organisations. One way to help deal with that is social events (see above); another is to encourage people to find the political discussion that takes place elsewhere in the party – such as on this site. Alex’s inserts are a great way to do this.
- Go to conference: whether it’s regional, state or federal conference, encourage others to make their first visit. Often the easy steps that are all that’s needed to get more people more involved. It may be as simple as telling people more about what’s involved or as practical as organising some car sharing.
- Keep good records: who has offered to help? what do they like to do? how do they prefer to be contacted? and so on. Good records means happier helpers and more help.
Those are my tips. What are yours?
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14 Comments
Excellent post Mark. Can I add one more suggestion? Identify what issues matter most to the new members, and try to get them to plan some constructive community action in relation to that (my recent post “big society + political activism = community politics” refers).
It seems to me that one element often overlooked is that there is an emotional component to political allegiance. Engaging peoples specific concerns and passions benefits them, and strengthens and deepens their ties to the party. It also encourages a return to the true nature of political activity as an organic part of community life, and is an affirmation of an individuals place and worth in that community.
I like your no.1 idea there, the power of fun is often underestimated.
Can you get them more familiar with the idea of Alternative Vote, and ready for a referendum on the matter?
Can we find out why they all joined? I would like to see some numbers on why folk are joining the Lib Dems.
Some people don’t want tea parties, they joined because they wanted political engagement. So without ditching tea and chocolate (Heaven forfend), the odd political speaker and a chance to engage with ideas is essential to keeping these members.
The importance of attempting to bind new members to the political coherence of a local party is often under-estimated. It’s people who develop their political views after joining and who become bought into some liberal or Lib Dem classic principles who are more likely to stay members in the long term.
…And I see Belinda made the same point, but more eloquently.
Here is something to cry about. One of our new supporters has a business managing HIPS. He has lost his business overnight with no compensation so far. how do I look him in the face?
When the dust has settled I would be very, very surprised if we are gaining members. In my constituency we lost a few last week, 2 more emailed me this morning to quit and the general feeling at a meeting last week about our local prospects was very downcast. This is a winnable seat as well or rather was. We will suffer for a while but need some clear gains on things other than political reform.
Hold meetings four or six times a year with a speaker, and invite along not just members but also Liberal Democrat voters. Most will not come but will remember they were invited instead of being ignored between elections. This will build up good will. Those who do come will probably be willing to become more involved.
Alex KN – be prepared to be very, very surprised! New members are outstripping resignations by a substantial margin – no doubt someone will be along soon with some actual figures.
@Sid
That would be pleasant surprise!
However it does not square with my experience or two neighbouring ones.All I can say is that there must be regional trends.Any info on this? We are bound to pick up some new members although I am struggling to work out why they would join now but not in the past. There is a small niche of centre right voters who may now be attracted but they will be more than off set by centre left losses. The reckoning will come when we call on members and volunteers for the next round of local elections. As many of ours fought locally against an Academy they will be hardly thrilled by their creation in bulk by M Gove. It is this sort of issue that will hit us very hard from the Midlands northwards.
@AlexKN
I fear that the UK’s political culture is too simplistic to allow the Lib Dems to be anything other than alternating between being centre-right in some places and centre-left in the other. This transfers to the way voters think and act, i.e. I voted Lib Dem to stop the Tories so why are they joining them, and also to members/activists, who will do things like campaign to stop an academy even when it’s perfectly within the liberal canon to support privatised education.
The important thing is to remember that these new members have joined because of national issues; try not to bore them out of the party by constantly wittering on about lamposts and potholes…
New member here. Joined up during the campaign and spent the final week of the election wearing out my trainers delivering leaflets. Retention following the surge must be paramount, and it’s good to see articles like this. I can’t wait to get involved more – whatever form that takes, I do want to feel like I have a voice though, Belinda and Peter have it spot on.
In areas where the LD’s are seen as the “Anti-Tory Party”, would it not help to emphasize that the Conservatives were “let in” by the number of people who voted for them, not the Liberal Democrat’s consequent actions, that the alternatives to forming the Coalition probably empowered the Conservative Party more (Minority Conservative Government, leads to another General Election in under one year, fought by well funded Tories, against Labour with new leader, and penniless Liberal Democrats) and that the Lib Dems could not drag the Labour Party into a Rainbow Coalition against their will?
Where I have been involved in campaigning, the Liberal Democrats are seen as “Not the Tories”, rather than “the Anti-Tories”, and the Coalition is going down quite well, but then that is in Conservative safe seats, rather than Con/Lib Dem swing seats. Sorry, I don’t have any actual numbers to back that up with as yet.
Sorry to post twice in a row everyone, but I forgot to say,
@John Moody, welcome to the Liberal Democrats.