Petition Drive Suggestions
INITIAL MEETING
Bring together as many people as you can who might be interested in helping out. At the meeting, have someone make a presentation about the issues, and then ask everyone to talk about how they might like to be involved. Key goals: pick a few days when you will launch the drive; plan when and where to meet again; motivate people to bring others to the second meeting who were missing from the first.
SOME TASKS TO DIVIDE UP
Pre-Launch Checklist
- Photocopy a few hundred petitions, get or make clipboards, do simple publicity/ postering.
- Pass around a sign-up sheet for the hours around lunchtime on the days you will "launch" the petition drive. For example, you might sign up six people per day, 3 at 11am, 3 at noon.
- Send a letter to 10 faculty members asking them for $20 each to help you pay copying costs.
- Call the campus newspaper and see if they are interested in running a story announcing what you are doing (this may work if you already have a reputation).
- Reserve an information table, for use before or during signature collection.
During the "Launch Days"
- The coordinator for each day should call to remind/confirm volunteers the night before, meet them to help them get started, and collect forms at the end of the petitioning.
- Place signs up in the morning with something like "sign the new priorities petition today -- in Barker Dining Hall" on your campus.
- Collect petition forms at the end of the day.
- Get together to celebrate on the last "launch day" and to count signatures and plan next steps.
PETITIONING TECHNIQUES
The layout of your campus will determine the best way to collect signatures. Although tabling may be the usual method, it's usually more effective to stand in a high-traffic area with a clipboard. "Hi. Would you like to sign a petition to shift money from the military to education?" you ask. This is your First Amendment right. If asked to leave, please call us! People will sign right there (which is best), or they can take petition forms away to sign later. Sometimes people will give you their name and number and offer to join your effort. High-traffic areas include the corner of the quad near the dining hall at lunchtime; the line that forms before a big campus event, etc.
In a location with very heavy traffic, you can have three people collecting signatures at once. You can even put up a big sign that says something like "sign the new priorities petition" up against the wall, so that from 100 feet away people will see what you are doing, and be more ready to hear your pitch or to sign. After two days of petitioning in one location, many people you ask to sign will have already signed. At this point you try other methods to gain signatures. Each petition blank should include your local address for returning petitions, and a deadline (maybe 2 weeks after you start) for returning them.
SIGNATURE GOALS AND DELIVERY
With six volunteers, you ought to gain at least 100 signatures in one day. Can you try for 500? 1000? Send a copy to us, announce your totals to the campus paper, and figure out a flashy and visually exciting way to deliver them to local politicians in a manner that will gain press coverage.
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