There is a strange thing that happens in grassroots organizing.
A campaign can have thousands of names in a database, hundreds of people in a Facebook group, dozens of volunteers in a group chat, a beautiful website, professionally designed graphics, impressive social media numbers, and absolutely no meaningful grassroots organization.
I’ve seen it happen more times than I can count.
I’ve also seen the opposite.
I’ve watched relatively small groups of committed people accomplish things that organizations with considerably more money, staff, technology, and name recognition couldn’t accomplish.
That difference has fascinated me for years.
And after spending a significant portion of my career working in grassroots advocacy, political campaigns, coalition building, digital engagement, volunteer recruitment, and issue advocacy, I’ve become convinced of something that sounds simple but is incredibly easy to forget:
Grassroots organizing is fundamentally about people.
Not databases.
Not apps.
Not social media followers.
Not email lists.
Not consultants.
Not even campaigns.
People.
Technology can help you find people. Data can help you understand them. Digital platforms can help you communicate with them. Campaign infrastructure can help coordinate them.
But none of those things can replace relationships.
There is actually a substantial body of research supporting that basic principle.
Political scientists Alan Gerber and Donald Green conducted one of the landmark randomized experiments on voter mobilization in New Haven, Connecticut, involving roughly 30,000 registered voters. They compared personal canvassing, direct mail, and telephone outreach.
Personal canvassing substantially increased turnout. Direct mail produced a smaller effect. Telephone calls in that particular experiment produced essentially none. (FieldExperiments)
An earlier analysis of the canvassing portion found that personal canvassing increased turnout by approximately six percentage points. (PubMed)
Later experiments across six different cities again found face-to-face voter mobilization effective across a variety of local elections. (Wiley Online Library)
The lesson is bigger than elections.
People respond to people.
And once you understand that, many of the biggest mistakes in grassroots organizing become surprisingly easy to identify.
Mistake #1: Confusing a List With an Organization
This may be the most common mistake of all.
Someone collects 10,000 email addresses and says, “We have 10,000 supporters.”
Probably not.
You have 10,000 email addresses.
Those are very different things.
The same applies to social media.
Having 50,000 followers does not mean you have 50,000 activists. Having 2,000 people in a Facebook group doesn’t mean you have 2,000 organizers. Having 500 people sign a petition doesn’t mean 500 people are prepared to attend a county commission meeting on Tuesday night.
The real question is:
What are these people willing to do?
Will they make a phone call?
Will they send an email?
Will they attend an event?
Will they knock on doors?
Will they bring three friends?
Will they testify publicly?
Will they organize their neighborhood?
Will they recruit somebody else?
That is when a list begins becoming an organization.
The solution is to stop measuring grassroots strength exclusively by audience size and start measuring depth of engagement.
Think of participation as a ladder.
Someone might begin by signing a petition. Then they join an email list. Then they attend an online meeting. Then they make five calls. Then they attend an event. Eventually they organize an event themselves.
Each step creates greater ownership.
The objective shouldn’t simply be accumulating supporters.
It should be developing leaders.
Mistake #2: Asking People for Too Much, Too Quickly
Organizers sometimes meet an enthusiastic volunteer and immediately try turning that person into a full-time activist.
That usually doesn’t work.
Imagine meeting someone for the first time and saying:
“Great to meet you. Would you like to spend your entire Saturday knocking on strangers’ doors?”
Some people absolutely will.
Most won’t.
And that doesn’t mean they don’t care.
People have jobs. Children. Church. School. Aging parents. Little League games. Grocery shopping. Doctor appointments. Life.
Successful grassroots organizations give people different ways to participate.
Maybe somebody has five minutes.
Give them a five-minute action.
Maybe somebody has thirty minutes.
Give them a thirty-minute action.
Maybe somebody is ready to spend four hours canvassing.
Wonderful.
Give them the opportunity.
The mistake is assuming that commitment must precede participation.
Usually participation creates commitment.
Small actions build confidence. Confidence builds ownership. Ownership builds leadership.
That progression matters.
Mistake #3: Treating Volunteers Like Free Labor
This one destroys organizations.
Volunteers aren’t employees you don’t have to pay.
They are people giving you something considerably more valuable than money:
their time.
And unlike employees, they can walk away at any moment.
That changes the relationship completely.
If someone gives up Saturday morning to help your organization, they should understand why their work matters.
Tell them.
If they knocked 75 doors, explain what those conversations contributed toward.
If volunteers generated 300 constituent calls, tell them what happened afterward.
Did a legislator notice?
Did somebody change a vote?
Did the local media cover the issue?
Did another organization join the coalition?
Connect activity to impact.
Research into volunteer retention reinforces the importance of recognition. One longitudinal study found that recognizing volunteer contributions through awards predicted whether volunteers remained involved the following year. (Wiley Online Library)
Recognition doesn’t always require trophies or ceremonies.
Sometimes it is simply:
“Sarah absolutely crushed it today. She talked to 87 voters.”
Or:
“Those calls you made yesterday mattered. The commissioner’s office specifically mentioned the number of constituents contacting them.”
People want to know their contribution mattered.
Because it did.
Mistake #4: Talking At People Instead of Listening to Them
Bad organizing sounds like this:
“Here is our issue. Here is why we’re right. Here is what you need to do.”
Good organizing starts differently:
“What matters to you?”
That question changes everything.
Grassroots organizations frequently arrive in communities with predetermined messaging, predetermined policy objectives, predetermined strategies, and predetermined solutions.
Then they wonder why the community doesn’t become engaged.
Maybe because nobody asked the community what it thought.
Listening isn’t merely good manners.
It’s intelligence gathering.
The person sitting across from you may understand their neighborhood better than your entire strategy team.
They know which churches people attend.
They know which businesses everybody trusts.
They know which community leaders people actually listen to.
They know why residents are angry.
They know what language resonates.
They know which politician hasn’t returned anyone’s calls in six months.
They know the community because they live there.
Research into volunteer communication similarly suggests that trust, free-flowing communication, and listening to volunteers are closely associated with effective volunteer retention practices. (Penn State)
If you aren’t listening to your volunteers, you’re wasting one of the greatest resources you have.
Mistake #5: Mistaking Digital Engagement for Grassroots Engagement
I love digital organizing.
I’ve spent years working with digital strategy, social media, online advocacy, voter engagement technology, digital campaigns, and communications.
But one of the biggest mistakes organizations make is believing digital engagement replaces traditional organizing.
It doesn’t.
It enhances it.
A Facebook post can help recruit someone to an event.
An email can mobilize hundreds of supporters.
A text message can remind volunteers where to meet.
A Zoom call can connect organizers hundreds of miles apart.
Digital tools can dramatically reduce the cost and geographic limitations of organizing.
But ultimately, something needs to happen.
A constituent contacts a legislator.
A volunteer knocks on a door.
A voter shows up.
A resident attends a commission meeting.
A coalition delivers testimony.
Someone talks to their neighbor.
The fifth edition of Gerber and Green’s Get Out the Vote continues examining mobilization through extensive field research, including door-to-door outreach, mail, telephone communication, digital techniques, and relational organizing. Their broader body of research has repeatedly emphasized the importance of testing campaign tactics rather than assuming the newest or loudest method is automatically the most effective. (JSTOR)
Digital should be the bridge between people.
It shouldn’t replace them.
Mistake #6: Building Everything Around One Leader
This is another organization killer.
If every decision requires one person’s approval, you haven’t built an organization.
You’ve built a bottleneck.
Sometimes that bottleneck is a candidate.
Sometimes it’s an executive director.
Sometimes it’s a state director.
Sometimes it’s the organizer who started everything.
Everything works wonderfully until that person gets sick, takes another job, burns out, loses an election, or simply becomes overwhelmed.
Then everything stops.
Strong organizers intentionally make themselves less necessary.
That may sound counterintuitive.
But the goal of leadership isn’t creating dependency.
It’s creating more leaders.
Give volunteers ownership.
Let someone lead the Saturday canvass.
Let somebody else organize the community meeting.
Let another volunteer manage recruitment.
Let someone run training.
Let somebody build the local coalition.
Will they occasionally make mistakes?
Absolutely.
So did you.
Leadership develops through responsibility.
Mistake #7: Ignoring Volunteer Burnout
There is a dangerous tendency in advocacy to celebrate exhaustion.
Who stayed up until 3:00 a.m.?
Who worked seven days straight?
Who knocked the most doors?
Who made the most calls?
Short bursts of extraordinary effort sometimes become necessary, particularly immediately before an election, legislative vote, or major event.
But permanent emergency mode is not sustainable.
Eventually, your most committed volunteers become your most exhausted volunteers.
Then they disappear.
The organization replaces them with new volunteers, burns those people out, and repeats the cycle.
That’s not organizing.
That’s consumption.
Build a culture where people can say:
“I can’t make it this weekend.”
And the response is:
“No problem. We’ll see you next time.”
People who believe volunteering requires sacrificing their entire personal lives eventually stop volunteering.
Sustainable organizations respect boundaries.
Mistake #8: Failing to Give Volunteers a Voice
This is closely related to listening, but it goes deeper.
Volunteers shouldn’t merely execute strategy.
They should help shape it.
Research involving 472 volunteers across three public library systems found that inclusion in organizational communication, participation in events, and involvement in decision-making were among factors associated with volunteers’ intentions to remain involved. (DOI)
Another study examining organizational voice found relationships among volunteer satisfaction, motivation, responses to organizational problems, and retention. (Sage Journals)
That makes intuitive sense.
Imagine volunteering somewhere every week but never being asked what you think.
Eventually, you begin wondering:
Why am I here?
Compare that with an organization where leadership asks:
“What are you hearing?”
“What do you think we should change?”
“Is this working?”
“What would you do differently?”
Suddenly you’re not merely helping somebody else’s organization.
You’re part of it.
That’s ownership.
Mistake #9: Chasing Activity Instead of Outcomes
This one can fool even experienced organizers.
“We knocked 20,000 doors!”
Great.
Why?
“We made 50,000 phone calls!”
Fantastic.
What happened?
“We sent 400,000 text messages!”
Okay.
What changed?
Activity isn’t the same thing as impact.
Campaigns love metrics because metrics make reports look impressive.
Doors knocked.
Calls attempted.
Texts sent.
Emails delivered.
Petitions signed.
But good organizing asks another set of questions.
How many meaningful conversations happened?
How many new volunteers were recruited?
How many volunteers returned?
How many new leaders developed?
How many people completed the requested action?
Did public opinion move?
Did decision-makers respond?
Did the policy change?
Did turnout increase?
Did you win?
Research on voter mobilization is especially valuable here because randomized field experiments allow organizers to distinguish activity from causation. The famous New Haven experiment didn’t simply count how many doors were knocked. Researchers compared randomly assigned treatment and control groups to determine whether those contacts actually changed turnout. (Cambridge University Press)
That’s the mindset organizers need.
Don’t simply ask:
What did we do?
Ask:
Did it work?
Mistake #10: Refusing to Change the Plan
Every organizer eventually develops a strategy they absolutely love.
Then reality destroys it.
The worst response is pretending reality is wrong.
Maybe your phone program isn’t connecting.
Maybe your volunteer recruitment message isn’t resonating.
Maybe nobody attends your Wednesday evening events.
Maybe the script sounds unnatural.
Maybe your target audience doesn’t care about the argument you thought would motivate them.
Change it.
Strategy is a hypothesis.
Organizing is the experiment.
Results are the evidence.
One of the great contributions of experimental political science has been demonstrating that campaign assumptions can actually be tested. Gerber and Green’s work helped popularize precisely this scientific approach to voter mobilization—evaluating tactics through experiments conducted in real elections rather than relying entirely on conventional campaign wisdom. (JSTOR)
Organizations should constantly ask:
What are we learning?
What should we stop doing?
What should we do more of?
What surprised us?
Where were we wrong?
Being wrong isn’t failure.
Continuing something you know isn’t working because admitting you were wrong would be embarrassing is failure.
Mistake #11: Forgetting That Organizing Is Relational
This brings everything back to where we started.
People organize people.
Think about how most people become genuinely involved in their communities.
Usually somebody asks them.
A friend.
A neighbor.
A coworker.
A pastor.
A parent from their kid’s school.
Someone they trust.
That relationship carries credibility an advertisement can’t manufacture.
This is why relational organizing can be so powerful.
Instead of treating every volunteer merely as one additional person capable of performing tasks, recognize that each volunteer exists within a network.
They have friends.
Family.
Coworkers.
Neighbors.
Church communities.
Professional associations.
Social circles.
Their relationships are part of your grassroots infrastructure.
And those relationships cannot simply be purchased.
The Best Organizers Eventually Become Invisible
Over the years, my understanding of grassroots organizing has changed considerably.
Early on, it was easy to get excited about numbers.
More volunteers.
More contacts.
More followers.
More calls.
More doors.
More events.
And those things matter.
But the longer I’ve done this work, the more convinced I’ve become that the most important question isn’t how many people participated today.
It’s:
How many people are capable of leading tomorrow?
That is the difference between mobilization and organization.
Mobilization gets people to show up.
Organization develops people who can get other people to show up.
That’s how something becomes sustainable.
And there is something deeply democratic about that.
Real grassroots organizing distributes power.
It takes people who may never have considered themselves activists, organizers, advocates, or community leaders and gives them the knowledge, confidence, relationships, and opportunity to influence the institutions governing their lives.
I’ve watched people walk into their first volunteer meeting barely willing to introduce themselves and later become some of the strongest advocates in their communities.
That’s grassroots organizing at its best.
Not professional operatives parachuting into communities and telling everyone what to think.
Not national organizations manufacturing the appearance of local enthusiasm.
Not algorithms creating artificial engagement.
People discovering their own ability to create change.
Build People, Not Just Campaigns
Campaigns end.
Elections happen.
Legislative sessions adjourn.
Organizations change.
Staff members leave.
Funding disappears.
Issues evolve.
But leadership remains.
If your campaign ends and every volunteer disappears, you successfully ran a campaign.
If your campaign ends and dozens of people leave knowing how to organize their neighbors, contact elected officials, testify before government bodies, recruit volunteers, build coalitions, communicate effectively, and lead campaigns of their own?
You built something considerably more important.
You built civic capacity.
That’s the real objective.
So recruit people.
Listen to them.
Train them.
Trust them.
Recognize them.
Give them meaningful responsibilities.
Let them disagree with you.
Let them experiment.
Let them fail occasionally.
Let them lead.
And when somebody you’ve trained eventually becomes better at organizing than you are?
Celebrate it.
Because that isn’t evidence that you’re becoming less important.
It’s evidence that the organizing worked.
The strongest grassroots organization isn’t the one with the biggest email list, the most expensive technology, the fanciest headquarters, or the largest social media following.
It’s the one filled with people who believe the organization belongs to them.
Because once people genuinely believe that, you no longer have an audience.
You have a movement.
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