Grassroots Manual Organizing Berning Manhattan

Compiled by Jacob Weinstein, an organizer of BERNing Manhattan. Notes, commentary, assistance, and other materials used here from Reddit /u/miskellaneousness (organizer of BERNing Manhattan), Ella Ryan (organizer with Team Bernie NY), Tascha Van Auken (organizer with Brooklyn for Bernie), Reddit /u/rcas (organizer of BERNing Manhattan). Credit to Christien Bernier for kickstarting BERNing Manhattan in the first place!

Introduction

Hello, Bernie Sanders supporters out there! This is New York for Sanders. We

coordinated a very successful event called BERNing Manhattan. The concept was simple

— get volunteers at as many subway stations as possible in Manhattan to hand out

flyers. The event took place on September 5, 2015, from 12 PM to 4 PM. We’d like to

share how we did it so that you can do it in your own city. You don’t need a subway

system to do it - just some volunteers and street corners, plus whatever money is needed

for flyers.

1. Create a local Slack group for organizing. Slack was an invaluable tool for this event. We exchanged thousands of messages between a dozen or so people leading up to the event regarding getting flyers ready, social media promotion, etc. It would have been an absolute mess to do all of that via email. (We’re not affiliated with the Slack company in any way!)

2. Set a date. The date you set should be at least 4 weeks (or more!) away. This will give you time to adequately promote and prepare for the event.

3. Come up with locations. For BERNing Manhattan, we set out with an ambitious goal: place volunteers at all ~150 subway stations in Manhattan. We ended up getting folks to 84 stations. While covering 84 stations ensured that our event had incredible reach, it also meant our teams of volunteers were highly dispersed, making things like distributing flyers to teams difficult. For future events, we recommend choosing fewer locations and sending larger groups to these locations — and then breaking into small teams and dispersing from there. For example, instead of sending 3 people to 100 locations, send 30 people to 10 locations and have them disperse from there. This serves a number of purposes:

a. It makes flyer distribution easier. Instead of getting flyers to 100 locations,

you only have to get them to 10.

b. It allows volunteers to interact with each other and see how many other

folks are coming out!

c. Having larger groups makes for great media exposure!

d. Volunteer leaders at each location can give a very short seminar on flyering

and outreach for new volunteers.

4. Contact /u/rcas (rapi@bernie2016events.org) to have a map created. It’s very important that this step be complete before you start promoting the event on Facebook and the berniesanders.com/events site. With BERNing Manhattan, we have

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600+ Facebook RSVPs for the event by the time we got the map set up. It was difficult to get these RSVPs to then sign up through the map, so it’s best to get the map prepared beforehand and then have it prominently displayed when you create a Facebook event and an event on berniesanders.com.

5. Work with Bernie2016Events.org to create a signup form. When people click on “Canvas Here” on the map, they will be redirected to a Google Form that will allow them to enter their contact information. This is very important in that having their phone number and email is much more valuable for mobilizing volunteers for the event than simply having them signed up to attend on Facebook. Here are a couple important things to include on the form:

a. Ask if they are okay to have their information added to a local grassroots

volunteer mailing list/database/whatever you have in your area. If this

event gets hundreds of signup, having this option on the form can

substantially beef up local volunteer efforts.

b. If you are doing smaller teams, ask if they are okay with their contact

information being shared with other members of the team to make for

more fluid coordination on the day of the event. This will allow you to send

emails out a few days before the event with contact info of the folks they

will be working with so they can coordinate flyer pickup, exact meeting

location, last minute details, etc.

6. Create a Facebook event. Once you’ve created your Facebook event with a signup map, begin sharing it! Post it on your local Sanders for President subreddit, the national subreddit, share with friends, families, etc. Make sure that you absolutely have the signup map pinned to the top of the event page and let everyone know that they should sign up via the map ASAP so they can coordinate who is going where.

7. Create an event on the official campaign website. There are many folks who are not looking for events on Facebook, but who

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are signing up for events via the campaign’s official site. Make sure you create an event on this page with all necessary information and be sure to include a bolded link to the signup map in the event description.

8. Find someone to design a flyer. You can find someone locally, or reach out on reddit or other forums to have a flyer designed. It’s great to design a state specific flyer so that you can include all local deadlines. Here’s the one that was designed for the New York event. We also designed and printed 5,000 of the Spanish ones! Design the flyer early on so you can post it on the Facebook and other event pages so that people can print on their own, and so that you can get it to a printing shop very early to avoid problems and paying for rush printing. Call local businesses/unions about getting reduced price or free printing for the event. Consider starting with 30 flyers an hour per volunteer, but allow more for high-traffic areas (and if your event encompasses rush hour, adjust for that too). Note: if you raise or spend over $250, you should look into filing FEC Form 5.

9. Develop a social media presence for the event. We got a late jump with this for BERNing Manhattan, and we still had a good number of folks Tweeting pictures to the hashtag #BERNingMan. If you come up with and promote a hashtag early on, you’ll be able to generate more excitement for the event and get more great pictures! In addition social media is a great way for volunteers to feedback on their experience and a way to get a feel for the success of the event on the day.

10. Stay in contact with volunteers in the leadup to the event. Stay active on Facebook, answer any questions that volunteers might have, and promote the social media presence of the event. Also sign up for an email service to send reminders/updates about the event via email. We used a free MailChimp account. Since mass emails can end up in the spam or promotions folders of people’s email accounts, share with them the email address you will be sending from so that they can add it to their contact list. Depending on the number of volunteers you have flyering and your group’s bandwidth, individual phone calls, emails, texts to volunteers the

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day or two before the event will great improve turnout. If you have a volunteer or two who like making phone calls, this is the job for them! Reminder calls are the easiest and best kind - and worth every minute.

11. Create a guide for participating in the event. For BERNing Manhattan, we came out with this pretty simple guide. The guide should let people know what to do and expect on the day of the event.

12. Come up with a game plan for distributing flyers. Get the flyers early on. If you are having an event with fewer locations, give a few thousand flyers to a team lead at each of these locations. If you are having an event with many locations, come up with flyer pickup sites in the days leading up to the event. It’s a good idea to have a few people running around resupplying the volunteers and keeping morale high.

13. Promote, promote, promote. Once you have everything in the works, spread the word about your event. Reach out to local Bernie groups and have them promote the event too. In NY, we used this directory of social media groups to promote the event.

THE DAY OF THE EVENT

It’s finally here. Today is the day of the event. You have prepared everything and ran

through it the night before, so there are no worries about things going wrong. The gears

of your machinery are well-oiled and will glide smoothly. Get out an hour before the

event starts and go to the place you have set to be your flyer depot (if there are multiples,

pick one). Volunteers will start arriving. Observe the process, and answer any last-minute

questions they might have. If there are multiple depots, be sure to visit all of them. Check

to make sure that the person running around delivering flyers to those who have run out,

and the one taking pictures or videos are both present. Relax, and enjoy the show.

AFTER THE EVENT IS OVER

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Make sure that all of the pictures are uploaded to Instagram and Twitter. Get your

hashtag for the event working, and try to get considerable traffic on it. Compile your

photos into an imgur album. Send them to newyork4sanders@gmail.com and the official

Bernie Sanders campaign, along with a basic summary of how the event went. And be

sure to congratulate yourself and everyone who participated for making it a success!

For Volunteers: What to Expect

Berning Manhattan lasted 4 hours, from 12 PM to 4 PM. Here’s a guide that was created

for it; you can adapt it to fit your own city or town.

Volunteer Experiences

You’re going to want to know as much about the experience as possible, so here’s some

stuff about how it went and what to expect from a volunteer.

“Every location is going to be different. Every neighborhood in NYC is different! No

matter where you are, the important thing is to stay positive and friendly. Some people

will take the flyer. Some people won’t. In some areas, people will stop and be very

friendly, and in some people may walk right past you. 90% of it has nothing to do with

you, but with the dynamics of that location and time. I was in a spot where there is not a

lot of Bernie name recognition - a lot of people didn’t know who he was, so just getting

the flyer in their hands and his name in their ear was a huge first step. If that was the

first time they heard “Bernie Sanders” and “president” in the same sentence, it won’t be

the last, and that first contact can make an impact when they suddenly see him on TV

and remember “oh that’s the guy those people were talking about the other day.” I think

it’s worth pointing out that young people LOVE Bernie. While a lot of adults didn’t know

who he was, we had many teenagers and college students say things like “Bernie? He’s

the man!” or “I like that guy!” When people stop and talk to you, and ask how they can

help - it makes it all worthwhile.”

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- Tascha Van Auken

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