How might we...
- How might we build a base of 2500 activists whose identities include a majority of those most oppressed by our systems and history to lead this permanent ideological shift?
- How might we build a high-quality list of Minnesotans to get to our purpose AND activate that list?
- How might we organize to a critical tipping point-3.5% of Minnesotans or 215000-to make a permanent shift in Minnesota's ideology?
- How might we welcome new TAMN members and get them on a faster path towards leadership?
Hypothesis
Attending a welcome call will increase new member affinity, action, and leadership
Design
- Schedule an initial welcome call for new TAMN members. Target date of early-mid June.
- Research how many new people join TAMN on a weekly/monthly basis to define audience.
- P2P texts to new members, auto email upon joining
- Zoom call scheduled w/ registration page.
- Develop a 30-60 minute program about TAMN, history, current campaigns, ways to get involved, group discussions.
- Recruit experienced leaders to take on the role of leading these calls (with minimal staff tech support).
- Survey participants after the training
- Track participation rates for new members, measure if those who join become more active with TAMN than those who do not, debrief trainer leaders.
Metrics
Organizing one pilot welcome call for new TAMN members in June.
Qualitative:
- Did the call feel energizing and exciting?
- Did member leaders who helped facilitate enjoy the experience? Would they be willing to take on bigger leadership roles in future calls?
Quantitative:
- Survey participants who join the call about their experience.
- Track action rates for call participants.
- (Potentially) Only invite half of new members and measure action rates for both groups through the year.
Learnings
- Trusting the volunteer leaders was key. The volunteer leaders wanted to make space for participants to talk since that’s been what’s most important to them. So following their guidance around the design of the meeting.
- People on the call were really engaged and talked a lot! Started off kind of shy but volunteer leaders helped make people more comfortable and they shared more as the call went on.
- Didn’t do a ton of recruitment: Emailed out to 3,000 and got 41 total sign ups, 23 joined. Was a pretty basic email that was framed in the way the leaders framed it — “People are often intimidated to join new things, they don’t know the jargon, feel like imposters getting involved” — so we left it pretty simple. No P2P texting or social media posts.
- We created tags in EveryAction so we can track these people going forward and what actions they take.
- Asked people to commit to do a 1-1 or join a text bank and sign up for SMS rapid responses, but not too many people signed up for those things.
Idea for 1-1s is that we would have organizers call through the list of attendees and do the follow up and involve them. Want additional ways to be intentional for how we keep engaging call attendees.
Decisions
- Continue to make space for participant sharing.
- Do more outreach for the next one.
- We decided to do the call at 5:30pm on a weekday, based on the facilitator availability. Going to try the same time on a different day next time.
- Continue to have staff in support roles for Zoom and slides so that vol leaders could focus on facilitation.
Questions
- Should we explain more about what a 1-1 is? More about the other volunteer roles? Should we focus on just one action ask instead of 3?
- Is there a ‘big ask’ you can make that gives people the option to take on more responsibility right away?
- Should we do a ‘how did it go’ survey?
- Who are the 3,000 people we invited? What else have they done w/ TAMN? What are they interested in? How do they communicate?
- How would it change the feel of the call if there was more than 23 people? Or less?
- Would we get better participation at different times?