Good management of your volunteer group will ensure that volunteers stay motivated and excited about supporting Clark. Grassroots leaders exhibit different management styles. Some enjoy setting agendas, assigning tasks, and implementing ideas. Others look for leaders to emerge out of their group to take responsibility for various tasks. Whatever your leadership style, remember to always respect everyone in your group and empower supporters to take initiative.

Electronic tools are a great way to communicate with your supporters. Providing information in a timely and appropriate manner keeps volunteers excited about upcoming activities and meetings. There are a variety of electronic tools you can use to stay in contact with your organization.

The best way to keep in touch with your members and keep them constantly engaged is to form a blog for your group. A blog is short for web log. It’s a simple text-based site similar to an on-line newspaper. Blogs are typically less formal than websites, which allows your organization some flexibility in communicating with members. Go to Clark Community Network And register as a new user. You now have your own Clark blog! Post messages on the blog and encourage your group to post comments. Create an environment of respectful dialog and discussion on whatever topics you want! Your group will stay engaged and involved.

Discussion groups are a great tool for keeping in touch with volunteers and encouraging dialog between members. Yahoo! Groups are e-mail lists where you can post messages to group members and read responses to those messages. Go to http://groups.yahoo.com/ to start your group.

Most leaders of grassroots organizations emerge from a pool of dedicated individuals committed to a common cause. Grassroots leaders are not selected by the campaign or the candidate and they are usually are not elected by volunteers. Those who emerge as leaders must be careful not to silence others who may want to take a leadership role, too. Be respectful if you have emerged as a leader. Don’t bully your way into a leadership position. Try to display your talents and gain the respect of others in order to gain respect. Also, there’s no reason that only one person can lead. There may be multiple leaders that emerge from your group for varying tasks. Work to create power with, not power over, other leaders.

Any good grassroots organization relies on the strength of its members to conduct fun and productive meetings.

Volunteers have busy schedules and often can’t make it to a meeting that is scheduled last-minute. Decide where to have a meeting and inform volunteers where to go when. Remind your volunteers a days before about the meeting.

Whenever you call a meeting for volunteers, think of what you want to discuss. Write down an agenda and let everyone see it so that individuals know what to expect during the meeting. Click here to see a sample agenda from a grassroots organizer in

Everyone who enters your meeting should leave with a task. Volunteers will loose interest if you don’t engage them immediately. For instance, give them flyers to distribute in their area, task them to bring a friend to the next meeting, or ask them to participate in an upcoming activity.

One of the most effective tools of any grassroots organization is the ability of the group to brainstorm ideas for community outreach. Creativity is important and brainstorming is a great way to think of ideas for outreach projects in your area.

Brainstorming is the process of freely generating ideas without criticism. Allow time in your meetings for brainstorming. Ask volunteers what your group can do to spread the word about Clark. Here are some tips:

• Let thoughts flow freely. Don’t criticize yourself or others. Allow all ideas, no matter how trivial they may seem.
• Write ideas down and revisit them after the session
• Keep the list handy and use it again. You never know when two ideas thought at different times can work together!

Assign a note taker
Ask someone to take notes for the meeting so that your group knows what they’ve done and what they are going to do. Email the notes to your group after your meeting or post them on your official Clark04 blog!

Run a good meeting
Here are some tips for being an effective group leader:

• Ask questions that facilitate the exchange of ideas and opinions in order to generate discussion.
• Summarize discussions on topics as they start to die-down and move the group on to a new topic.
• Try to involve everyone in the discussion. Not everyone will feel comfortable speaking up. Try to create an environment where everyone is comfortable speaking.
• Keep the group on task. Politely remind members to stay on topic and not deviate too much from the subject at hand.

Every time you get another volunteer, let us know! Send your new volunteers to us. Include names, email addresses, and phone numbers. Providing us with more names provides the Clark campaign with the ability to keep your volunteers well informed on upcoming events with the Clark campaign.

In organizational meetings or outreach projects, it is important to create an inviting environment for volunteers and those who interact with your group. Politics is often harsh, but political activism doesn’t have to be. A welcoming environment values understanding, respect, and appreciation first and foremost. Never forget to value the individual and invite them to participate.