Building Relationships

Key Concepts

Long-term intentional relationships rooted in shared values are central to building power in organizing, and require consistent work and attention.
The “4Cs” of a hard ask are an effective way to ask for commitment
Supporters move up the pyramid of engagement into leaders through leadership tryouts.
Relational strategies, building relationships with individuals and through networks and organizations, are implemented via relational tactics: 1:1 meetings and house meetings.
Recruitment and retention best practices can significantly increase the rate at which new people join and stay on a team.

Why Build Relationships?

Again, we define organizing as leadership that enables people to turn the resources they have into the power they need to make the change they want. Power comes from our commitment to work together to achieve common purpose, and commitment is developed through relationships.

Building Intentional Relationships

Relationships are rooted in shared values. We can identify values that we share by learning each other’s stories, especially “choice points” in our life journeys. The key is asking each other “why?”

Relationships are long term. Organizing relationships are not simply transactional. We’re not simply looking for someone to meet our ask at the end of a 1:1 meeting (read on for what this means). We’re looking for people to join with us in sustained, long-term growth and action.

Relationships are created by mutual commitment. Relationships require a commitment from both people involved: a commitment of time, and committing to support the other person even when you may not see anything in it for you. That commitment must be reciprocal. If that commitment only flows in one direction the relationship cannot be sustained. Because we can all grow and change, the purposes that led us to form the relationship may change as well, offering possibilities for deeper relationships or more enriched exchange. The relationship itself becomes a valued resource.

Relationships involve consistent attention and work. When nurtured over time, relationships sustain motivation and inspiration and become an important source of continual learning and development for the individuals and communities that make up your organizing campaigns.

Case Study: The 2012 Obama for America campaign had many returning volunteers from the original 2008 campaign. Here are some of the top reasons why volunteers came back:

87% said they returned because they had built a meaningful relationship with their team members.
80% said they returned because they had built a meaningful relationship with their organizer.
80% said they returned because their time was used effectively.
84% said it was because they felt welcomed and included.
80% said it was because they had a clear sense of how their efforts contributed.

Two themes emerge from these numbers: people stay committed because of relationships and because they feel effective. This section unpacks how to build relationships with volunteers. The Strategizing (pg. 56) and Taking Action (pg. 66) sections offers a framework for how to be effective (and make our people feel effective).

Relational Strategies and Tactics

Because building relationships is central to building power, having clear strategies and tactics for doing so is important.

Relational Strategies

We can think of three main strategies for building relationships to recruit individuals to our campaigns:

Individuals: Recruiting by building new relationships with individuals. Organizers develop relationships with each individual they hope to bring into the organization or campaign. Initial contact may be done at tables, street corners, sign-ups at rallies, or through online-to-offline actions.

Networks: Recruiting by connecting with networks built from existing relationships. Organizers draw numerous people in through informal relational networks of which they, or an individual they recruit, are already part of. New relationships are formed mainly between an organizer and the recruit, but the basic approach is to find individuals who can bring other people in through their own pre-existing relationships.

Organizations: Recruiting by building alliances with, or merging with, existing organizations. Organizers build relationships with leaders of existing organizations. New relationships are formed mainly between an organizer and a point person at an organization.

Organizers may use one or all of these relational strategies to build their organization or campaign. Their relational strategies will be implemented by using relational tactics.

Relational Tactics

While organizers may adapt them to fit their specific contexts, there are two main relational tactics available to an organizer: 1:1 meetings and house meetings.

In 1:1 meetings, the focus for the organizer is on building a relationship with one person. In house meetings, the goal is to build relationships between the organizer and a large group of people, and to establish or strengthen relationships between other attendees at the house meeting.

Both of these tactics end in a specific commitment, whether to have another meeting, to volunteer for the campaign, or take on a specific role on a team. A hard ask, which we explain next, helps provide a framework for creating commitment.

We’ll go into more depth on these tactics below.

Hard Asks

When you ask someone to make a commitment – for instance, attend an event or take on a new role – it’s important to make an effective ask, or what we call a “hard ask.” A hard ask is a question that results in a commitment to a specific action.

The 4C’s are one way of thinking about the contents of a hard ask. Including the 4C’s in each ask can help make them as effective as possible.

Connection

Before jumping into your ask, make a connection. Note what you both have in common, or ask why they care about the campaign. Ask them a couple further questions to find out more, and if they say something you relate to, share that with them!

Context

Lay the groundwork for the commitment you are going to ask for. Explain your campaign, strategy and the reasons why the commitment you are about to ask for is important. This part of your ask is an opportunity to convey urgency! Describe an urgent problem and how the person you are asking is the solution to the problem:

We need to get an extra 115 petition signatures this week to meet our targets, and need another 5 canvassers to get there.

Don’t ask them to commit to something general; instead, have a specific event or role in mind. If it’s an event (e.g. a canvassing event or training), include the date, time, and location in your ask.

Thursday at 6pm outside the Emily Carr Library Branch.

Be specific - make sure they understand what it is you are asking them. Provide time and space for them to ask questions until they’re clear.

Commitment

This is the actual sentence where you ask for commitment to action. Ask in concise, plain, and specific language. Try to use a direct question such as, “Can you come?”.

Tip: The best hard asks have commitment sentences that have a) the fewest words as possible in them and, b) end in an actual question mark if you were to write it down.

Example of an ineffective ask: “Would you be interested in coming to a meeting at some point to meet the team and talk about how you might want to get involved?”
Example of an effective hard ask: “Our next team meeting is next Wednesday at 6pm at Noor’s house. Can you come?”

Catapult

Once they say yes, take that commitment and ‘catapult’ it into a second ask. This might mean asking for them to bring another person to the event, asking them to help with set-up or a planning task, or some other additional action your campaign needs.

Great! I’m excited you’re coming. Do you have a friend you could bring?

Three Types of No

When securing commitment, it’s inevitable that our hard asks will sometimes be met with “no.” In organizing, there are three types of no that you will encounter – “not now,” “not that,” and “not ever.” Being attuned to the difference will dictate how you proceed with the person you’re asking.

If someone says “no” they might mean “not that time,” so try offering another

time or date. For example:

“Can you come to our next team meeting on Monday at 5PM?”
“No, I have to work then.”

“No problem, we have another meeting next Sunday at 1PM, can you come to that?”

If someone says “No, I don’t want to do that,” it could mean “not that.” Try asking them to commit to something else. For example:

“Can you come door-to-door canvassing with us on Tuesday at 5PM?”
“I don’t know if I feel comfortable going door-to-door. I’ve tried it before and found it really intimidating.”

“That’s okay! We are also planning an event to recruit new volunteers for the end of the month. Will you come to the planning meeting for that on Sunday at 1PM?”

If someone says definitively “No, I’m not interested in doing more” or “No, I don’t want to join the team,” then don’t worry about it! Thank them and move on. For example:

“Can you come door-to-door canvassing with us on Tuesday at 5pm?”
“No, I am too busy right now to take on anything else, I’m sorry!”

“That’s okay, thanks for taking some time to talk with me. Have a great day!”

The 1:1 Meeting

The 1:1 meeting is a tactic to establish, maintain, and grow relationships in organizing, specifically between two individuals. Each 1:1 meeting has four key pieces:

Purpose – Be up front in establishing why you are meeting in order to make sure you are both on the same page. If you plan to ask the person you’re meeting with to make a commitment at the end of your 1:1, it is appropriate to let them know when you set up the meeting and remind them at the beginning of your meeting so that they aren’t caught off guard.

Exploration – Most of the 1:1 is devoted to exploration by asking questions. If you are meeting a person for the first time, ask questions that help you understand their story, values, and resources that may be relevant to your shared purpose (e.g. knowledge, relationships or skills they may have). If you already have a relationship, ask questions that help you understand what’s going on in their life, and the challenges or success they are experiencing in their organizing.

Exchange – Exchange resources in the meeting such as information, support, and insight that will help them be part of your campaign; you may highlight connections between your stories, or provide coaching on a challenge. This deepens your relationship and creates the foundation for future exchanges. You might also ask about the skills the person is hoping to bring to the campaign.

Commitment – A successful 1:1 meeting ends with a commitment to start working together, including specific next steps on how you will do that, or to meet again and continue the relationship.

Three Types of 1:1 Meetings

There are three types of 1:1s that you will use or engage in in your organizing relationships.

Recruitment 1:1

These meetings happen at the start of a relationship to connect you and a new volunteer, and establish a connection based on shared goals and values. The goals of the recruitment 1:1 are to make a personal connection, use your personal story to identify and gauge potential interests, discover shared experiences, connect on values, and lastly, pivot to engagement – that is, move the volunteer to action based on what you’ve discussed. Think about the volunteer’s aptitude, skills, and connections when considering how to best engage them. See the here for a sample recruitment 1:1 meeting agenda.

Maintenance 1:1

These meetings should occur regularly between you and each of your team members (assuming that you are in a leadership role in your team or snowflake). This is an opportunity to catch up on a personal level, debrief recent actions taken by the organizer and their team, and offer coaching. Maintenance 1:1s should be scheduled regularly and proactively: do not wait for a problem to occur to schedule one. A good guideline is to schedule a maintenance 1:1 every two weeks, and at least once per month.

See the sample maintenance 1:1 meeting agenda.

Maintenance 1:1s are the primary opportunity to coach an organizer. See the Coaching section for more information on how to approach coaching (pg. 43).

Because every organizer has a limited amount of time, and maintenance 1:1s need to happen regularly, each organizer has a limit to how many relationships they can maintain. See the Structuring Teams section (pg. 48) for information on “sustainable relationship ratios.”

Leadership 1:1

These meetings are for organizers who are ready to take the next step on the pyramid of engagement in assuming more responsibility and taking on ownership of goals. First, recognize the accomplishments the organizer has already made, with a particular focus on any leadership tests they have recently passed that make them appropriate for the new role. Explain the context for why there is an urgent need for someone new to move into this role, then propose the idea of taking on this new leadership role. If all goes as planned and the organizer accepts, take the time to clearly lay out the new responsibilities and expectations.

Best Practices for a 1:1


Do	Don't
Schedule a time to have this conversation (usually 30-60 minutes)	Be unclear about purpose and length of conversation
Plan to listen and ask questions	Try to persuade rather than listen and ask questions
Have a plan for your meeting – give context or purpose, connect with one another, and secure commitment	Chit chat about your interests
Share experiences and motivations	Skip stories to ‘get to the point’
Illustrate a vision that articulates a shared set of interests for change	Miss the opportunity to share ideas about how things can change
Be clear about your next steps together	End the conversation without a clear plan for next steps
Split the bill if you meet in a coffee shop or restaurant	Pay for the whole bill (note: it can make the relationship feel transactional and can get expensive in the long run!)
Meet in public unless you know them well (e.g. a coffee shop or public park)

House Meetings

The house meeting is a tactic to establish or grow relationships in organizing, amongst small to medium sized groups of people. House meetings bring people together to connect, share stories, and learn your campaign strategy. The goal is for participants to agree to take action on your campaign. Some of them will commit to holding their own house meetings or activating their networks, thus allowing your campaign to keep growing.

In a house meeting, the host invites a network of their acquaintances to attend. An organizer will often work with a host by coaching them through inviting their networks to the meeting and then lead the meeting.

House meetings do not have to take place in houses! While hosting a house meeting in a home is totally appropriate, they could also take place in cafes, community centres, worksites, and other community spaces. It’s the format, not the location that matters!

What does a house meeting look like?

A house meeting provides an opportunity for each participant to share how they are connected to the campaign and share values and stories with the other participants. The organizer will give the attendees context about the campaign, model story sharing, and invite the attendees to share their story as well. The organizer closes the meeting using the Public Narrative framework to weave their Story of Self with those of the other attendees to make a Story of Us, and finish with a Story of Now, with a specific commitment through a hard ask.

In other words, each house meeting has four key pieces:

Purpose – Explain why you invited everyone to a house meeting, give a brief overview of the campaign and explain what you’ll be doing – mostly sharing stories and hearing from others. Make sure to be up front that at the end you’ll be asking everyone to get more involved.

Exploration – Most of the house meeting is devoted to facilitating the house meeting attendees getting to know each other and having a chance to express themselves. Go around the room and ask each person to share why they care about the campaign issue, and why it was important to them to come to the house meeting. Depending on the size of the group you may want to split them into smaller groups for this portion of the meeting. The idea here is to help each person express why this is important, and build connection with the other people at the house meeting, through the values your campaign is based on.

Commitment – After you’ve heard from each person, it’s time for you, the organizer, to ask for a commitment. Start by answering the question of why this campaign issue is important to you, yourself. Draw connections to what you’ve heard already, pointing out how your values or experiences are similar to those in the room with you. Finally communicate how the campaign strategy will act on those values by stating the campaign’s goals and strategy. Close by sharing details on what they can do to support the campaign. End with a hard ask.

Exchange – Ideally those attending say yes to your hard ask! At this point you may want to exchange what resources the people in the room have to help everyone fulfill their commitments. Depending on what they’ve committed to they may need a space to meet again, people with specific skills, a way to get around, etc. Set next steps for how you or others will support them in fulfilling the commitment.

Recruitment & Retention Best Practices

The following best practices can significantly increase the rate at which new people join and stay on your team. Here are some key best practices to keep in mind when building and maintaining relationships:

Don’t be apologetic: organizing is an opportunity, not a favour. When asking for commitment, be positive and enthusiastic.
Always Follow-Up: when someone offers to get more involved, ask for their contact information and give them yours. Follow up with them as soon as possible, ideally within 48 hours.
Make reminder calls: call 1-2 days before the event and an hour beforehand. Some people prefer text or Facebook messages to phone calls.
Always schedule for the next time: don’t let anyone leave without asking when they’ll be coming back.
Plan for no-shows: assume that half of your people will turn up. For example, if you need four people for a successful event, plan on scheduling eight.
Design actions that are empowering to participate in.

Designing actions so that they are inherently motivational is a key way to keep people engaged. See the Taking Action: Targets & Timelines section (pg. 68) for information on motivational engagement.

The Pyramid of Engagement: Recruiting organizers

The path from interested supporter to organizer does not happen overnight. Rather, it involves a supporter being recruited and moved into roles that require progressively more commitment and skills. In order to grow and take on more leadership, our people must demonstrate that they have the ability to perform the roles of each position.

As an organizer, it’s your job to identify and develop leadership in others. We call this process – whereby individuals take on more and more leadership – the pyramid of engagement. Here’s an example of an organizing pyramid of engagement (note that your pyramid might look different depending on your campaign).

Supporter: Individual supports campaign (e.g. signs a petition) but does not express interest in ‘getting involved.’ They may get email updates about your campaign but limited other communication.
Volunteer Prospect: Supporter signs up on a website or says yes to an organizer’s hard ask to volunteer. Organizer invites them to come out to a volunteer event, and, ideally, this invitation happens within 48 hours because prospects are more likely to say yes (and show up) with a quicker follow up timeframe.
Volunteer: Volunteer prospect comes out to a team event (e.g. a meeting or a canvassing event), and is now a volunteer with the team. Organizer schedules them to come to another event or schedules a recruitment 1:1 meeting. They will continue to get campaign emails, but may also receive emails specific to the team they are part of.
Committed Volunteer: Volunteer has been coming out regularly to team events and is a committed part of the team.
Leadership Prospect: Committed volunteer begins taking on leadership and succeeds at one or more leadership tryouts. Organizer then schedules a leadership 1:1 meeting to ask team member to take on a leadership role.
Leader: Leadership prospect is able to organize. They have passed tests so organizer asks them to be a leader. They may begin sending out communications to other team members about the local campaign.

Note: Steps 5 and 6 can be repeated over and over to move the organizer into new roles as they take on more responsibility and become more committed.

One thing to notice about the pyramid of engagement is that it is wider at its base than at the top - while our role as organizers is to move people up the pyramid, not everyone will be interested in being a leader, and our campaigns won’t necessarily function if everyone is a leader and we don’t have a broad supporter base.

The Organizing Cycle

The organizing cycle is a way frame all the steps required to bring an individual onto a campaign’s leadership team, starting from their first conversation with a volunteer, through to being in a leadership role recruiting others. The organizing cycle ties together most of the practices in the Building Relationships chapter into a progression that we can use to bring someone through all the stages on the pyramid of engagement.

Note: Each number on this diagram corresponds to a level on the pyramid of engagement (pg. 39).

We identify new supporters for our campaign through some sort of campaign tactic: gathering petition signatures through canvassing door to door, holding an event or via social media.
We seek out volunteer prospects by asking supporters if they will volunteer at an action or come to a recruitment 1:1 meeting. You may ask prospects to volunteer in person or on the phone. Many campaigns identify volunteer prospects by having an “I want to volunteer” box to check on petitions or online sign-up forms. We use a hard ask when asking prospects to volunteer or come to a recruitment 1:1.
The volunteer attends an action and is asked to commit to a future action before they leave. This continues until an organizer decides to hold a recruitment 1:1 with them. We ask for commitment to a significant or ongoing volunteer role at a recruitment 1:1. Some campaigns, especially those requiring a high volume of volunteers such as a large scale canvassing-based campaign,. From this point on an organizer does regular maintenance 1:1s with them.
The volunteer is given one or more leadership tryouts so they can exhibit the ability and commitment needed to take on the responsibility of a leadership role.
The tested volunteer agrees to take on a leadership role in a leadership 1:1. They become a leader on a leadership team, receives training and begins recruiting, coaching and escalating volunteers.

How early in your engagement with a new volunteer you choose to hold a recruitment 1:1 depends on how advanced your campaign is. An organizer starting a new campaign and building a leadership team from scratch would likely hold many 1:1s with new volunteer prospects, as there might not be any volunteer actions to invite them to. An organizer working on a well-established campaign with a functioning campaign is more likely to hold a recruitment 1:1 after a volunteer completes their first action.

Developing Leaders

People move up the pyramid of engagement with the support of an organizer. This happens through a person taking on gradually more responsibility and new roles on a campaign. A leadership tryout is an assigned task that gives a developing leader the opportunity to exhibit their ability and commitment. For example, you might ask someone who seems like a good prospect for a team lead role to chair and host your team’s next planning meeting. To demonstrate ability at this leadership tryout, they will have to organize the location, communicate the meeting details to the team, draft an agenda, and keep the meeting on track. At the end of a successful meeting, they will have exhibited significant leadership skills, as well as their commitment to give the time to the task and follow through. They will also have experienced leading a team meeting. This will let their organizer know that they are competent at taking on that type of role.

Design tryouts so that once someone has succeeded, they are ready to be developed into a specific, ongoing role. For example, if you need someone to organize a monthly volunteer orientation for your campaign, ask them to organize just one. Support them through running that orientation, and debrief the experience afterwards. If they are successful, ask them to host them every month via a Leadership 1:1.

Sometimes leadership tryouts don’t go well: they may have neglected to attempt the task they committed to do (they didn’t organize the orientation at all) and, therefore, are showing a lack of commitment; or they attempted the task and it went poorly (the orientation was disorganized and didn’t meet its outcomes) and showed a lack of ability. It’s important not to pass judgment or write people off when tryouts don’t go well. Many people want to commit to a campaign, but might lack the time commitment necessary at that due to work or family commitments or the skills to make it go well.

However, if a tryout goes poorly, don’t proceed as if it went well! You may decide to do another similar tryout with different coaching and follow-up if there was a lack of follow-through the first time. If they displayed excellent commitment but a lack of ability for a specific task, you may give them a tryout for another skill area and look to move them into another type of role. Depending on the circumstances, you may also choose to abandon efforts to move someone into leadership based on your best reasoning and intuition.

If a leadership tryout is not successful, you may also choose to use a series of smaller asks to help them tryout the skills more gradually. For example, rather than asking someone to coordinate all aspects of a petition gathering table at a public market, you could ask them to coordinate set-up, then support and train a new volunteer the next time, then to book the table space for the next event, and so on until they have performed most of the tasks needed to run a petition table at a market. Then, if you decide to ask them to organize the whole event from planning through to action, they will have practiced all of the tasks and it will be easier for them to follow-through on their commitment. Note that using micro-tries is slower and will take more time than bigger leadership tryouts, and that the two can also be used simultaneously within your team or even to complement each other with the same person.

To summarize, building strong, resilient relationships is critical for effective community organizing.

This page adapts material from “Organizing: People, Power, Change,” Version 5.0 (August 2017). Credits: Originally adapted from the work of Dr. Marshall Ganz (Harvard University), the Leading Change Network, the New Organizing Institute; revised by contributors from Dogwood Initiative, Leadnow, One Cowichan, David Suzuki Foundation, Stonehouse Institute, and genius (Organize BC & Organize Ontario). Design/photography: Shelby Tay. See Rights and Use for the full terms (non‑sale, attribution required, include these restrictions, send significant modifications, and grant back a royalty‑free license).