The Volunteer Ask

The main tool of the FO is the volunteer ask. That's the industry term for asking someone to do something for which they will not receive any sort of compensation or tangible reward. I tried to explain the power and importance of what they'd be doing. I would bribe them with food when I could. I would downplay the time commitment, and do my best to make them realize that they do have a few hours somewhere in their week. And then I would say, "So, can you volunteer?" or if I was feeling feisty, "When can you volunteer?" I would ask some version of that question maybe 50 times a day. Anyone who came into the office for any reason, and anyone I met who showed some enthusiasm for Obama got the ask. That's on top of 4 hours of calls a night.

The reason is simple enough. Let's say you need some volunteers for a weekend thingy. So you call 100 supporters- that should do it right? Well of those 100 calls, you actually talk to, say 22 people. And of those 22, you get 3 yes and 5 maybes, and then you call all of them the night before to remind them, and 1 or 2 of the yes people show up and 0-1 of the maybes. 1-3 volunteer shifts out of 100 calls. Daunting. Daily reality.

One night, about a month in, I got a call about an NAACP meeting, starting in just 20 minutes. It was during call time, but I thought this was too good an opportunity to pass up. I raced across town to the meeting, was introduced by the secretary, said who I was and what I did, made my pitch for volunteering, explained the lack of yard signs as best I could, took names and gave out my number to everyone. I left beaming. I had hit the volunteer jackpot! Right?

Well, no.

I found it very easy to get people riled up and excited about Obama- much less easy to get them to do much about it, especially the specific tasks that I needed them to do- namely make calls and knock on doors.

Before long my perspective had shifted away from sympathy for all those who were "too busy" or "too anything" to volunteer. It was all the more infuriating when they assured me they were helping, and then defined helping as talking to their friends and family about the election. That's not to say that those things don't help, but for most people, two months of talking with folks you know about the election is worth about two hours of focused voter contact. Almost everything the campaign did was some form of focused voter contact, but I had to explain the importance of it many times a day, in the hopes of hooking someone into putting in some extra time. The trick was to draw as straight a line as possible from what I needed them to do, to Obama winning the election. It was probably the hardest part of the job, but I did just enough to turn my county blue, and we did enough collectively to turn NC blue (and, y'know, elect Obama).

I can get weary just thinking about it, but it's over it's over we did it we did it.


I lost my personal cell phone a month into the job, and didn't get it replaced until after the election. When I finally did, I had five voicemail messages. Three of the five were from Obama staffers asking me to drive to Indiana to volunteer or come to a phonebank in Chicago. Had I been in town, I probably would have. If I had time, and I was feeling up for it, and remembered to actually show up.