PRLog recently posted an article about a group of
canvassers with Grassroots Campaigns, Inc. in New York. The article is about the experience of the
average canvasser, and the resounding message is that the canvassers are
able to stay positive and find success despite the challenges of the job. The canvassers talk about how they maintain a
positive attitude even when people don’t stop to talk to them, and also about
some of the skills they use to engage people.
Grassroots Campaigns, Inc: Have Clipboard, Will
Canvass
PRLog—July 27, 2012
Katie Golieb assumed her ready position in the middle of a Park Slope sidewalk:
wide stance, hips swaying, clipboard cradled in her right arm. An approaching
woman in heels and a skirt, seeing that she had been marked, quickened her
step, but not before Ms. Golieb called out to her.
“Excuse me, ma’am, do you
have a minute for the A.C.L.U.?
“I’m working,” the woman
said as she brushed past.
“Oh, O.K.,” Ms. Golieb
replies cheerfully.
“Good luck!” the woman
yelled, now in the clear.
It is the twilight of the
canvassing season. Soon the college students, like Ms. Golieb, who bolster the
summer ranks of activist groups like Greenpeace and the Human Rights Campaign
will return to school.
The diminished presence of
canvassers will surely delight those New Yorkers who have become expert at
tracing wide arcs of avoidance on the city’s sidewalks.
But Ms. Golieb, who
attends Oberlin College, still has a few shifts left.
One recent afternoon, she
and three other canvassers for the American Civil Liberties Union stationed
themselves along Seventh Avenue between Union and President Streets. There,
hundreds of times a day, they criticize the Bush administration’s stance on
habeas corpus and urge passers-by the join the organization and donate the
recommended $30 a month.
“You’ve got to tell
yourself that people are busy, they do have things to do,” said Alex Waite, a
25-year-old field manager for Grassroots Campaigns, the consulting firm hired
by the A.C.L.U. to do the canvassing.
But Mr. Waite, a
gregarious politics buff, knows there are ways to spot the people who will
talk.
Eye contact is key. An
individual is a better bet than a pair. People at the front or rear of a group
are far more likely to respond than those buried in the middle. “If you have a
big group and you just yell out in general,” Mr. Waite said, “they’re all going
to pretend you’re talking to someone else.”
At one point, a cluster of
canvassers for the New York Public Interest Research Group, in matching
T-shirts, walked by.
“Hey, guys!” Mr. Waite said.
“We’ve got clipboards,
too!” a member of the group called out, as they marched on without stopping.