By Mark Reilly
I recently attended a conference on political involvement and, after about an hour or so of presentations, someone said something that blew me away: "You are all talking
about what the best ways are to tell people who support your organization to take action. But if you are telling them what to do, is that really grassroots? I thought grassroots
was when the bottom takes your message and runs with it, and not a single voice telling people what to do."
A bell went off in my head and I realized, 'hey, this guy's right.' "True" grassroots campaigns are about creating connections among supporters and empowering those
individuals to take action.
They are not about the Grasstops "top-down" approach, in which a single, highly controlled message is sent to a list of supporters, asking them to send a vetted sample
message to Congress in a tightly managed process.
This is not to say that I am advocating an aimless, unmanaged campaign as the path to win your issue.
What I am saying is that most public-affairs professionals are running top-down grassroots campaigns that are not really tapping the power of grassroots, and they are
potentially just Astro-turf (the practice of mobilizing people who are convinced to be supporters through less-reputable means and unscrupulous tactics).
Astro-turf can't grow because it doesn't really have any support that is not bought and paid for. As such, it has no sustainable life after the one-time mobilization.
True grassroots would include giving supporters the ability to express themselves to other supporters, to connect with other supporters and to allow a level of autonomy for
each group to take action on their own. Done correctly, it will provide more impressive results than any top-down campaign could ever muster.
Recent examples of national campaigns that embraced "true" grassroots were the "Dean for America" campaign in 2004 and the 2000 "McCain for President" campaign.
In Dean's case, the blog and associated "meet-ups" were prime examples of letting supporters meet, talk and act on their own within the context of the campaign (but without a
lot of direct campaign supervision).
The McCain campaign in 2000 pioneered these tactics by using its Web site to let volunteers make campaign/voter identification calls on their own with little direct
supervision from above.
Many national organizations also have added "true" grassroots components to their otherwise top-down campaigns by giving supporters the tools to make their own "mini-Web
sites" that allow them to promote the organization in their own words.
An example of this can be seen on the Human Rights Campaign Web site (http://www.hrcactioncenter.org/actioncenter/home.html), which enables supporters to publish their own "Defend
Equality" pages and can determine what pictures, text and goals (advocacy actions and fundraising) they want to set for themselves within the HRC Web site. An example of a page
with really impressive numbers is http://www.hrcactioncenter.org/actioncenter/advocacy/sally.green-4503.
Another example of the power of grassroots is viral-marketing recruitment, giving your supporters a means and reason to communicate something about your campaign to their
networks (friends, co-workers, family, etc.).
In campaigns in which I've consulted -- Fannie Mae, the National Association of Realtors, NCLR, Verizon, and many others -- I have seen a difference in drop-out and response
rates between those grassroots supporters who were recruited into the campaign through advertising, and those who joined as a result of viral recruitment, and those who joined
due to viral recruitment ended up being the stronger supporters.
It's true that if you let your supporters take action on their own, your campaign does run the risk of some "not on message" communications being sent to targets as part of
your campaign.
Still, a true grassroots campaign is more powerful and sustainable than is a top-down campaign that controls all the actions of its supporters.
Contact: Mark Reilly is senior director/Professional Services at GetActive Software. He can be reached at 202.659.8585 x 5028, [email protected].