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Back to School: Build your College Republican Chapter, Part I - Recruitment
By punch bowl | January 16, 2008
The Back to School: Build your College Republican Chapter series was a reader suggestion that we liked so much that we decided to do it.
The five-part series will be released over the course of the next week and will feature tips on how to recruit members, effectively communicate, increase involvement, run good meetings and plan exciting events.
Today’s topic will be how to recruit.
So, why recruit? There are four reasons.
First, according to LI your level political sucess is determined by the number of political acitivists on your side. The more members you have the more successful you will be.
Second, we are the future. The success of the our party depends upon our success at recruiting new members and training new leaders.
Third, the goal of a College Republican chapter is to help elect Republicans and spead the Republican message on its campuses - it is common sense to think that the more members recruited into a chapter the greater the impact a chapter can have on its school and elections. Recruiting helps win elections and spread Republican principles.
Fourth, studies show that voting patterns developed during college hold for life. If students are made Republican in college, they will stay a Republican for life.
At this point, you may be wondering, “well I need to recruit but how do I come up with a good plan?” This next part of today’s post will help you with that.
If you think about it, recruitment is about name recognition. If students at your school know there is a CR group on campus, then the ones who want to join will join. Successul CR recruiters keep in mind how to maximize their name ID on campus in ways that often require thinking outside the box.
Several questions to consider when developing your recruitment plan:
What do I want students to know?
What are the benefits of what I want students to know and do?
Who am I trying to tell? What is the best way (place, time, method) to tell them?
Would I join if I were them?
The last part of today’s post will focus on a quality recruitment table, which is the bread and butter of CR recruiting.
To do a recruitment table right you must do four things correctly: recruit at right the time, in the righ place, with the right techniques, and with the right goods.
The best time (for most schools) is somewhere between 9 am and 3 pm. The best place is a high traffic area.
The right techniques include at least two people staffing table - one in front of the table passing out flyers for the first meeting and the other standing behind the table welcoming potential members as they sign up.
And the right goods refers to the tangible items placed on the table. These must include CR banner hung from the table, sign up sheets, issue sheets, flyers for the first meeting and stuff of potential members to take, such as CR key chains, and pens.
Well, this concludes this part of the Back to School: Build your College Republican Chapter series. Tomorrow’s segment will discuss post recruitment tasks, such as communication and holding your first meeting.
See you tomorrow - same time, same place.
Happy recruiting…
Update: Check out the rest of the series
Back to School: Build your College Republican Chapter, Part II - Communication
Back to School: Build your College Republican Chapter, Part III - Meetings
Back to School: Build your College Republican Chapter, Part IV- Events
Topics: cr tips |
January 16th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
[…] folks over at the CR Nation blog have a segment going on some helpful tips for getting your chapter back up and moving after the winter […]
January 16th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
[…] Nation has a good post, mentioned below by Ethan, on recruitment on […]