CR Nation

Hey everybody, glad to be on board, and thanks so much to the CR Nation team for allowing me to chime in sometimes. My writing time is fairly limited, so bear with me, but I will look forward to feedback from you guys on the accuracy/applicability of my thoughts!

In a sad but fascinating example of teamwork and responsibility, yesterday morning an airplane carrying 247 passengers was landed safely after the death of the captain mid-flight. See it here if you hadn’t heard. News stories often spark my thinking toward life lessons to be drawn and applied in other areas:

So what would you do if something happened to your pilot mid-flight? Say your chapter, or even state federation, is getting ready to hold a big event, and something happens so that the fearless leader can’t be there, or maybe even can’t help finish with planning and set-up. Is your organization of such strength that you could carry on anyway, with at least a reasonable contingency plan?

Many CR networks, especially at the chapter level, end up depending almost entirely on one or maybe two people to be the driving force. This is why so many clubs fade and even die when one strong leader graduates or transfers. Too many chairs focus most on recruiting new faces to the neglect of developing potential in current members.

With the fall semester looming in a couple of months, what attitudes are you cultivating to prepare your chapter or state for success? As a “regular CR”, do you try to stay in the loop, helping out with events and activism drives, maybe brainstorming new ideas? Or do you generally wait for orders from the top before getting to work? If in a leadership position, do you have a transparent and cooperative style, delegating often to encourage initiative from people who could be your greatest help if given some ownership?

Simple pointers for building a stronger team:

DO talk a lot about what is going on and how everybody can participate

DON’T give positions or titles without keeping those people active and involved in planning and decisions

DO practice transparency of operations even when it’s annoying

DON’T forget to build value into your younger colleagues for the long-term benefit of all concerned

What experience do you have in building strength into your club? Any suggestions of chapters or state federations you’ve seen who have it figured out and could maybe offer further advice and guidelines?

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

Like many College Republican clubs, the University of South Dakota Crs had a hard time building interest, recruiting students, and motivating members – but that has all changed this semester.

The group has instituted an open-door policy and has been aggressively recruiting by word-of-mouth.

This semester they had a goal of attracing 15-20 members, but the success of their word-of-mouth campaign now fills the room at meetings.

According to the club’s faculty advisor –

Now we’re looking at 30 to 40 people attending events and that’s a substantial change. The club’s focus on current campaigns, rather than the last election, has given them good direction.

the Facutly advisor also noted that the CRs have brought more consistency to the club’s meetings and purpose.

That’s number one, is giving people something consistent to attend. Consistency is something people value. And this year’s group is doing a very nice job with that.

Word of mouth recruitment works, but why does it work?

It works much the same way that getting someone to come over to your house for a party works. Its all about relationships. Very simply, a person who you know is more likely to come to a CR meeting because the relationship bestows a sense of trust.

The “bring a friend” approach, if aggresively encouraged, can really deliver – as the USD College Republicans prove.

What’s the best video camera one can buy? I’ve always wanted to shoot video (and had plenty of opportunity), but I have no idea which camera to buy!

My budget is around $400. I use an Apple Computer with basic iMovie editing.

Anyone know of a good camera and can use and then put the footage on my computer??

I am not expert on political media. However, upon reviewing how the Maryland College Republicans employed YouTube, I have one generally applicable suggestion for future use by College Republicans everywhere.

Always be cognizant of the elements the professional media would include in a story. Keeping in mind how the professional media would prevent a story will increase the impact your media will have. There is a reason the pro-media does things the way it does.

Take for example the Maryland CR protests. The footage to good but it is lacking, and I couldn’t help but feel that as I was watching. What is missing is an interview of a member participating in the story explaining the rationale behind their participation. The professional media would have gotten an interview.

Along this same line of thinking – getting interviews from members on one side of the story – the professional media would have gotten not only the college student perspective on tape, but also the perspective of the 30 year old accountant, the 67 year old retiree, and the 45 year old dad with three kids. This tatic widens the appeal of the story and thus increases its impact – which is the goal of utilizing media right: influencing as wide an audience as possible with your message.

Another thing I think the professional media would have done that the Maryland CRs failed to do is to gather the perspective from the other side. This is key for College Republicans, because unlike the professional media we won’t play fair or pretend to play fair for our audience.

What the professional media would do would be to gather the other side of the story in much the same way that they gathered your side. That is to pick out a reasonably intelligent looking person to go on camera and speak as to their participation or perspective. If this is how I thought College Republicans should do it, I would not suggest it because it only detracts from our message.

Instead, what you do is try to find the dumbest looking fellow to go on camera. This completes the zero-sum effect you want on every story possible: to make the other side look as negative as possible while making your side look as positive as possible.

In the Maryland CRs case, the union workers would have been a prime target.

Remember back to the Max Blumenthal video documentary on the CRNC convention (see below video) when he went around asking students about Iraq. Remember how dumb we looked. This is what you want to capture, while in the same video capturing the brilliance of your side.

Let me know what y’ll think.