Building Teams of Volunteers

One way we help state and local partners build grassroots political power is through volunteer recruitment. At a 2005 Power Summit training in Austin, Texas, our local partner — Equality Texas — had been working hard to build a volunteer army to campaign door-to-door against legislation that would have placed a same-sex marriage ban on the ballot.

During the training, we taught participants to build a larger volunteer team through asking strangers face-to-face to sign up. More than 60 participants put their new skills into action by fanning out across the city of Austin on a Sunday morning to talk with LGBT people and likely allies at churches, coffee shops and bookstores. In just two hours, the team signed up 410 new volunteers, doubling Equality Texas’s volunteer base.

After the action, many Power Summit participants remarked how they had to push through their fear of asking strangers to volunteer for a gay-related issue. One commented: “I haven’t been in a church in over 7 years, so I was a little scared. But I really care about this, so I tried it. I was surprised that I had a great experience, talked to some really great people, and even found people who want to volunteer for marriage equality.”