Building blocks building votes

From dKosopedia

The flagship young voter mobilization program of the Bus Project—is enabling progressive victories in Oregon state-wide races by providing uniquely effective access to young urban voters. Building Blocks is creating a network of volunteer apartment and block captains who register and turn out their neighbors to vote. It’s an extremely simple, indeed classic, approach to political engagement—and it is critical in order to mobilize the newest generation of progressive voters. Results from the program’s launch summer include:

410 apartment & block captains recruited (Goal was 150)

95 captains trained (Goal was 30)

7,000 phone calls made (Goal was 5,000)

620 hours of street outreach (Goal was 300)

Launch of pilot site, [1]

Phase Two: Building Blocks Phase 2.0 will expand the volunteer captain network to 1,500 members. Goals for this network include reaching over 37,000 voters, registering 7,000 voters, and doubling the expected turnout in 26 target precincts in the 2006 election. This will generate over 16,000 votes above and beyond what would otherwise be expected in a non-presidential and non-senatorial election year. (More on pages 8 -9.) This is a critical margin. Note that Oregon’s current governor had a margin of victory in 2002 of only 30,000 votes, and the 2000 presidential election in Oregon was decided by a mere 6,700 votes. Young voters can and will determine Oregon’s future—and Building Blocks is the most effective way to find, access, and motivate those young voters.

Valuing Volunteerism & Return on Investment: With its volunteer-driven model, the Bus Project is the ideal place to house Building Blocks. According to Independent Sector, the average economic value of a volunteer hour in 2004 was $17.55. The Bus had a 6-month budget of $160,000 from May to November of 2004 and generated an estimated 59,500 hours of volunteer effort. Using the average value, over that period the Bus generated over $1,000,000 in person power. By that measure, the Bus Project’s volunteer model yielded an ROI ratio on invested funds of 6.34 to 1 – that is, a 634% return on investment.

Applying This Efficiency to the Young Voter Universe: Young voters have historically been ignored by traditional campaigns—yet they are a necessary part of Oregon’s statewide progressive victories in 2006 and beyond. How can these voters be reached? Cutting-edge technologies can be useful, and we do use tools like online social networking and text messaging. But research and our own experience demonstrate that a back-to-basics approach is the best way to reach young voters. Face-to-face, peer-to-peer, volunteer efforts will get out the vote among 18-to-34-year-olds better than any other method. Building Blocks is starting from that premise. It is building a base for progressive victories in 2006 and beyond—building by building, block by block.

We believe that this unique model, incubated and evaluated in Oregon, can serve as a model for young voter efforts in urban areas around the country.

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This page was last modified 20:08, 25 July 2006 by Chad Lupkes. Based on work by dKosopedia user(s) Loganme. Content is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.