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petitioning_coordinator_kit

WELCOME! This page is to store a collection of things that we think are useful for Petitioning Coordinators. There are three sections. This first section is about “what is a Town Coordinator”. Below (scroll down), are tools and links to get you started in your organizing… And below that are “management” ideas that seem to help Town Coordinators organize effectively.

1. WHAT DOES A PassMassAmendment PETITIONING COORDINATOR DO?


A PassMassAmendment Petitioning Coordinator is many things, and every one is different. We don't tell Petitioning Coordinators what to do, but are happy to give them suggestions. Then they can coordinate their teams the way that they and their teams like.

At a minimum, we ask that Petitioning Coordinators gather signatures and then “process”

  • (see details below) the completed petition forms. We ask that Petitioning Coordinators coordinate with the State Coordinator (Terra Friedrichs: Welcome Local Organizers.doc




We hope (but do not require) a Petitioning Coordinator will do things like the following:

- over the summer, build a team of 2 or more people to educate and gather signatures locally
- hold at least on team meeting/event in your town so local participants can learn about what PassMassAmendment is doing
- set petitioning times during the PETITIONING PERIOD at local events/supermarkets and other good petitioning areas
- work to have local petitioning times covered by your team
- be aware of large local events (Town Days, elections, Football Games, etc) where a lot of people (voters, especially) will be at
- communicate w/local team members about important PassMassAmendment news, which you get from the Regional Coordinator
- coordinate with nearby Town Coordinators, in case there are large regional events that might warrant petitioning at
- if you are not an experience petitioner, you might want to have a “petitioning training event” before the start of petitioning. Contact your regional coordinator for details on how to do this.
- write/call your Legislator and ask them to support the PassMass Bills, and ask your team to, as well. Yes, even though we have State Legislation, we are petitioning…

**2. WHAT TOOLS DO I NEED to be a PETITIONING COORDINATOR?**


Most of what you will need as a Town Coordinator will be found on this website:

- Frequently Asked Questions
- The Language of the Petition (this will be updated as we move closer to the Petition Period, hopefully by July 1)
- How to Petition (training resources)
- Timeline (the “schedule”)


**3. ORGANIZING IDEAS**


To help in organizing, here are some ideas on how to organize/coordinate people

BUILDING A TEAM
- start with a list of people who you think want to help
- contact each one via email and phone to determine how much they want to help
- keep track of your contact with each, by keeping notes such as “Jim wants to help, but can only come on Monday afternoons”
- get a sense of who is available to petition/meet at what times of day/week, and keep track of that on your list
- confirm two or three times as we lead up to the petitioning period, that people are still on board. some people will confirm readily via email and will not need a lot of contact from you. others will want to ask a lot of questions about the process and why we're doing this. that's normal. feel free to ask your regional coordinator to come to a meeting to answer questions, or schedule a conference call. also, if questions are more than you want to handle, please refer them to the contact page, and we'll take it from there.

NOURISHING A TEAM
- keep people informed, but do not pester them. Your team will advise you on how often they want to be contacted. some people prefer to have all of the details, and like to get reminders. Some people just want to help set the time for a meeting and then will show up on their own
- people usually have a “preferred method of contact”. Some people like a phone call, and like you to leave a message, other people want you to call back until they answer. Some people are diligent about reading email and prefer to get an email.
- send a letter to the editor telling the town what you're doing. team members tend to like seeing what they are doing in the paper.
- get on the agendas for popular civic action groups and go to the meeting to announce what you're doing. this not only spreads the word, but it helps nourish the team, because team members tend to enjoy when they hear from other people that they heard about the project.

ORGANIZING DETAILS
- if you have the capability to create a page on Facebook or online, feel free to do so for your local team
- feel free to share with the Regional Team, your meeting times/dates, so we can post them on the statewide Facebook page and calendar. new people do show up from these posts.



  • Processing the completed forms FOR YOUR TOWN consists of submitting the forms to the Town Clerk in YOUR TOWN, and then picking them up after the forms have been “certified” by the Town Clerk and mailing (or delivering) the forms to one of the PassMassAmendment Core Team members. If you can also process petition forms for nearby towns, please let us know. For YOUR TOWN, we will mail or deliver forms for YOUR TOWN to the Town Coordinators. You will probably get signature forms from other towns while you are petitioning, and we will ask you to get those to the Core Team, for processing a couple weeks before the end of the signature gathering period. Then in the last weeks to only gather signatures for towns that you are willing to deliver directly to the Town Clerk for that town.
petitioning_coordinator_kit.txt · Last modified: 2018/07/23 11:49 (external edit)