If you’ve ever run or worked on a campaign, been a candidate for office, or just pretty much been involved in politics in almost any capacity, you’ve seen how important volunteers are to political success.
And you’ve no doubt noticed that all volunteers are not created equal. Some are worth more than others, some better than others, or some are just better at certain things than others.
So what makes for great volunteers?
There are at least four qualities that stand out as the marks of really great volunteers. Of course, few have them all, but they’re a standard you should reach for when trying to find people to help – or if you’re thinking about volunteering yourself.
Four Top Qualities of Great Volunteers
1) A commitment to the cause
Do they believe in the campaign? The level of commitment from the people involved in any effort is usually the greatest contributing factor to success or failure.
No matter how desperate a campaign may be for help, if “the help” doesn’t really believe in the cause, then you’re really not going to get much out of them and they’re not going to help you motivate other people.
2) A willingness to sacrifice
Great volunteerism is based on sacrifice. But good volunteers don’t think of it as sacrifice, but rather as an investment in the things that they care about.
That’s why you’re going to get more support from people who really believe in the cause to begin with.
3) A sense of humility
Who wants to hang around someone who thinks that they’re “too good” to be there? The type of person who lets everyone else know they should feel “blessed” that they’re around. They will be less “help” and more “hurt”, in the sense that they can run off people who actually do want to help.
A good volunteer is someone who is able to set aside their ego in deference to the cause that they’re involved with. Pride and volunteering don’t go well together.
4) A positive attitude
Attitudes are infectious, (both good and bad). And since nobody wants to work around people with “jerky” attitudes, this is another type of person who can quickly run off the real help.
Good volunteers maintain a positive attitude that encourages others to keep going regardless of circumstances.
***
Even though any political effort is usually extremely grateful for any volunteers that it gets, these are some of the qualities of great volunteers that you should keep in mind when looking for people to help your cause.
Run down the checklist. How do you or your volunteers stack up?
Over the long run, it can actually pay to be picky.
***
You can find out more tips on volunteers and volunteer management in my Grassroots 101 Training Series. Check it out!
Time for a National Conversation on Liberty
But if information is power and, as Lord Acton put it, “power corrupts”, we need to think very carefully about the power that we are handing over to government without demanding a national conversation on liberty.
It should be a conversation with Americans making informed decisions about what’s important to them, not secret edicts by politicians and bureaucrats who are quick to create systems that grow out of control and prove impossible to stop once in motion.
Each day seems to bring new stories of abuse.
A Washington Post report detailed how the government has secretly been paying tens of millions of dollars to tech and internet companies to underwrite the ability of the government to use these services to spy on everyone – not just terrorists.
The Wall Street Journal reported that employees and contractors of the NSA have been found to use the agency’s capabilities to spy on their own potential “love interests” and former spouses. Call if cyber-stalking on steroids. And just a week ago we found out that the government’s own secret reports document that the NSA had broken privacy rules nearly three-thousand times in the last year alone.
A recent CNET story details how the FBI has developed new custom “port reader” software that it is trying to force all Internet service providers to install in order to give them access to Internet data in real time. (Who needs the NSA when you can wiretap the whole Internet yourself?)
To add insult to injury, the administration is petitioning the Supreme Court to review a case that could give government the right to search your mobile phone without a warrant. When you consider that most mobile phones are now linked to the same data and applications of the average computer, the government’s ability to go through it without a warrant is effectively no different than being able to walk into someone’s home or office and go through their computer files at will.
This isn’t what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they wrote the Fourth Amendment’s language about being “secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects”.
As a result of the growing scandal, Obama has done what folks in Washington usually do when they want to defuse a political problem: appoint a committee. The new panel is comprised of leaders from the intelligence community as well as White House staffers, and will take a look at how the NSA spies on Americans and then let us know if there is anything to be worked up about. Fox, meet hen-house.
Of course all of these new revelations come several weeks after a coalition of conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats in the US House came within twelve votes of passing a resolution to prohibit the NSA’s collection of “bulk data” on Americans unless they were under suspicion of terrorism.
Clearly it’s time for another vote on the subject.
Why is it illegal for the CIA to operate domestically (a wise precaution), but not for the NSA to spy on Americans domestically and share that information with other government agencies? And who’s to say these programs can’t be focused on something other than potential lovers and be used for blackmail, or to spy out financial secrets and make big bets in the markets? The list of potential abuses is endless.
There needs to be someone in this process whose job is to protect the privacy and liberty of the very people who are paying the tab. Some sort of congressionally appointed special counsel who can review all activities, report to Congress and even prosecute abuses. The current “trust us” arrangement doesn’t cut it.
Whatever reforms and restrictions are put in place need to be imaginative and lay down clear principles that apply no matter what the technology of the day may be. To set out in certain terms that it is illegal for any agency of our government to spy on us (individually or collectively) or to collect personal information on Americans without their consent or a specific, individualized warrant from a judge – which was the exact intent of the Fourth Amendment.
Anything less is not only an invitation but an admission that this is exactly what will happen.
It’s time that we start having that national conversation.