My favorite tool on Democrats.org is the Events widget in PartyBuilder. It's available 365 days a year, 24/7. You can use the Event tool to promote your events or to find something to do with fellow Democrats in your community.
Every Friday we'll be highlighting five events happening around the country that we've found in PartyBuilder's Eventssystem.
So what kind of events are there to be found? Well, let's start with the obvious. If you are in a local Democratic Club you should definitely be inputting your events into PartyBuilder. So that means, County Party Meetings, Central Committees, Wards, whatever the local Dem group is called in your neck of the woods - you should let other Dems know about it.
Then there are elected official or candidate events - town halls, fundraisers, meet and greets - you can find those too and should encourage your local elected officials and campaigns to use the system. In fact, you could volunteer to input them for your favorite candidate!
Then there are social events, happy hours, BBQs, pot lucks, which are happening everywhere. Plus there are social events built around community service projects - street clean-ups, blood drives, a charity car wash or a bake sale to benefit your local VFW hall.
The bottom line is that Democrats who work and play together, win together, and keeping your local Democrats active and involved takes a bit of work. Using the events system to organize, publicize and energize local activists is a simple way to make a big difference.
My favorite anecdote about the Events system is this:
Before I worked for The Democratic Party, I held an event for Democrats at my home in Tallahassee, Florida. Now of course, I invited a bunch of my friends too, and I was active in our local chapters of the Leon County Democrats, Young Democrats, College Democrats (I was in grad school at the time), Drinking Liberally and I was even working for a candidate.
However, using the Events Tool to organize my event brought people who had never attended any meeting or event for any of the groups I was active in into the Democratic fold. About a dozen "new" activists were uncovered that night and I was then able to connect them to the other Democratic clubs in town and get them engaged in the process.
Now, that won't always happen, but it can't happen at all if you aren't putting your events into PartyBuilder. It's like that saying about life and pianos, you get out of it what you put into it!
Happy Eventing!