Background on the Crowdsourcing project:
The Crowdsourcing Steering Committee comprises Chris Reeves, evcoren, Meteor Blades and navajo. If you’d like to join this group, send our group a kosmail and let us know how you want to help. navajo, who is organizing volunteers, will send you an invite. Also, please post your own diaries and recommend the work of others you think would be good additions to the effort.
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The 2016 election cycle may be the big story for several months still, but communities have already started to think about what is coming next. Last minute candidate recruitment is often difficult, and the longer you wait, the more difficult it becomes. Identifying a candidate, encouraging a candidate, and finally recruiting that candidate can take time.
In light of that, many local organizations have decided to start looking ahead — not just to the 2016 Presidential and General election, but to the 2017 Municipal, local and state elections that occur around the country.
In order to help make those elections more successful for progressive causes, these groups are looking to build community recruiting organizations. Organizations built of local residents can show potential candidates that resources are available to them in case they run. By setting up “neighbor support” organizations, you can build infrastructure for a future run of a candidate before a candidate is identified.
In Roeland Park, Kansas, residents gathered to look at how to change numerous races, from city council to county races — elections which won’t occur until November, 2017. The secret, they know, is that starting early gives them time to identify the races they want to challenge, to begin research on candidates they want to support and elected officials they want to oust. Over the next year, they will reach out to their neighbors and friends about issues that matter in their local community and build support to help change their city government.
This early outreach effort also allows them to start identifying potential donors for 2017, and to take the issues they have identified and build community support.
Local races have an immediate and significant impact into their day to day life; everything from setting safety policies to managing the economic health of their city. They also serve as a key stepping stone in developing candidates of the future; people who can serve as a city official and later as a state official.
Most importantly, gathering to help recruit candidates is the first significant step in building a local, on the ground effort that can support all candidates at all levels.
Background on the Crowdsourcing project:
The Crowdsourcing Steering Committee comprises Chris Reeves, evcoren, Meteor Blades and navajo. If you’d like to join this group, send our group a kosmail and let us know how you want to help. navajo, who is organizing volunteers, will send you an invite. Also, please post your own diaries and recommend the work of others you think would be good additions to the effort.
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