General Supporters.
As you work through the Needs Assessment and Visioning tasks, individuals will begin to identify themselves as supporters of the districting effort. It is important that the names, addresses, e-mail addresses, and telephone numbers of these people be kept in a spreadsheet or database so that they can be searched by these fields.
One aspect of the needs assessment should also be to determine whether you will have adequate volunteer help to carry out the effort. As you meet with groups that are likely to be supportive, you can ask for potential volunteers to sign up. If a library already exists, you can also put a sign-up sheet at the library, along with a sign on the door to notify library users that you are looking for volunteers. If you get a good number of volunteers, that is a sign that there will be support in the community. If, however, there
are few people who are willing to sign up as potential volunteers, this may signal that there is inadequate community support to proceed.
When asking for potential volunteers to sign up, it would be wise to ask for more than just name and contact information. You may want to ask volunteers if they have any specialized skills that would be useful in the districting effort. Such skills might include digital skills, creative writing, graphic arts, public speaking, public relations, or organizational skills. A sign-up sheet has been provided here.
Reality Check
Placing a voluntary sign-up sheet at the library or other location, or using an online voluntary sign-up method, is the legal way to recruit volunteers for the districting effort. A public library in Idaho is prohibited by I.C. §§ 74-120(1)(a) and (b) from distributing or selling a list of potential volunteers from its patron database without first securing the permission of all those on the list.
Opinion-Leader Supporters.
In addition to seeking general supporters, you should also identify community opinion leaders who you think would be supportive. In general, the community leaders who will be most likely to support a districting effort will be those who tend to support other educational and governmental services. They are people who tend to look to the future of the community as well as to the present, and who are generally considered to be interested in new ideas and opportunities. These people should be contacted individually.
Opinion-leader supporters will be drawn from the following groups:
- political leaders, such as city council members, county commissioners, school board members, and legislators;
- business leaders, such as the managers of leading companies, heads of the chambers of commerce, bankers, and leading representatives from farm, mining, or timber industry associations;
- media leaders, such as newspaper editors and publishers and the station managers of local radio and television stations;
- educational leaders, such as school superintendents, presidents of the local teacher’s association;
- social leaders, such as religious leaders, heads of important community groups, and service organization presidents. Other social leaders may not hold any official position in the community, but because of their family history in the community or their wealth, they are generally seen as a powerful force in community life.
The spouses of these leaders may also become important opinion-leader supporters in a districting effort.
The effort to find opinion-leader supporters should begin by listing all the important opinion leaders in your community. These people should be listed by name. After your group has created this list, you can make an initial assessment of whether each person is likely to support the project, oppose the project, or be neutral. A worksheet has been provided here.
You then begin contacting those you believe likely to be supportive, and then those you feel will probably be neutral. This should be done individually and by appointment. Try to take two people to each meeting. Take a copy of the vision statement with you. After explaining what you are considering, ask the person whether he or she would be likely to support such an effort. Assure him or her that all comments will be kept confidential if that seems necessary. Take notes at the meeting, if participants are comfortable with
that.
After the meeting, compare notes. If the person being interviewed did not want you to take notes, write down your impressions of the meeting as soon as possible after the meeting, then compare your impressions. (However, make sure that you honor any commitment that you have made to keep information confidential!) After comparing notes, assess the person’s support level:
- Very Supportive: Will speak for the effort and will actively work for it.
- Supportive: Will speak for the effort, but not work for it.
- Neutral: Will not speak for or against the effort.
- Opposed: Will speak against the effort.
- Very Opposed: Will speak against the effort and actively work against it.
The Group / Individual Meeting Analysis Form can help you perform this analysis.
If it appears that there will be good support from your community’s opinion leaders, then this should encourage you to continue with the effort.