Make an Outreach Plan

By making an outreach plan for events and actions, your group will get the attention and participation you need to make your actions effective. Some pointers:

• Recruitment: The best way to recruit and motivate people is face-to -ace. Tabling at events, talking to friends and neighbors, discussing at meetings are all good ways to get people involved. Bake sales or garage sales to raise money for your local group also pull in new people to be active. You may be able to get photocopies donated by local printing companies. Include www.codepink.org at the bottom of your flyer.
• Follow-up Phone Call: The personal touch of a phone call says volumes more than a mass email! Tell the person about your upcoming actions, be positive, and offer to send a follow-up email with relevant info (confirm that you have the right email address).
• Encourage Participation: Once you have someone's name, email and phone number, let her know she is wanted and welcome. Put her on an email list and a phone list. Ask her to be in charge of something or host a meeting or make something for an event—there's nothing like direct involvement to encourage participation.
• Outreach to Different Communities: Speak/meet with people in your community that you don't know well, or who are different from you (ethnicity/religion/class/age/interests). To connect with and build coalitions, reach out to people outside your social group and participate in other groups' activities, instead of expecting them to show up for your actions. "
• HAVE FUN! One of CODEPINK's greatest strengths is that people perceive us as having fun in our work—and we are!
• The Law of Halves: Recruiting expectations should be realistic. If you contact 200 people, you will probably make contact with 100 people. Of those 100, 50 people will agree to come to a meeting or event. Involve others in continuing to make contacts.
• Online Promotion: Use the website and social media: Post your event on local calendar websites. Use Twitter, Facebook, and other social media websites to reach out to people online.
• In-Person Promotion: At any event you attend, publicize your event, and/or circulate petitions and have signup sheets available.
• Endorsements: Find endorsers to help you promote your event, especially if it is a major effort.
• Highlight Local Connections: Make your issues meaningful to your local community; emphasize the local cost of wars and militarism: Check out www.nationalpriorities.org - it's a deep resource with many links and tools.
• Work Collaboratively: Don't burn yourself out -- including more people in planning and actions will not only lighten your workload, but will also build capacity in other CODEPINK activists.