Campaign update: 8th December 2020
Nick’s campaign is going really well. A second very strong newsletter has now been delivered to the 1,900 residents of the Humshaugh ward. Nick and his volunteers have received some very encouraging feedback in the form of emails, phone calls and doorstep conversations. The campaign team is now preparing to start a survey of the 1,400 people who actually vote. Nick intends to knock on every door himself, assisted by each volunteer on their own “patch”. The volunteers have now got to know their own delivery rounds and can therefore guide Nick to the right property, as well as keeping records and assisting with survey form collection.
The first newsletter was delivered by hand to every property, but for the second newsletter we allowed ourselves the luxury of posting newsletters to the more remote properties. The idea was not only to save on driving, but also to keep the team fresh for survey work. The total postage costs came to £165. The campaign budget deficit is about £400 without taking the costs of posting newsletters into account – so if we are to continue to post this many newsletters, we will have some serious fundraising to do! In reality we will almost certainly have to find a compromise – to do a little more driving, a little less posting and to continue to work hard on fundraising.
Talking of fundraising, Nick’s second fundraiser has now been launched – this time through Action Network rather than Crowdfunder. To make a one-off or regular contribution, go to our action network page. Please feel free to share this link far and wide! Following the success of the presentation by Flight Free UK at the last Tynedale Green Party (Zoom) meeting, we intend to continue to invite a succession of engaging speakers to our meetings. The link to Nick’s fundraiser will be shared at each meeting, and we hope that this will be an effective way of raising funds for the campaign. We have a very special guest speaker lined up for our next meeting in January – details to be released shortly!
Nick was awarded a place at Green Party Campaign Academy, which took place online over three days in early December. He has learned a lot about conducting a successful Target to Win campaign and will be sharing the best bits with his campaign team via a Zoom meeting in December or January. Nick will also soon be attending a short campaign planning meeting, where he will start to look ahead to the key messages, literature and tactics that we will use to build on the success of the long campaign as we approach election day.
December will be a busy month for the campaign team, because as well as survey work commencing, we are also expecting the new electoral register to be released. This will mean that a new campaign database has to be created, and the data from the old database transferred. Fortunately, the Green Party provides a tool for doing this – but exactly how easy it is to do remains to be seen! As a result, we are not planning to deliver our third newsletter until late January. Nick will be working on the articles and getting the all-important photos in December. The next literature to drop through letterboxes is likely to be a New Year card.
Nick is keen to find ways to delegate tasks to others, and Campaign Academy has taught him the importance of doing so. He is looking for someone with good organisational and people skills to coordinate newsletter delivery and for someone with good IT/spreadsheet skills to take responsibility for creating and updating the campaign database. If you feel that you have the skills, time and inclination, please get in touch!
Nick’s contact details are: nick.morphet@tynedale.greenparty.org.uk