Through Oxfam, I heard a presentation in July from London Citizens about a particular approach they take to recruiting new supporters. I have found myself using this idea more than once since then, so here it is.
London Citizens is a dynamic charity working with local people for social, economic and environmental justice in London. Go to their website and you see immediately how active and energetic they are. I was in London at the end of July with Oxfam’s Community and Activism team (see my earlier post about this) for an awayday, and we had a talk from an inspiring young woman (I’m sorry that I’ve lost her contact details) about one-to-ones.
As I understood it, what this means is that instead of focusing on mailouts and other multiple-recipient, one-way communication methods to recruit new supporters, London Citizens people make it their business – say at an event, or after an initial approach – to spot people with potential and invite them in for a one-to-one conversation. During this forty-minute encounter, they share something about themselves, get to know the individual, find out what makes them angry or joyful, try to find a next step for the individual to take towards engagement with London Citizens, and ask them for the name of someone else they know who might be interested in getting involved. It’s something like an interview and something like a career counselling session and something like a networking meeting, but more personal and more two-way than any of those. London Citizens put a lot of time into this approach: it’s essentially what our speaker and her colleagues do for 70 per cent of their time.
The idea is as old as humankind, probably. But I wonder if we’ve tended to forget about the power and focus of face-to-face contact with one other person in all our excitement over electronic contact with millions?
I’ve found that this old and simple idea keeps coming back to me:
- It has been very influential in defining the approach I’m taking for the supporter toolkit I am working on for Oxfam
- Earlier this week I was talking to the chair of Summertown Stars, my local children’s football club, about how to get parents more engaged with and supporting the club, and found myself suggesting that we should ask each parent who is already engaged to find one other person and get them involved
- Ever since I decided to leave my former job last year, I have been having one-to-one conversations which have all led to other one-to-one conversations, most of which have led to work or ideas or inspiration of some kind.
So isn’t blogging about this a contradiction in terms? Well, maybe: not too many people read my blog yet anyway, and by definition it’s hard to get across the power of the one-to-one unless you can talk to people about it. But London Citizens haven’t ignored the potential of the electronic: they do that (brilliantly) as well, and the one complements the other. And for me, blogging is something I do, and perhaps by writing this down I’ve clarified my own thinking about it in a way that will help me use the idea in future.
