Event Guide #INVESTinED

Petition Event Guide

Create an Event

Since you cannot use school facilities to distribute or collect petitions, you will need to create an events for people to distribute petitions and collect completed petitions quickly. Be creative and have fun. Here are some ideas.

Walk-in for #INVESTinED is something we all know how to do. Organize another walk-in for your staff. Except, be sure your meeting location is outside school boundaries, maybe on the sidewalk just outside the gates. Have a table with petitions and check-out sheets and be sure to recruit a notary for the walk-in.

#INVESTinED Petition Party is a fun way to get petitions out. Schedule a party and invite your community. It can be a happy hour, house party, or a picnic at a park. Have a table with petitions and check-out sheets. Sign-out petitions to enough volunteers to reach your goal. Give them one week to get their petition filed and then have another petition party to collect them in a week - recruit a notary at the petition collection party.

Cover an event and organize a group of volunteers to circulate petitions at events. If it is a school event, find a visible location outside school property. Use signs to attract attention. Community events are great. Youth sporting events, neighborhood festivals, church events, sporting events, arts festivals, concerts, etc. Go where there will be people, take clipboards, circulate and ask people to sign the petition.

Be creative and remember that we just figured out how to organize a statewide walkout with broad community support. Each school in the state developed their own creative strategies and tactics. Use that same ingenuity to get petitions out and returned so we reach our signature goal before school is out.

Before your event

Prepare all of the materials you will need and recruit for action:
petition packet sign-out sheet
petition intake cover sheet
petition guidelines (printable version)
Pens, clipboards, any information about our issue that you want to hand out.
Make sure to recruit canvassers, a notary, and table/data volunteers for your event.
Post your event to social media and share it with your network, recruit family, friends, and neighbors to join you, and confirm all the details with attendees beforehand.

Train for Action

Train all petitioning volunteers some people in your group may have experience petitioning. Others may not. The point of a group training is to make sure everyone understands why they’re petitioning and how to do it. A good training has the following components:

Petition Signature Gathering Video / Spanish Version / ASL Version

Give Context

How many days are left until the end of the school year? How many signatures do we need to qualify? What are the major components of the initiative?

Create Connection

Share your 30 second of why you are choosing to volunteer. It can be as easy as saying, “I care about education and I think we have a chance to change things.”

Ask for Commitment

Can we count on you to sign the petition in support of investment in education?

Catapult

If you would like to get involved sign-up to volunteer at actionnetwork.org/forms/investined

Give tips on how to be successful at collecting petitions
Be friendly and greet everyone with a big wave and a strong ask.
Make sure to get complete petition information.
Talk about what a completed petition signature looks like.
Review materials that all the volunteers have in their hands.

Practice

Have volunteers practice stopping people, asking them to sign petitions, and answer a few basic questions.

Petition Check-out Procedures

Within 24 hours of your event, return notarized petitions to hub location or make a plan to return petitions with your organizer.
While managing a drop-off location, day-of-action, or while tabling make sure volunteers sign-out their packet numbers using the petition packet sign-out sheet.
Once you have distributed your packets to volunteers, please enter the check-out data for each packet using the check-out tracker form.

Note: enter every packet an individual checks out

Give volunteers a deadline to return their packets within a week.

Action

Check in with your volunteers throughout the volunteer shift. Ask them how it’s going, remind them how important the work they are doing is, thank them for all their hard work. Part of your role as an organizer is to be a cheerleader for your team, remind them how appreciated they are, and help keep them motivated to keep going.

Take pictures and video to post on social media with the hashtag #INVESTinED as way to publicly thank your volunteers, and please send to us at hello@investforedaz.com.

After your event

Collect your materials and debrief with your volunteers. Ask your volunteers to meet back at your meeting spot at the end of their volunteer shift with all of their materials. Make sure to get all the signed petition sheets checked back in. Ask your volunteers how their experience was. Remind everyone how important their work today was, and thank everyone multiple times.

Petition Check-in Procedures

Have volunteers get their petitions notarized prior to return by a legal notary.
Attach a petition intake cover sheet to the set of petitions you are returning and be sure to include the serial number of each packet you return.

Recruit all of your volunteers to a next event.

Note: Do not hang-on to packets - return immediately.

Please note: As an education activist, you don’t represent Invest in Education as an organization. You represent your own causes as a concerned constituent and community stakeholder. This is critical to our strength as a movement: As you work on your campaign, and other causes, your voices will be stronger as representatives of your community. If anyone is looking for a comment from the campaign please direct them to info@investinedaz.com.