How to Manage Volunteers in Mobilize
Mobilize offers a user-friendly platform to manage events and recruit volunteers. Most Democratic campaigns and organizations that work with volunteers use Mobilize. Create your account here. You can use Mobilize to:
Post Volunteer Opportunities
Mobilize allows you to create online or in-person actions for your organization's supporters to engage with. Available event features are:
- Scheduled events: supporters attend at specific dates and times
- Recommended for volunteer shifts
- Anytime actions: supporters take action from anywhere, on their own time.
- Petitions: supporters sign a petition to support your cause.
- Pledges or interest forms: supporters express interest or pledge to take action.
- Groups: supporters join a group.
Scheduled events
This event feature is most useful for scheduled volunteer shifts. Volunteers can sign up to attend at specific dates and times. Scheduled events can be in-person or virtual, and you can specify the event type by selecting an event 'Type'.
Click “New Event” to post a volunteer shift.
Select “Scheduled event” if you want to post a volunteer shift with a specific date and time.
Event name: Include your organization, the region the shift is in, and the type of work it is (canvass, phone bank, letter writing, etc.)
Type: Select the appropriate type of work
Visibility: You must select “public” for Mobilize to share your event with local Democrats. We suggest keeping the event private until you finalize edits.
Event details: Local supporters will see this when your event is shared. Keep it brief but provide enough detail and urgency so your description is effective at getting people to sign up and know what they’re signing up for.
Photo: You can upload a photo/logo that will be the header of your event. Supporters will see this when they go to sign up.
Location: Mobilize will automatically set the location as “Virtual”, be sure to toggle it to “In-Person” if the volunteer opportunity is not remote.
Event location: Select the venue/physical location of the volunteer shift.
We suggest keeping each communication feature aside from group chat – unless you have the capacity to manage the chat and find it valuable for your volunteer experience.
Each volunteer shift will need a “reply-to-email” for volunteers to reach the organization directly with questions. You can also add linked groups (if your organization has any Mobilize subgroups) and co-hosts (anyone in your organization you want to help manage the event); cohosts can view sign-ups and edit the event page.
Sign up for all shifts: You can allow your volunteers to sign up for all your upcoming shifts. Leaving this option on can result in a high flake rate for your future events, though. We suggest that you keep this feature off and call volunteers directly to recruit them into more shifts.
Accessibility: Only select ADA features that you absolutely can guarantee to all attendees.
Primary language: Select the appropriate primary language.
The last step before publishing your event is scheduling time(s)! For instance, we would use the schedule above if Blue Texas was hosting one South Houston canvassing shift on Saturday, 8/9/24 from 10 AM - 1 PM CT.
We would use the schedule below if Blue Texas was hosting a South Houston canvassing shift from the same location at the same time every Saturday from 8/9/24 to Election Day!
Find further instructions for creating a scheduled event here.
Recruit volunteers
Mobilize will share your event with local Democrats who are looking for ways to get involved. There are ways you can run your own recruitment by sharing the Mobilize event link.
- Invite your super-supporters (who always show up) and encourage them to use the "Bring a friend" feature. 4.3% of signups on Mobilize come from "Bring a friend" prompts.
- Include the link to your Mobilize shifts in any email and text communications your organization sends out for recruitment.
- Use source codes and UTM parameters to track how people arrive at your events.
- Customize your social sharing details, and share Mobilize links over social media.
- Customize your weekly newsletter and other automated communications.
Track and manage volunteers
You can view and manage your sign-ups for each scheduled event. As a form of recruitment, we suggest you reach out to anyone who canceled or no/showed the shift and try to get them signed up for a later shift. You should also call anyone who completed their shift and get them to sign up for more work. Always assume your volunteers are motivated by a desire to win, don’t assume the answer is no until they tell you so. Review our hard-ask guide for tips on these conversations.