Comment 48540

By Meredith (registered) - website | Posted September 30, 2010 at 22:41:16

I'm not sure how the Hamilton Civic League is doing, but they were certainly inspired by GCL's success.

At this point, the HCL is doing OK. We won't be able to get a fantastic organization going until the next election, but thus far this is what's in process:

  • Bus ads encouraging voting have been donated (one per bus inside, some exterior) and the design is finished
  • Regular Cable 14 spots on voting and its importance
  • Radio ads (running on several local stations)
  • Print ads encouraging voting
  • Statistically significant number of survey responses within multiple wards - unfortunately not enough volunteers this time around to get that information within all wards.
  • Downloadable poster campaigns (going up on site this week)
  • 1 hour primers at high schools
  • Access to voter resource at WeVote.ca. (again should be up this week)
  • Newcomers, young voters , Renters, Poverty are focus areas since those 4 groups don't vote much
  • networking with several organizations (campus organizations, poverty organizations, newcomers organizations) as a part of that
  • Series of monthly forums (now often in conjuction with other groups and not promoted as specifically Hamilton Civic League)

This is with a small group of volunteers who mostly work 50+ hour weeks, and three of the four board members have gone through significant job changes within the last six months, and we have a ton of great volunteers/contacts but unfortunately we haven't been able to leverage them as well as planned, especially on a shoestring budget (most has been dedicated to printing costs and open houses).

Next time around, there will be a better-focused process, and even clearer leadership and volunteer recruitment, etc. We're doing OK for the first run-through, but it'll be a much better machine the next time, and we'll have learned a ton. Personally I hope to be a better leader through the process and not in the middle of a job change the next time around either!

Focus, however, is something we've certainly gained (we're not the GCL, but we also have been looking in a lot of different directions to start, and we'll have a better focus as we continue on).

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