2015-12-07
John Twyman
The Greens is a party intrinsically dedicated to the principle of grassroots participatory democracy. It underpins who we are and how we work, with members and supporters contributing directly to the party's successes. Nowhere is this better espoused than in the contributions to the party made by volunteers.
Anyone who has voted in an election has no doubt seen Greens volunteers handing out how-to-vote cards on polling day. The party reaches hundreds of thousands of voters thanks to volunteers who knock on doors, call phones and leaflet letterboxes. But not everybody is comfortable with face-to-face work and disability means it's just not an option for others. Don't worry, there are plenty of other projects you can join.
Reaching the public online
Every day, our national office staff, state office staff and staff in MP offices around the country create web pages to bring you the news of the day or create articles like this one to inspire you to action.
With so much political discussion taking place online, accuracy in our online material is vital — so of course we also have staff spell-checking and approving content. But ensuring accuracy of our material is just one part of the equation.
Over time, material goes out of date, some weeks faster than others. We've just completed a project where a team of volunteers painstakingly went through hundreds of pages noting which pages still refer to Abbott, and embarrassingly sometimes, to Rudd or Gillard. Now we're looking for volunteers to help make those edits and transfer content into our new templates as we ready the site for 2016.
Volunteers also help monitor and engage in conversations about the Greens on social media. They review how our policies and politicians are quoted by the media. They send tweets in support of us and post comments on Facebook on behalf of the party. In short, they help us participate in the national political conversation.
If this sounds like you, we'd love to have you join us. Fill out our application form to get on board!
Engaging with our members
Another huge area of contribution by our wonderful volunteers also takes place online. We are lucky to have the skills, experience and expertise of a team of software programmers and other IT specialists who help build the tools we use to engage with our members, supporters, volunteers and voters.
The most important of our tools is our Customer Relationship Management system or CRM. This is our database of members and supporters. We use it to send emails to keep everyone up to date with what the party is doing, manage party memberships and fundraise for our election and issues campaigns like the recently launched Renew Australia.
This system is complex and managing it is no easy task. Volunteers with experience as system administrators and programmers help us keep this system running. They investigate and solve problems uncovered by our people nationally and implement new functions and features in response to requests from staff and volunteers nationwide.
This work relies on people who understand how to manage Linux servers and have worked with SQL and databases in the past. There's always work to be done, so if you're keen to help, contact me to learn more.
Engaging with our volunteers and voters
Our CRM helps us stay in touch with our members and supporters but it's not the tool we use to coordinate their activities when they volunteer for us. We have software specifically designed to recruit volunteers and manage their activities such as door knocking, calling voters and handing out How To Vote cards.
This software is constantly evolving. Volunteer coordinators, office staff and volunteers give us feedback which drives our software development. We translate that feedback into programming tasks for our software programmers who introduce new features and improvements on a regular basis.
Our development team do most of their coding in PHP and AngularJS working on custom Drupal modules, user interface design, systems integration and API design. It's interesting work with a lot of opportunity to learn. If you think you have relevant software development experience and would like to participate, contact me today.
Training
Of course, having great software to support our work doesn't matter too much if we don't know how to use it. Greens staff across the country train volunteers in how to use our online systems. Our training materials team works hard to ensure those staff have the best possible material at their disposal to train volunteers effectively.
Our current focus is to write new manuals to help staff and volunteers nationally as we prepare for the 2016 federal election. It's a big task but has an enormous impact on our ability to campaign effectively. We'd love to hear from people with technical writing experience who can help. Did you guess by now? Contact me to get involved.
A truly grassroots party
These projects rely in large part on the contributions made by our wonderful volunteers. Their commitment to the Greens and our principles — and their willingness to show that commitment through active participation — is inspiring. It's the power of grassroots democracy at work and I encourage all of you to think about how you can get involved and make a positive difference.