Invite your friends and neighbors.

While you can certainly make effective calls to voters on your own, it is often more fun and productive to call in groups.  Some of the best times to make phone calls are after dinnertime on a weekday or on weekend afternoons. Working together helps keep morale up through lots of calls, and allows you to share tips and learn from each other. It's also an opportunity to make it a fun social event -- have a potluck, play games, use your creativity to make it fun and enjoyable while also having a strong political impact.

Know who your target is.

Focus on a member of Congress who you are trying to get to take a specific action, such becoming a supporter of legislation like H Res 1045.  Make sure you are only calling people who live in that district.  Members of Congress are concerned with getting reelected, so they want to know what their potential voters think about important issues.  E-mail Cara Bautista, Deputy Political Director, to get lists of voters to call in your target district.

Get organized.

Before people meet up, you should have all the materials ready for them.  Each person needs:

* A "rap" that he or she can read from when making calls.  
* A pen or pencil.
* A phone to call on. It works great to ask people to bring their cell phones.
* A comfortable place to sit.
* Enough space to have a phone conversation without disturbing or being disturbed by other callers.
* A list of people to call.

You should also provide a list of people to call that is reasonable for the amount of time you have. The list should be organized in a call sheet that has names, phone numbers, and a space for people to write down what happened (not home, said no, said yes).  That way you know if you didn't reach people in case you want to try calling them again another time. You want to be especially careful to record the number of yeses so you can see if you met your goals and celebrate your success!

Finally, make sure the materials are split up so you don’t call the same people more than once.

Prepare your team.

Before everyone starts calling, spend 10-15 minutes briefing the volunteers. Fill them in on information that will help make the calls more effective: the political climate, background information on your target, what you want to achieve with the calls, an explanation of the rap, and how to keep track of the calls. Throughout the night, check in and work to keep people motivated.  It can be frustrating to get hung up on or talk to people who don't want to take action, and that can start to show in people's voices.  As the leader, you want to make sure you are keeping people politically motivated and having fun.

Have a concise rap and a clear ask.

Provide people with something simple and brief to say on the phone that also conveys the urgency of taking action.  You should also make sure that there is something specific you want the voters to ask for when they call their representative's office. Email Deputy Political Director Cara Bautista for a sample phone rap.

Set goals.

Having specific goals about how many calls you want to generate can help keep people motivated and excited throughout the phone bank.  You can find fun ways to acknowledge successful calls (like everyone rings a bell when they get a yes) and to keep track of your progress (have a chart on the wall that shows the number of "yeses" growing throughout the day).

Practice.

Calling strangers can make people a little bit nervous, so it's good to do some role-playing together before you start calling.  Have people practice in pairs or in front of the group pretending to play each role. That way people have had the experience of talking through it and all the calls will be more effective.

One of the most important things to practice is having assumptive and confident tone, which is critical in getting busy people to take some time to talk.  You can also practice challenging situations that might come up, such as the person on the phone saying she doesn't have time to talk.

Wrap it up and report back.

First of all, thank your volunteers for their efforts and celebrate the impact you've had with your successful phone bank!

Report back!

Our political impact becomes even more impressive when we see how it fits in to the larger effort for the elimination of nuclear weapons.  E-mail Deputy Political Director Cara Bautista with your success stories, numbers, stories and photos from your phone bank. Then we can share with the rest of the network and inspire others to take action.