How to Organize a Canvassing Event

March 22, 2022

What's Canvassing? 

Canvassing involves going door-to-door to local small- to medium-size businesses in your area, discussing with them how mandates have affected them, telling them about Project StandTogether and offering them one of our signs of peaceful noncompliance and nondiscrimination.

Our Sign

Why We Canvass

We believe that the best way to make real change is to stand together. That’s why we ask local businesses to stand with us in this fight against discriminatory mandates and tyranny. We want to empower everyday people to take a stand, and we want to form a peaceful community of people who support freedom. Not only does canvassing spread freedom in your area, it also allows you to connect with your community and to get to know like-minded, service-oriented people.

So, how do you get started? Let's dive in.

How to Organize a Canvassing Event

Steps:

  1. Form a chapter in your area if you haven’t already. Here is how to do so. Once you have your signs, your volunteer leader and your resources organized, you’re ready to host your first canvassing event! 
  1. Pick an area in your city to canvass that has a lot of small businesses within walking distance. 
  1. Within that area, select a meet-up location, day and time frame for canvassing. The meet-up location can be a local park, an already-supportive establishment, a parking lot, outside of a restaurant, etc. 
  1. Tell one of our volunteer coordinators about your planned event so we can share it on our newsletter and social media. Invite your local telegram group, friends, family and colleagues to come out.
  1. Research what businesses you would like to visit. If possible, find the name or the owner or manager. 
  1. Talk to a volunteer coordinator about hosting a Zoom meeting with the entire chapter to go over these steps and best practices and to answer any questions. 
  1. Distribute your local resources to volunteers attending. This could be done digitally! 
  1. Go out there and do it! Meet at your meet-up location, and wait at least 30 minutes to ensure that everyone arrives. You can choose to go out to businesses together or to split up into groups of two or three. While we believe pairing up is very effective, we don’t recommend going out in groups of five or more. This can overwhelm business owners. 
  1. Talk to local business owners, asking them to take a stand and put up our sign of non-compliance. We have a script here that can help, but we think it’d be best if you made it your own and be yourself! 
  1. If the business owner is not present or is unsure of what to do, leave them with this flyer. You can print them yourself or send it to them digitally.
  1. If the business owner is responsive, ask them if you can put up the sign for them. Take pictures! Also, ask them if they’d like to join our business directory
  1. Keep a spreadsheet on what businesses you visited and how they reacted. Here’s a spreadsheet template. Report back to your volunteer leader and to Project StandTogether about how it went. 
  1. Optional - Leave businesses a positive review online. If you have never done business there, speak directly to the quality of the owner/manager and staff only, and that they support Freedom, equality, and denounce discrimination. Do not use the words “vaccine” or “mandate” or “comply” as we don’t want any algorithms targeting them.

Some Rules and Best Practices 

Signs 

Location, Day and Time

Communication

Businesses and Business Owners

Pictures/Video

Ready to get started? Email us at hello@projectstandtogether.com if you would like to start a local chapter, or, if you are already a part of one, message us through your Telegram group that you'd like to host your first event.