On Monday, July 17th, the other CLA interns and I had the opportunity to practice canvassing for the first time in a park near Monterey Park’s City Hall building. We set up our table in the late afternoon, at a time when the sun was high and the air was uncomfortably warm. With stacks of freshly-printed surveys in three different languages, a mismatched collection of random pens pulled out of pockets and backpacks, and a few scant clipboards evenly distributed amongst the canvassers, we set out to collect information on what issues the Monterey Park community cared about and what policies they’d want their representatives to prioritize. Throughout the course of this experience, I continuously developed my canvassing skills with each new attempt I made at persuading a community member to take the time to complete our survey. Here are the lessons I learned as I used this opportunity to workshop my introduction, hone my persuasive rhetoric, and experiment with my overall attitude and demeanor.
Lesson #1: Canvassing is all about the approach.
One of the most important things I learned during this canvassing experience is that the first 5-10 seconds of your interaction with a potential surveyee is a critical period of time. Those few seconds constitute your “window of opportunity,” the one chance you have to convince the person you approach to take time out of their busy day to fill out your survey. If you don’t initiate the interaction with an effective approach, that five-second-long window of opportunity will slip right through your fingers as swiftly as water. Therefore, you need to figure out an approach that best utilizes each millisecond you have of a person’s attention before they get turned off from the idea of filling out your survey. As a cohort, we’ve come to the consensus that opening up the conversation with something like “Hi, we’re a group of local students doing a community engagement project…” is the most effective introduction because it informs people of who we are, where we’re from, and why we’re asking them to fill out a survey in a single sentence. It also eases any potential anxiety or doubt they have in our intentions because they come to understand that we’re just students conducting research and gathering data rather than a group of strangers asking for personal information. This approach, therefore, alleviates fear and suspicion before it has the chance to manifest.
“Candidate" Meghna Nair speaks to a "constituent" from Monterey Park as she completes the policy priorities survey.
Lesson #2: Persistence is key
Canvassing opportunities rarely ever occur at the most ideal times and places, so there will always be a chance that the person you approach denies your request to fill out a survey, even if you have the most impeccable approach. People are busy and have a lot of things going on in their lives, so the best thing to do is to not take it personally when someone tells you no. For example, our canvassing event at Monterey Park was less-than-ideal because it occurred at a time when the weather was really, really hot. There weren’t too many people at the park to begin with and those that were there were more likely to not want to expend the extra energy to fill out a survey because they were already exhausted by the heat. In situations like this, you need to understand that when someone tells you no, it’s not a reflection of you or them, but rather a reflection of their individual circumstances. You just need to be patient and persistent and keep approaching and asking people. Don’t get discouraged by a few failed attempts. You’ll only increase your success rate if you keep improving and you’ll only keep improving if you keep trying.
Lesson #3: Emphasize short time intervals.
Because people are generally busy and always on the move, it can be difficult to convince them to stray from their schedule long enough to complete an entire survey. As the cohort found, the best way to circumvent this obstacle is to emphasize that the survey won’t take much time to complete. People are far more likely to agree to complete the survey if they’re told it won’t cost them too much time. Typically, we told surveyees that the survey would take 20 seconds. This was usually an underestimation, but it was a powerful persuasive tool that convinced many people to complete our survey.
Through these lessons, I feel like I’ve grown exponentially as a surveyor. In subsequent canvassing opportunities, I implemented these lessons, which definitely increased my success rate!
"Candidate" Meghna Nair's amazing canvassing skills leave the Monterey Park "constituent" happy and satisfied knowing they will have excellent representation in the California Assembly.
The views and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not reflect the views or positions of CAUSE or the CAUSE network.
Written by Meghna Nair, Leadership Academy 2023 Intern.
The CAUSE Leadership Academy (CLA) for students is a nine-week, paid, internship program that prepares college undergraduates to lead and advocate for the Asian Pacific Islander community on their campuses and beyond.