An Organiser’s Guide to Knocking on Doors
Introduction
Door-knocking isn't a chore; it's the lifeblood of grassroots political action. Think of it as speed dating for radicals. When you run a door knocking campaign, you, along with a partner, are going to pound the pavement, knock on doors, and have rapid-fire conversations right there on the doorstep. This isn't about collecting names for some list; it's about seeking out and getting to know the people who really form the backbone of a community.
What follows is based upon our own experience from a decade or more of cutting edge neighbourhood organising, and draws on an in depth analysis of the door to door tactics and techniques of radicals, grassroots organisers, and evangelical christian groups from all over the world. It is your go-to study for door-to-door capacity building through doorstep meetings.
Objectives
Be Proactive: Get out there, walk about visibly, make initial, relational contact with a broad base of community members. The aim of a door knocking campaign is to establish a rapport that goes beyond mere data collection. This proactive approach is essential for building trust and credibility.
Identify Leaders: Spot the movers and shakers, the potential leaders, in the areas we've targeted. These are the individuals who can mobilise others and are key to your campaign's success. Identifying leaders is crucial because they can act as multipliers for your message, hosts for house meetings, and members and recruiters for your place.
Build a Roster: Create a roster of contacts for the battles that lie ahead. This isn't just a list; it's a strategic resource for mobilising community action. A well-maintained roster can be a goldmine for future initiatives.
The Five-Step Door-Knocking Campaign
The Five-Step Process
Step 1: Know Your Game Plan
Before you hit the streets, know your game plan. Are you running a three-month door-knocking campaign that will be held annually? Or are you planning on incorporating door knocking as a weekly—or even daily—practice? What is your turf? Have you mapped it out? What are the metrics for that piece of turf—who lives there? How many hours will you need to put in every week over the time period you’ve chosen to cover that area? Is your approach sustainable? Think about it all before you kick off.
A key tool that supports effective door knocking is community mapping. You might take a detailed approach to your mapping duties, or take a less formal approach. At the end of the day, a community map is just a chart—a visual guide that you make by yourself to show you who lives, where. It’s a chart that helps you to bring an anonymous-looking block of flats, or a long lonely street of houses, to life—so it teems with hitherto hidden details of an entire human community.
In one door-knocking campaign we were involved in, the leader made floor maps for every floor within a multi-storey block of flats. He tagged the names, contact details, and other bits of information he garnered about the residents alongside each door number listed on a hand-drawn chart. It only took a few minutes to sketch out every floor of the block and write all the door numbers down. After a few visits to each floor, we managed to meet almost every household. To get so deeply embedded in this building took us a repeated series of visits, lots and lots of of knocking, and the use of relational floor charts to help us keep track of all the people we had—and hadn’t—met.
Persistence is key. Using your mapping tool well will help you to stay on task and maximise your rate of contact while increasing your understanding of each corner of the community. You are doing all this so you can meet more people and increase your own relational power, which can be defined as the number of people you actually know. As you fill in the blank spaces on your map with names and information of real people, you will start to get a sense of which households connect to other households in the area. This is key information for you to acquire, as these families and kinship networks will always be the big social “multipliers” in the area—the people who are the most effective carriers for messages and mobilisation efforts.
Before you head out and start knocking, ask yourself the following questions: how are you dividing the turf? What's your quota for each hour of knocking? Six contacts? Seven? Are you headed out at night or in the day? How can you be sure the right groups of people will be at home at the times you have chosen? And how many doors do you have to bang on to hit those numbers you’re aiming for? Make sure you've got your IDs, entry keys or a resident who can let you in (if it’s a block of flats), a fully charged phone, and your map-making tools all ready to go. A well-thought-out game plan sets the stage for a successful campaign.
Step 2: Get Knocking
One of the lessons of effective door knocking is to go out as a team—preferably in pairs. As a rule, you should never go out door knocking alone. One person might take the lead in conversations, handling the conversation like a very short one-to-one meeting while the other team member smiles silently in the background and nods along. Being friendly. Playing a supportive role to the other leader. Or you might to and fro a bit with the conversation. It’s up to you.
When you get to a door, knock or ring the bell politely, but call like you mean it. Stand back a bit to make sure you show how respectful you intend to be of the inhabitant’s personal space, but make sure the person who answers can see your name badge or group credentials on display. Perhaps you are being accompanied by a local person with some standing in the community? Or perhaps you are calling from a respected local institution? If so, make all of this clear at the top. Knocking assertively signals your confidence and purpose, making it more likely that people will engage with you.
Credibility is currency. When someone hears a knock on their door, the first thing they think is: who is that? They might take a quick look at you through the window to check you out, or through the keyhole. In some areas, people are going to be more suspicious of knocks on the door than in other areas. When someone decides to answer the door, they’re now asking themselves a further question: are these people friends, or foes? You need to answer these questions in the first few seconds after the door opens: through your body language, the sort of clothing you wear, by having your IDs visible—if that’s what you use. You’re being sussed out to see if you’re offering the person something helpful, or if you want to take something away. You need to work with that dynamic. We are offering a relationship. A listening ear. Smile and be friendly. We are going to be a positive addition to that person’s life and we need to signal it to them—straight away.
Step 3: Love Your Neighbour
Organising is an iterative process. Presuming this isn’t a one-off campaign, presuming that you’re planning to run something a little more permanent, when we are door knocking what we are really doing is making ourselves into the new next door neighbour. Until the time you knocked, Mary or Tom, or whoever lives at number 32, may have lived without too much contact with their neighbours. But from now on they have you, as their new next door neighbour. From this day on, you’ll be living alongside them—permanently. The new next door neighbour. Over time they should start to see you that way. So, when we knock on the door for the first time, we should come across a bit like that new neighbour, coming round to make a gentle introduction. That’s how to see this first encounter. Of course, this also means you need to come back regularly to the estate, or street. Gently building up contact over time.
Introduce yourself and explain why you're there. Perhaps tell them, “we’re neighbours. From the church/community centre/union branch behind your block.” Let them know you are only there to say a quick hello. Remember, you aren’t doing sales. You aren’t calling from a political party: you don’t want anything. You aren’t offering anything either. Only the prospect of relationships. Remember that relationships will form naturally through repeated contact made over time. In this way, strong relationships grow from quite short conversations repeated several times over a longer period. Because you’re genuinely planning on coming back a second time, you’re free to break away from scripts and the rigidness of sales-like recruitment drives, and to be yourself. To build a real relationship. There’s no need to hang around for half an hour, flogging your services. You’ll be back, so you can keep it brief. Focus on getting a high churn of short conversations. Ask open-ended questions that get people talking. Probe gently for any issues of local concern too. And for heaven's sake, look friendly; you’re not auditing them for HMRC. Using an icebreaker, sharing a story or a personal anecdote can make you more relatable. More memorable.
If someone seems interested or engaged, make a mental note of it. These are the people you'll want to circle back to and develop ties with. Maybe they mention that they’re interested in seeing more community events happening. Then hint that you know about some local events or initiatives that might pique their interest. Think on your feet. Spend a few minutes building rapport. But don’t overstay your welcome. Take some contact details, if it feels like the right time to ask. Maybe fish a bit and find out if there is a local WhatsApp group or Facebook page for residents that they have some leverage over. Find out if they know anyone else locally. Try to arrange a time to pop back and meet them again. After every meeting, take down some notes, but never note down anything while you’re talking to someone. You’re not interviewing them. This is relational work. Deepening the connection for a few moments serves to help you to identify potential allies and resources within the community, making your campaign more robust and resilient.