Engage with new hires, potential members, and current members throughout the year. Reaching out before the orientation and throughout the year allows establishes the union as a trusted resource and reinforces the value of membership. All engagement events and 1:1s should include a membership ask and tracking of the contact in the state-designated database.

Sample tactics:

• Train member leaders and Member Organizers on one-on-one organizing conversations and data tracking.
• Use the Year-Round Organizing card as a tool to develop engagement opportunities of interest to your members and potential members.
• You don't have to wait until new hire orientation! Reach out to graduating seniors at local education programs and plan pre-orientation engagement events.

Create a plan to make membership and PAC asks at every new employee orientation (NEO) and union-lead event. Make a game plan that helps local union members and representatives approach, recruit, and follow up with potential members year-round.

Sample tactics:

• Support early career educators in sharing their personal union story during NEOs and other union-led events.
• Train early career educators, Building Reps, Member Organizers, and other leaders to engage with participants at union-led events and follow up with them for 1:1 recruitment conversations.
• Create ways to reward locals or worksites with the most recurring contributions to PAC by the highest number of members.

Focus on in-person follow-up conversations. Members are the most effective recruiters of new members. A strong follow-up plan supports Association Representatives, Member Organizers, and worksite activists in having targeted one-on-one organizing conversations with new and potential members at the worksite worksite focused on issues of importance and built on relationships, trust, and experience.

Sample tactics:

• Prioritize leader identification in worksites to increase capacity for personalized follow-up conversations.
• Train current members to follow-up with members and potential members at each worksite. Training includes: listening, asking probing questions, getting a commitment, leader ID, making the membership ask, etc.
• Assess new member, identified potential member, and outstanding potential member data ("hot lists") to determine priority worksites and individuals for recruitment outreach.

Use data to drive decision-making, plan campaigns, and offer engagement opportunities. The Year-Round Organizing card survey data identifies opportunities to develop activists, organizing campaigns, issue-specific education, and professional supports that can be used to execute meaningful engagements that help win campaigns.

Sample tactics:

• Use survey data to identify potential engagements and plan networking, professional supports, and other engagement opportunities around issues potential and existing members indicate interest in. 
• Analyze survey data to inform decisions around planned advocacy programming and developing issue campaigns.
• Review individual survey data to personalize individual organizing conversations and target turnout drives to events.
   

A diverse group of natural leaders exists in all workplaces. It is essential to identify them, train and support them, and offer them pathways to use their skills to move others to action.

Sample tactics:

• Utilize data and assessment systems in your state-designated database to identify new leaders and activists.
• Establish many pathways for leadership, including membership committees, contract action teams, bargaining teams, and other committees of members.
• Have member engagement and recruitment led by members, with staff support. These members can then trained in leadership identification and trained as leaders themselves.
   

Effective communication structures facilitate two-way communication between rank-and-file members and leadership that purposefully emphasizes transparency and democratizes decision-making. Accurate and up-to-date contact information must be regularly gathered and maintained, both for potential and existing members.

Sample Tactics:

• Send emails to members and potential members that communicate wins, make follow-up asks, and provide opportunities for two-way communication with the union.
• Set up websites, Facebook pages, and/or other social media accounts that are updated frequently and has easy-to-find join links, as well local information and cross-posts of state and national content.
• Use contact data gathered from the Year-Round Organizing cards to reach out to "hot lists" and target engagement opportunities to members and for recruitment of new members.