Building The Washington Grassroots Organization

Statewide Grassroots Organizational Structure

The Concept

Our proposed statewide structure is meant to be bottom–up. As ideas, strategies and resources are developed at the local levels, they can then be passed upwards to the statewide structure. From there, these tools are more readily made available to the other local organizations. This will save people from reinventing the wheel, and could well give people new perspectives they hadn’t considered before. It will also go a long ways in developing a more cohesive and unified grassroots campaign.

The following flowchart shows what we propose to develop in terms of an organizational structure. If it looks surprisingly like the Democratic Party structure, well, there’s good reason for that. Keep in mind, we’re not meaning to replace the Democratic Party – many (not all) of us believe in working both within and outside of the Democratic Party.

Please keep in mind, the flow chart (and the explanation that follows) is not carved in stone. This is a suggested starting point for developing our statewide organization, and is open to discussion with the larger organization.

(Right–click and download the PDF flow-chart here.)

PCOs and Precinct Teams

At the top of the organization is the PCO (Precinct Committee Officer). It is the PCOs who have the best opportunity understand what the majority of people in the neighborhoods are thinking and saying — a very important consideration in a true bottom–up democracy. From both the perspective of understanding the majority, and in helping develop “an informed and educated electorate,” it’s important to have PCOs in every precinct.

Even better than having a PCO in every precinct is having a precinct team in every precinct. See our PCO Recruiting page for more information on this topic.

(In the traditional sense, the PCOs are the base of a bottom–up organization. We’ve inverted our flow chart to show the most important part of the organization at the top. Ultimately it is the people living within the precincts that we should serve. A leader, after all, should be nothing more than a humble servant.)

Area Coordinators

The person filling this role works more to support the PCO/precinct teams in their work, as well as facilitate the flow of information. An area facilitator can also be a PCO. By having people working in such a position, it also ensures that precincts not covered by a PCO/precinct team won’t go without people “walking the streets.” By ensuring that uncovered areas are canvassed, we open up new opportunities for recruiting PCOs/precinct teams in those precincts.

County/LD Organizer

This is the area that the current grassroots structure is presently the strongest (although there are still a few counties in the state that we need to find people to perform this grassroots organizational function). The present contacts for most of the County/LD coordinators is located on our Get Involved page. If you don’t see your county or LD represented on this page, Contact Us.

Congressional District Organizer

The CD organizer isn’t necessarily required to follow strict Congressional District boundaries — we use this term out of convenience. Given that many LDs are split between CDs, to follow these boundaries strictly would not be efficient for our organizational purposes.

In reality, the LD/County organizations would determine what constitutes a workable organizational model. Like the Area Coordinator, this role is more facilitative than anything else. A CD Organizer can also be an LD Coordinator (anyone filling one role can easily fill other rolls concurrently).

As can be seen from the flow chart, both the LD and CD coordinators are part of the overall statewide coordinating committee, just as is true with the Groups Organizers.

Groups Organizer

This is one of the weak areas of our grassroots campaign. While the importance of reaching out to various groups and organizations has been discussed many times in the past, we’ve not had enough people to coordinate this vital work. Given that we now have far more people participating (especially since the precinct caucuses), it’s time to start developing this vital outreach work.

(The various groups listed above the Groups Coordinator should not be taken as a complete list. There are many other groups out there which shouldn't be overlooked nor neglected.)

Washington For Obama Coordinating Committee

This is where all of the parts produce the whole. Again, the purpose is to facilitate the flow of information and the sharing of resources. The coordinating committee ties this all together, and includes representatives from all of the local organizations.

ALL Of The Task Groups

In one sense, it was easier to post the various task groups as functions of the Coordinating Committee. In reality, the Task Groups are comprised of people within the LD/County organizations. These Task Groups can function both autonomously within a local organization and in a coordinated manner as well.

To give a couple of examples:

The Financing Committee would be more a function of the Coordinating Committee. If we’re able to put together some good funding sources, then this group can steer the resources required by various local organizations in the appropriate direction.

The PR/Media group could function at either the LD/County or State Level. If an LD or County has a specific media need they’re capable of taking care of, cool. However, it’s even better if everyone is working on the same page to ensure that a consistent message is being framed. For those groups in need of help with PR/Media, that larger team is ready to help out.

The same is true for the Merchandising Group. It could well be that some areas have a ton of such talent, while other areas have no one with such abilities. Either way, with a good statewide structure, everyone’s needs can be (in theory) taken care of, and the wheel not constantly re–invented.

The Communications Group will definitely need participates from each LD.

We plan on adding a section to this website specifically for each local organization. These new pages will replace the Newsletter pages, and will give the local groups the opportunity to contribute directly to the website with news, events and stories of successful strategies from their areas. For those local organizations that already maintain a website, we can provide better linking mechanisms.

Another important consideration for the local Communications Groups will be the monitoring of the Barack Obama list servs and events calendars. A lot of new activists can be found through monitoring such activities on a regular basis. Other local communcation channels could also be monitored in a systematic way.

The Volunteer Group presents some interesting possibilities. It’s good that there are volunteer coordinators at the County/LD levels. But what happens if there is a parade you want to cover in your area, and you don’t have enough people to swell the ranks? Enter the larger, coordinated Volunteer Committee (which is drawn from all of the LDs) to help fill in the gaps.

It is hoped that each local group can develop their own calendars of community events for an Obama presence. Where that isn’t possible, the larger organization is more than willing to support such efforts. Again, where a local organization can’t gain enough participants, we would hope to be able to send people to support from outlying areas.

These are but a couple of examples of how such Task Groups could function. Again, it’s not meant to be top–down — it’s meant to be facilitative and supportive.

Because this is meant to be a bottom–up organization, the concepts presented in the above flow chart are open for discussion and modification. Just because a few people are advancing the idea to get things going doesn’t mean it has to be accepted as carved in stone.

It is, however, a good place to start.