Reflections and recommendations to members
Reflections and recommendations
from outgoing Executive Committee
May 2023
Introduction
This note has been produced, for all members and Green councillors, to provide insights and information from the current Executive Committee, on some high-level issues facing Exeter Green Party. The idea is to capture insights and suggestions to pass on to the next Executive Committee, who will be elected at the July 26th Annual General Meeting.
Exeter Green Party is working with a new constitution agreed in mid-December 2021, of which an elected Executive Committee is a key element. The AGM is in July, in order to bring it back in line with the usual timing for Green Party AGMs.
The new executive committee (ExCom) was elected in December 2021. At this point, our early elections work was already underway. However, the campaigns were not as developed as they needed to be with delayed candidate selection and stalled door knocking activity. As many members know, a variety of issues (not least our recent period without a party management system in place, ) hampered the local party’s ability to mobilise prior to and between July and December 2021. However, despite the lost ground, the party delivered three target campaigns and a development campaign across four of the city’s thirteen wards. This achievement is both a record output and a record success with three new Green councillors returned, propelling us into position as the official opposition in partnership with the Liberal Democrats and an independent councillor.
The unanimous view of the outgoing ExCom is that the primary purpose of a local Green Party is to win elections so we can help make our city a place with greater social and environmental justice. There are several key components in a successful election strategy and in running a successful local party. Our hope in dissecting the local party’s approach, successes and failures in this election cycle, is to share understanding and to help us grow as a political force in the city.
Reflections
Volunteers - current capacity and future needs
Volunteer recruitment, retention and coordination are the bedrock of our ward-based campaigns, as around 80% of all our volunteer time and party funds go on delivering newsletters and door knocking. The local party currently has 283 members, approximately 50% of whom are volunteers, plus approximately another 30 volunteers who are not members. ExCom’s view is that although we have been successful at identifying and developing volunteers in recent years, we still have a significant way to go to meet our goals for the new campaign cycle and beyond.
To understand the party’s needs, it’s useful to categorise volunteers as set out below. The requirements for the coming campaign are also set out here to inform thinking about how much we can expand our electoral ambitions.
Delivering newsletters/election leaflets, from June through to the following May election. A general and important point is that there is a need to maintain a continual recruitment drive at ward level. Without that, the pool of people helping dwindles quite rapidly. Here's the current situation in what are likely to be our four core target wards for 2023 (see section B below):
Heavitree has broadly enough people
Newtown and St Leonards has nearly enough
St David’s needs significantly more people
Pennsylvania needs significantly more people
Door knocking - from September to May
Every ward needs more door-knocking volunteers. This is despite considerable efforts made since May 2022, to recruit and train new volunteers. Best practice suggests that a ‘full’ door-knocking programme consists of at least a weekly session per target ward from September to March moving to three times weekly between March and May. In practice, the local party has only managed to mobilise 1-2 volunteers per door knocking session and this number includes both the candidates and members of ExCom wearing double hats as ward leads. Looking ahead to 2023, if we are to hold the two seats we are defending and make planned gains, more door knocking volunteers will be required.
In the May 2022 campaign, a tiny number of core activists did all the data entry for doorknocking. In this campaign, we recruited and trained a whole set of data entry volunteers. This proved vital and successful, given the volume of material to enter, but also raises a new level of organisational and training requirements
Specialist roles at ward level eg managing the newsletter delivery process.
We have made huge steps since May 2022, with new teams managing the delivery of newsletters in some wards, and volunteers moving towards support and strategy roles in target wards. But we have significant gaps, and plugging those, and then adding in new teams for any new target wards is a ‘must have’ for a successful ward campaign. In particular, any target or development ward needs to have at least 2 people who manage the whole process of allocating newsletters to the delivery volunteers.
Specialist roles for the whole party eg IT or communications support.
We have made some progress, but haven’t had time since December 2022, to do what we believe is essential for us to even manage to support campaigns in the 4 wards we worked in for May 2022, let alone in new wards. That essential thing is, in Exec Comms view, to set up several new working groups that cover specialist functions that are critical for our work: Digital, communications, administration, volunteers, fundraising, elections work, and strategy/policy - at both city and ward level. This is about drawing in more people with the relevant skills, time and will to do jobs that involve responsibility and some regular input - or who are willing to learn new skills.
The current gaps in being able to deliver these core party functionspose a serious risk to our ability to function efficiently and effectively, as they are ‘must haves’ for a party that has grown to the point where we can no longer rely on the model of ‘one keen person’ tackling a large role alone.ExCom would like to pay tribute to the success of our networks of specialist volunteers. Ranging from data to press to design, we have an exceptionally talented and dedicated core of volunteers who deliver collectively and individually on key specialised work plans. Further work is needed to standardise and expand this work, see recommendations below for further detail.
B. Target Wards for 2023?
Based on standard Green Party best practice, the current Executive Committee have agreed on reselecting the last year's four wards immediately as the target wards for 2023. That is:
- St David’s
- Heavitree, (because our newly elected councillor Carol Bennett only has one year to run, having picked up a by-election seat)
- Newtown St Leonards
- Pennsylvania, ideally elevated to full target ward.
But even choosing these four target wards is, in our view, dependent on addressing some of the critical gaps in our volunteer base, as set out earlier in this note.
We suggest preparing for the possibility of one or two further target or development wards, but not committing to them until we are clear that we have sufficient capacity to run realistic campaigns in the four target wards - at ward level and for the critical supporting cross-party functions as set out in the section on volunteers
C. Choosing target candidates
Up to now, we have suffered from a shortage of credible target candidates who were known to the party. Because of that, we have had to select candidates who had little or no engagement with the party before their selection. This has not always turned out well. Normal Green Party best practice is where at all possible, to have target candidates who have been quite closely involved with some aspect of party work so that they build their understanding of what running a local party is, what being a councillor is, and relationships and trust across the core activists and councillors.
For this reason, we have added into our ‘decision register’, that candidates who have a track record of positive involvement with the local party will be preferred over candidates who have none unless a candidate would not otherwise be found.
We remind members of our protocol that all candidates are ‘stood down’ after an election, for a fresh selection process. As we grow, we will see a healthy competition for seats from good candidates, (as is seen in other Green Parties), so an impartial selection process remains important.
There will be an early call out for target candidates in July probably followed by a second call out in the autumn as things become clearer regarding whether we have capacity for further development or target wards.
D. Ward teams - the way forward
A new feature of the May 2022 campaign was the aspiration to create ‘ward teams’, who between them carried out much of the critical work that comprises a ward campaign. Great progress was made in Heavitree and Newtown St Leonards, with further progress already being actioned with the set up of new roles. Pennsylvania and St David’s had very small numbers of people achieving a lot, so there is work to be done there in creating more robust teams.
We suggest that:
Ward teams are retained as the organising principle for organising leaflet delivery, canvassing and doing work with candidates and councillors on ward issues.
That each ward team does need someone or some people are across everything and keeping that drive forward. This could be a ward lead, or better, a ward committee that includes delivery organisers, canvassers, and support team. That person or people do need a clear line into the Executive Committee though, as a surprising number of issues related to issues of prioritising resources in line with the agreed party strategy, and policy issues which can be ward or city-wide level.
E. Managing Exeter Green Party’s expansion
This past campaign year has shown the radical difference between who we were in 2019 - a small group of people who all knew each other pretty well, seeking to get one councillor elected in one ward - to where we are now, just 3 years later. Now, ‘running the party’ i.e. managing multiple ward campaigns, keeping everyone working together, handling the frequent decisions and actions and funding our activities is like running a not so small organisation - but all with volunteers. We have also had 6 months of a fairly different way of working with our new constitution. Our reflections on this are:
The May 2022 election campaign was only successful because of non-sustainable levels of work by a few people in roles that required more responsibility and/or specialist knowledge, on top of fantastic efforts by a very large number of people. In particular, the Executive Committee had to take on several roles because no one was found to fill them. This is to repeat the theme that we can only expand if more people step into roles /express an interest in learning about new roles.
The ‘whole system’ of Exeter Green Party is increasingly large and complex, meaning we need to invest more time in just ensuring people are kept in the loop, avoiding duplication etc
Our experience as the first set of elected officers acting as an Executive Committee is that good working relationships and trust among the three officers is vital. The three roles cannot be seen as independent areas of operation as there are so many crossovers.
Executive Committee officers should if at all possible, not have to take on other roles. We recommend consideration of job-share approach to each role, to both encourage people to stand for election who are concerned about time commitment and to build in resilience and allow for people to learn and develop in the role.
Because the Executive Committee’s role is so critical, we have introduced a new protocol for this year’s AGM, that anyone wishing to stand has to submit 200 words in writing about why they are standing and their relevant skills and experience, including what they have done within Exeter Green Party, or another party if they have recently moved here. This is so members can vote with a fuller understanding of who they are voting for.
Having an experienced and competent election agent is absolutely critical and the party should start training up one or two people to shadow our current agent, TJ Milburn.
Whilst our constitution and ethos is build on member involvement, reaching members is actually very hard work as people choose different platforms, and email is only reaching half of our members. Exec Comm has recently started to try and address this by experimenting with other platforms like WhatsApp. Members showed little taste for attending the quarterly member meetings or Ex Comm meetings, with strong preference for engaging through a specific activity.
Conclusion
There can be no doubt, that Exeter Green Party is all but the city’s second party and main opposition. This is evident not just in the significant swing towards our party in recent years but by the repositioning of Exeter Labour as a ‘green party’. Although the Labour vote is broadly in decline across the city, they remain significantly bigger and better resourced than us.
To continue our upward trajectory we need, more volunteers and more money than we have ever mustered before. Therefore the three questions we would ask each member are:
what can you do?
how much can you afford to give?
who else can you recruit to help us?
We know so many members already give a tremendous amount of time, talent and money to support our efforts. However, if we are to raise the profile of the climate emergency, challenge bad council decision making and take control of the council we need to dig deeper and reach out further than we ever have before.
Recommendations for the new campaign (June 2022 to May 2023)
Future post holders of ExCom posts should not ‘double hat’ i.e. post holders should be able to focus on their ExCom roles.
Exec Comm and the group of Councillors need to maintain regular and close liaison
The Ward Team approach should be retained and actively built on. Each ward team will ideally have 4 types of volunteer roles:
logistics - organising delivery of newsletters
volunteer recruitment and volunteer /member relationships in the ward
door knocking - training, supporting and doing door knocking
Cllrs /candidate support - working on issues in the ward
New working groups covering core party functions. The party needs a range of groups that each tackle a critical party function, comprising people with relevant skills and knowledge, but also including a learning and development function to bring on new people in the roles. The Working Groups that are needed are:
Press and external communications work. Ideally, a team of 5 will work together on daily output across press, web and social media platforms.
IT systems. A group to maintain and improve our various digital systems.
A strategic group that liaises with Exec Comm and the Cllr group on high-level city issues, and political strategy.
elections group, focussing on election data and working with the strategic group as there is some overlap.
Volunteer and member liaison.
Target ward selection.
We believe that we must consolidate and fill gaps before expanding further, or risk elements of the party coming under too much pressure and collapsing. We also believe it vital to ensure that the party retains the capacity to support our five elected councillors.
We, therefore, suggest that :
the four last wards (St D, NSL, Heavitree and Pennsylvania) are selected as target wards immediately, in line with GPEW guidelines.
one or two wards are agreed, also ASAP, as possible development or target wards, and if capacity is found, the groundwork done to set them up. But assume no mobilisation of newsletters or door knocking until we see have functioning ward teams in the four first target wards, new working groups set up and Ex Comm with a manageable workload. We believe that we must consolidate and fill gaps before expanding further.
