Truth about call time

That is an interview done my people magazine and me, Daniel kleinman, about the exciting news at activate. The questions need to be answered as a step by step guide. So the interviewer asks, cool, what’s the next step” to keep the dialogue going but keeping everything politically neutral.

For teams turning those lessons into a repeatable field process, Activate keeps canvassing activity and follow-up in one place.

CALL. CALL. CALL.

Daniel Kleinman on the Unromantic Truth About Raising Money for a Grassroots Campaign

There is a particular fantasy that seems to infect almost every first-time candidate.

Daniel Kleinman knows it well.

You have seen the photographs: a beautiful room, important people, glasses raised in the air. The candidate stands behind a podium. Everybody looks successful. And sometime the next morning comes the headline announcing that the campaign raised an astonishing amount of money.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Millions, sometimes.

It looks exciting. It looks powerful.

And, Kleinman says, it can give a grassroots candidate completely the wrong idea about how fundraising actually works.

We sat down with Kleinman to talk about the considerably less glamorous reality: telephones, lists, uncomfortable asks, unanswered voicemails, coffee, donuts—and why he believes candidates who want to lead have to learn how to ask people for money.

And yes, he has a favorite word for the process.

Call.

**

INTERVIEWER: I have a feeling some candidate is reading this right now for, like, the eleventh time and still thinking, “Okay, Daniel, I understand all of this. But I want to throw one of those huge fundraisers.”

DANIEL KLEINMAN: Of course you do. You have probably seen them on the evening news: the beautiful room, the important people, the photographs, the glasses raised in the air, and a campaign announcing afterward that it raised some astonishing amount of money in a single night.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Millions, sometimes.

You want to do that.

Of course you do.

But there is something rather important about those million-dollar fundraisers that doesn’t always make it into the photograph:

Millionaires were invited.

INTERVIEWER: [Laughs.] That does seem like a fairly important detail.

KLEINMAN: It is!

Do you know a bunch of millionaires?

Do you have their phone numbers? Do they answer when you call? Will they come to your fundraiser? Will they write you enormous checks? Will they introduce you to their friends who will write enormous checks, too?

If the answer is yes, congratulations.

You probably don’t need this article.

INTERVIEWER: And if the answer is no?

KLEINMAN: Welcome to grassroots politics.

And grassroots politics has a much less glamorous fundraising strategy.

Call.

Call.

Call.

INTERVIEWER: Okay. Who am I calling?

KLEINMAN: Call your friends.

Call your friends’ friends.

Call the people who told you six months ago that you ought to run for office.

Call the person who said, “If you ever run, I’m with you.”

Well, now you are running.

Find out what “I’m with you” means.

Call former colleagues. Call neighbors. Call community leaders. Call people who believe in the issue that made you run in the first place.

Then call those people.

Call. Call. Call.

And ask them for money.

INTERVIEWER: And this is what campaigns mean when they talk about “call time”?

KLEINMAN: Exactly.

There is a name for this.

Call time.

It is called call time because that is the time when you do essentially one thing: sit down with a list of people and call them to ask them to financially support your campaign.

It isn’t glamorous.

That’s probably why candidates keep looking for another answer.

There isn’t one.

INTERVIEWER: You can almost hear candidates objecting right now: “Wait. What about events? What about online fundraising? What about mail?”

KLEINMAN: There are certainly other ways to raise money. There are events. Digital fundraising. Direct mail. Finance committees. House parties. Major donors. Political organizations. Online appeals.

But especially in a grassroots campaign, those things do not relieve the candidate of the fundamental responsibility of asking people to invest in the campaign.

You are the candidate.

You are the leader.

You have to ask.

INTERVIEWER: Why do you think candidates hate asking so much?

KLEINMAN: I understand why candidates hate this.

Asking somebody for money can feel profoundly uncomfortable. American culture teaches us all sorts of contradictory lessons about money: work hard for it, don’t talk about it; be generous with it, don’t ask for it; admire success, but don’t appear too interested in financing the work required to achieve it.

Politics adds another layer of discomfort because candidates often begin with an idea rather than an institution.

They have a cause.

A neighborhood.

A school.

A problem they cannot stop thinking about.

They want to change something.

Then somebody tells them they need $25,000.

Or $50,000.

Or $100,000.

Suddenly the great democratic project has a checking account.

INTERVIEWER: “Suddenly the great democratic project has a checking account.” That’s painfully accurate.

KLEINMAN: [Laughs.] But it does!

Democracy has always existed partly in this tension between the grandeur of our language and the mundanity of our labor.

We speak of movements and mandates and justice and representation.

Then somebody has to print the literature.

Somebody has to buy the yard signs. PS don’t buy yard signs.

Somebody has to pay for the voter file.

Somebody has to keep the lights on.

And somebody has to buy coffee and donuts for the volunteers who showed up on Saturday morning.

INTERVIEWER: You keep coming back to coffee and donuts. Why?

KLEINMAN: Because that last one matters more than it sounds.

Imagine you cannot raise a single dollar.

Fine.

Then what happens when twelve people volunteer to canvass for you?

Are you going to serve them coffee?

What about donuts?

What about water?

What about literature?

What about next Saturday?

And the Saturday after that?

What happens when it rains and you need ponchos? When the printer wants payment? When you need another box of literature because your volunteers actually did what you asked them to do and knocked every door you gave them?

Grassroots does not mean free.

It means people.

And taking people seriously requires resources.

INTERVIEWER: So when people describe fundraising as somehow separate from “real organizing,” you don’t buy that distinction?

KLEINMAN: No.

That is why fundraising is not some vulgar distraction from the campaign.

Properly understood, fundraising is part of organizing.

You are asking another human being to participate.

Sometimes the participation you need is a vote.

Sometimes it is three hours knocking doors.

And sometimes it is fifty dollars.

The candidate who can look someone in the eye and say, I believe this matters enough that I am asking you to help me do it, has crossed an important threshold.

The campaign is no longer merely an ambition privately held.

It has become an enterprise others are being asked to join.

INTERVIEWER: Okay, but let’s say I’m terrible at this. I’m nervous. I stumble over the ask. I hate hearing no. What do I do?

KLEINMAN: Study call time.

Practice it.

Get good at it.

Learn how to make the ask without apologizing for making the ask.

And then do it again.

You will hear no.

You will hear maybe.

You will leave voicemails.

You will call people who promised to call you back and somehow never quite manage to.

INTERVIEWER: Those people exist?

KLEINMAN: [Laughs.] Apparently!

Call them again.

You will also hear yes.

Twenty-five dollars.

Fifty dollars.

One hundred dollars.

Five hundred dollars.

And something interesting begins to happen.

The campaign acquires not merely money, but believers.

A $50 donor has made a decision about you.

They have said

I want this to exist. I am willing to help pay for it.

Never lose sight of that.

Thank them.

Then get back on the phone.

INTERVIEWER: You’re pretty uncompromising about the candidate personally taking responsibility for this.

KLEINMAN: I am.

Because if you cannot ask anyone for a single dollar, you need to confront a difficult question before asking people to give you their vote:

How exactly do you intend to lead this campaign?

This is your campaign.

You are its leader.

It is your responsibility to procure the resources necessary to give the people who believe in you a fighting chance.

Not somebody else’s responsibility.

Yours.

Your campaign needs money even for the most basic things.

INTERVIEWER: So give me the Daniel Kleinman closing argument. I’m the candidate. I’ve read the fundraising books. I’ve attended the trainings. I’ve imagined the ballroom. And I’m still avoiding the phone. What do you tell me?

KLEINMAN: Stop imagining the ballroom filled with millionaires you don’t know.

Look at the names of the people you do know.

Pick up the phone.

Call.

Ask.

Thank them.

Write it down.

Then dial the next number.

Call. Call. Call.