Small Business Outreach Day

Working with small businesses is one of the key strategies in our campaign to convince Congress to create millions of new green jobs by investing in clean energy and efficiency.

Small business owners are influential in the community and with our congressional targets, and they're great at explaining how important it is for Congress to invest in creating new jobs.

So, our goal is to get as many small businesses on board as possible--and then to start making their voices heard by delivering letters signed by business owners to members of Congress on April 16th.

Across the country, councils are getting together to reach out to businesses in their community. Here's everything you need to know to have a great small business outreach day.

Getting ready

• Pick a date and time: We recommend Saturday as a great day to get together. Most folks aren't working, but lots of businesses are open. Once you have your date, time and location set up, make sure you post them online: http://pol.moveon.org/event/smallbizoutreach

• Recruit!: While you don’t need a ton of people to do this, it's more fun if you're working other folks. You should call folks who came to your kickoff meeting. If you don't have the sign-in sheets, you can get their phone numbers from the host tools page – the link was in an email you should’ve received when you registered your event. If you lost that link, go to: http://pol.moveon.org/event/events/forgot.html?action_id=165. You should especially make sure to reach out to folks if they came to the small business small group.

You should also recruit folks from your council —you can find them on your council page: http://www.moveon.org/team

• Get your materials ready: We've put together a small packet to help folks talk to small business owners. You can download it here: http://pol.moveon.org/poweruplaunch/smallbizhandout.doc You should print out extra copies of the letter for everyone. We recommend 5 letters per person.

Suggested agenda for your event

• Welcome folks and remind them why we're doing this (here's a quick overview of our organizing story) We also suggest a round of introductions.

• Call people you know: Personal connections are the best way to sign up a business. So have everyone think through who they know who owns a business, or even works at one. Then have them give those folks a call and ask them to sign the letter and join the campaign.

If it's easier to give them an online version, it's at moveon.org/smallbusiness. However, you should use that as a back-up, not as your first choice. Getting someone’s signature face-to-face is a great chance to engage them more deeply in the campaign. It’s also a chance to get business cards from them, and to take their photo. If you get their signature online, you miss all that.

• Go out and talk to businesses. After you're done with that, we recommend that you pick an area (or a few areas) of town where there are lots of businesses and go out and talk to them. This in-person outreach is the most effective way to sign up new businesses, and it can be fun once you get started.

If folks in your group are feeling nervous about talking to business owners, you should have everyone do a few "practice" rounds with each other. There’s a script to help your outreach in the small business outreach packet.

•Wrap up. After you're done talking to businesses, get folks back together to celebrate your success and talk about next steps. Here are the two key next steps:

o Follow up: Many of the businesses you visit will tell you that you need to get back to them (either the owner isn't available, or they need more time). So make sure people are committed to following up with those folks.

o Delivery: On April 16th, your council should plan on delivering the letters to your targeted member of Congress. Make sure everyone knows what you're planning on doing and start getting commitments for folks to come.

• You should also collect all the letters that folks got signed! You want to make sure you keep a hold of these so you can make sure they're delivered to your member of Congress.

After your event

• Enter the businesses you signed up into our online system: http://www.moveon.org/smallbusiness This is really important because it's the only way we have to collect the work everyone is doing across the country.

• Send a thank you note to folks who came—and remind them of the next steps!