How to hold a house meeting

House meetings can be an effective technique for building volunteer teams from existing social network to help a campaign from 5 to 50 to 500 volunteers.

For a house meeting, a volunteer invites their friends to a meet, shares personal stories about why they want to get involved, connect their interests to the campaign, and plan future actions including more house meetings.  When done well, the house meeting develops the leadership skills of the volunteers, forms a new leadership team, plans an action, and leads to multiple additional house meetings.

House meetings have been used since Cesar Chavez's 1960s United Farm Workers campaign and later formalized by Marshal Ganz as a central tactic to the 2008 Obama for America campaign.

Objectives

  • Organize a house meeting.

  • Identify new leaders and volunteers.

  • Plan an action.

  • Form a new team.

Key messages

  • House meetings build campaign capacity by identifying leaders, build relationships, recruiting supporters & moving them to action.

  • The keys to success for a house meeting are:

    • timing - house meetings are most useful in the early months of campaigns to build the army of volunteers you need to later mobilize supporters.

    • attendance - for the house meetings to work, you need people to show up, usually between 5-25.

    • vision - house meetings should help people connect their values to the campaign and how their actions bring the campaign vision to life

    • connection - there is a saying: "come for the cause, stay for the relationships" -- house meetings should help people build the relationships that keep them coming back

    • action - house meetings don't meet just to meet, they make a hard ask to get commitment to a specific action.

  • A typical house meeting agenda is:

    • show up and sign in

    • host welcomes and introduces

    • guest introduce self and why came

    • organizer share vision of campaign

    • call to action

    • thank host & clean up

    • follow up with volunteers

  • Organizing is empowering others by building and scaling personal relationships -- house meetings are one way to do that.

Time

  • 1 hour to prepare

  • 1 hour to invite people

  • 1.5-2 hours for the house meeting

Materials

Preparation

Watch these videos to learn how to hold a house meeting.

  • Remember that anyone can do this!  Get your friends and family to help.

  • Set a time and location.  Weekday evening or weekends work well, but chose a time and location that works for you network whether that is coffee, breakfast, BBQ, etc.

  • Prepare a few hard asks.  The first ask should be a public request to hold a house meeting in the next two weeks. The second ask should be an outreach action such as canvasing, flyering, or sharing PB.  ​​​​​​​

  • Both the host and organizer should both prepare a story about why they are working on participatory budgeting -- see story of self, us, & now.

  • Decide if you want to use the participatory budgeting video or slides to talk about the campaign, and make sure you have any necessary AV equipment.

  • Prepare some icebreaker questions if necessary​​​​​​​. 

Procedure

Invite people

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​1. Work with the host to draft an invite list. Start by going through the host's contact list.  If the host is open to inviting people outside their network, you might also provide names from other lists.  Record these names on the House meeting planner (Resource 1).

If the goal is to have 20 people attend, then you want to make invitations to 50 people.  These invitations might be the most important contacts the campaign will make with supporters.

2. Use the House meeting call scripts (Resource 2) to invite people on the list and record their responses on the House meeting planner (Resource 1)

If you can't reach people by phone, design a well-crafted email and send to the invite list.

3. You may want to post on social media groups.  If you do, make sure to also nudge people by phone or email, social media alone is not enough to make sure people show up.

4. Send a follow up confirmation at least a day before using the House meeting call scripts (Resource 2)

Before the meeting

1. Get food for the meeting.

2. Setup the space. 

The space should invite conversation, allowing people to share their personal story, give opportunities to get to know each other, connect shared stories to values, ask questions, and empathetic listening.

Setup the chairs in the living room chairs in a circle so that everyone has opportunity to listen, converse, and introduce themselves.

Setup signup sheets, name tags and pens where people can sign in when they arrive.

House meeting

I. Welcome (30 min)

  • As people arrive, have them get food, get to know each other and start building relationships.

  • Be warm and welcoming to guests and have some icebreaker questions ready. If people are shy, bring them in and introduce them to others.

  • Remember to take few pictures.

II. Host Introduction (15 min)

  • Invite the guest to take their seats.

  • Have the host welcome everyone and share why they are supporting participatory budgeting. Let the host take their time sharing their story.

III. Guest Introduction (15 min)

  • The host asks everyone to introduce themselves why they are here tonight.

  • This can be short statement like: "I'm Kate, I'm here because I want to improve access to affordable housing in Evanston."

IV. Campaign introduction (15 min)

  • The host should introduce you the organizer.

  • Share your personal story, including why you are here and a bit about campaign strategy. This is important because before you can make a call to action, supporters have to understand how their actions will contribute to a larger impact. Be transparent about the goals of participatory budgeting and the participatory budgeting timeline to help people see how they can be part of something bigger.

V. Call to Action (5 min)

  • House meetings aren't just meeting for the sake of meeting, the purpose is to move people to action.

  • Make a hard ask - explain the, what, when, where, why of the ask. For example: "we need people to help us canvas at Lehigh Park from 6-8pm this Saturday, to help us reach our goal of signing up 1000 community members for participatory budgeting."

  • Share the opportunity for everyone to get involved and sign them up. Pass the clipboard around and make sure to get phone numbers, to call everyone to thank and confirm shift.

VI. Wrap up

  • Have the hosts thanks guests and wrap up the meeting

VII. Clean up

  • Thank the host

  • Debrief how the meeting went and discuss next steps

  • Help the host clean up.

Follow up

1. Enter people's contact information into the database

2. Post pictures of the event on the campaign social media

3. Follow up with participants to thank them for signing up and remind them about the upcoming action.

Sources

  • Catherall, K. (2018). How to hold a house meeting Resistance School -- good lecture on how house meetings work.

  • McKenna, E. & Han, H. (2014). Groundbreakers: How Obama's 2.2 million volunteers transformed campaigning in America. Oxford. Chapter 4 gives a great overview of how house meetings fit into the overall campaign based on the 2008 and 2012 Obama Campaigns.

  • New Organizing Institute (n.d.). Engagement Organizing Trainings -- see House Meeting Campaign Toolkit, p. 68.

  • Organizing for Action. (2013). Organizing Manual -- see How to Organize a House Meeting, p. 149.