LOCAL TEAM TOOLKIT
A guide to effective local teams
Profile of successful local teams:
✔ 5+ Active and consistent members that have fun
together!
✔ A shared purpose - expressed through 3-5 goals for the year
✔ Strong relationships with city staff and elected officials
✔ Partners to help advocate
✔ Regular meetings and communication
Active Membership
Personal relationships matter. People respond well to personal outreach, one-on-one conversations, and group activities to bond, as well as a shared purpose.
Social cohesion generates accountability to one’s group. But everyone is a volunteer, so there’s no need to overly pressure people to attend meetings or to have penalties if someone isn’t as engaged in the group as they once were or as much as you think they should be. Be kind, give the benefit of the doubt, and don’t bad mouth fellow members.
Fun activities serve to connect you and your fellow volunteers so that your work becomes more meaningful and stronger. Themed rides or rides for treats (holiday rides, celebratory rides, boba, ice cream, beer, etc.) seem to do well. Consider the purpose of the ride. Is the target audience the team for a group meet-up? Are you trying to recruit new members? Tailor the theme and marketing to suit the goal.
Some ideas:
● Meet up by bike at city events
● Walking tour
● Attend a city council or government meeting
● Movie viewing party
● Book or movie discussion group
● Bike path maintenance day
● Ride to clean up the bay, Caltrain station, or some other area of your city
● Happy hour
● Regular morning coffee meet up
Shared Purpose
Teams that have a common purpose will be more cohesive and have more engaged members. Be ambitious, but realistic, when planning goals. At least yearly, set team priorities to keep the momentum going. Acknowledge when a goal will take years to accomplish and try to set yearly milestones toward achieving the goal, so as not to get discouraged by the slow-burn of advocacy work. Set more short-term goals to enjoy successes!
Keep members engaged by encouraging work on personal interests. If someone is particularly passionate about a project, ask them to lead the project with support. If someone is paying attention to city council, ask them to report to the group or check meeting agendas for items of interest. Does someone like to explore new areas of the city by bike? Ask them to plan a ride.
On the other hand, be careful that a particularly passionate member doesn’t derail the set goals of the team. For a member who suggests an entirely new project, make sure the team has the capacity or that the passionate member is willing to lead the effort before committing the team’s resources.
Building Relationships
Effective teams also have members who actively participate in city government. Look to recruit city board and commission members and encourage team members to apply for open seats on city boards or commissions. While on these committees, team members learn city government and develop relationships with city staff and elected officials.
City staff
City staff are often interested in regular meetings with constituents to provide updates on what the city is working on. Try to develop these relationships with pro-bike staff, but understand that not every city has such a staff member. Depending on the politics of the city and the staff member’s personality, they may be more or less forthcoming with what the city is working on but that hasn’t been publicly announced yet.
Elected officials (Champions vs. Allies):
Champions are those who have been fully converted to the biking way of life. They always vote for safer streets, are willing to listen to any ideas from biketivists, and put forth ideas on their own initiative. Keep these elected officials in office!
Allies are those who may not be already immersed in bike culture. They don’t necessarily have their own ideas to put forth in this arena, but they consistently vote for safer street projects. They are a vote you can count on when a bike lane is up for approval and they are willing to be educated about how to make the streets safer for all users.
Remember, with the exception of San Jose, our city council members are part-time and not paid very much for it. They spend a lot of their own free time trying to make your city better. Don’t expect them to be an expert in every issue – just try to educate them when you can. Give them talking points and backup data, if they are open to it. Invite them to rides and other events. Walk the streets with them so they can see what you see.
Partnerships with other groups
Connect with your local community-based organizations and other non-profits. Ask partners to share your information with their members: advertise events, sign your petitions, write letters to council members, or show up to make public comments. Return the favor. Advertise their events, petitions, etc. to your local team and on social media channels. Find overlap and develop campaigns around shared goals.
Meetings and Communication
A well-organized Local Team typically holds monthly meetings to check in on action items and discuss upcoming steps to move the campaign forward. It is the team leader's responsibility to organize regular meetings and work with the team to create an agenda.
See How to Run an Effective Meeting.
Suggestions for other forms of communication:
● Google Groups (SVBC provides)
● Slack (SVBC provides)
● Text & Emails
Potential goals:
Growing the local team by XX number or XX% within the year
Get a quick-build project in place
More and better bike parking in the city
Dedicated funding for Vision Zero infrastructure projects
Market-based pricing for parking in downtown areas to better manage the city’s parking resources
Start a regular bike bus to school
Specific Roles and Tasks
Team Leaders
We recommend a 2-core team leader model if possible, this way the team leaders can divvy up tasks among themselves and cover for one another when someone is unavailable. Team leaders facilitate and run effective team meetings, keep the team on-track with goals, campaigns, and events. Team leaders handle relationships with city staff and elected officials.
Effective Team leaders delegate – they find other active members to lead projects, plan events, run campaigns, or facilitate beneficial relationships.
Regular actions for Team leaders:
Facilitate local team meetings
Meet with city staff
Meet with elected officials
Facilitate team goal setting
Monitor city council and commission agendas for items of interest
Welcoming New Members
A Greeter (or Team Leader) sends a welcome message on behalf of the team when a new person joins.
● Make a personal connection – ask what interests the new team member and connect them with other team members with similar interests or situations. Example: Shawna is a new member. She rides with her kids to school when she can, but one intersection worries her. Try to connect Shawna with other parents in the group, perhaps at the same school. Highlight any recent Safe Routes to School accomplishments of the team or anything the team is currently trying to do. Ask city staff if there are plans to improve the worrisome intersection and report back to Shawna.
● Schedule a 1:1 – if time allows, meet for coffee or similar or schedule a virtual meeting to talk about the group and what interests the new member. Make a special effort to meet with any new member that expresses an interest in advocating for change in your city (you should meet those interested in social events when they attend anyway!)
● Tell them about upcoming events – highlight the next big event for the team and specifically ask them to attend to meet other members in person.
Maintain a Roster
Keep the roster up-to-date in the google drive for easy reference. Names and emails should be included. Consider including date joined, phone numbers, interests, or professional/personal connections of note (i.e. sister of a council woman, etc.). Also notes on special skills can be helpful, like: writing articles, website design, graphics design, analyzing data. The ‘join us’ google forms for each team can be linked to automatically update the roster.
Consensus Building
Speaking as a group with a name can have power and indicate that a large bloc of city voters are in agreement on an issue. As the local team grows and takes on more issues, the team should establish a way to decide positions or determine what actions to take as a team. If there is a large group of active members, the team should take some time in a team meeting to discuss a process. Determine how many people should agree to a position or action for it to be a group action. Here are some ideas for how the team could navigate a particular decision:
Have a meeting with voting
Do an online poll
Post in Slack and thumbs up/thumbs down (with a deadline to respond)
Determine a steering committee for a specific campaign (could be a Slack channel)
Agree that the team leads will have the final say on public, group statements on an issue
For some things, the team will be divided. That’s okay! The team doesn’t need to take a group position on everything. Sometimes the best course of action is for the group to remain silent and encourage individual members to speak independently.
Keeping the Team Engaged
Some of these ideas in this section come from VolunteerHub.com (specifically “Our 8 Favorite Ways to Engage and Retain Volunteers”). Check them out!
Everyone wants to feel connected, needed, appreciated, and that they’re making a difference. Keeping volunteers engaged and active is a constant nurturing process and one that different team members should take up at different times. Advocacy is hard and it often doesn’t result in the immediate satisfaction of actual change. Success of smaller short-term goals can motivate all of us.
Along with having active membership through social events and shared purpose (discussed above), here are some other topics to consider for engaging members and growing the team.
Keep the conversation rolling
We biketivists love to talk about all things urban planning – from specific bike paths to the city’s housing plan. Meet-ups and events are a great way to keep the conversation going. But you can also keep the conversation rolling online: try posting a book or article you’re reading or a podcast episode you’re listening to. Try posting a question and ask if anyone has an opinion. For example, “I’m trying to get from XX Street to downtown, anyone have any tips on how to navigate XX intersection?”
We’re all human
People respond well to personal outreach, one on one conversations, and group activities to bond. Team members want to build friendships and get to know others who care about what they care about. When things are stalling on the team, remember we all care about more than bikes. Sharing conversations and social activities about other things can be a great way to re-engage and motivate team members. Ask teammates about their lives, families, hobbies, travel plans.
You can attend a city-wide or library event as a team. Host a crafting party or walking taco crawl. Bonus: organize a meet up at bike parking! Help out a teammate in need or send a get well card to an ill teammate. The more we see our teammates as full people, rather than just bike advocates, the more engagement and social connection will naturally occur.
Respect
Respect teammates and the time and effort they are putting into the work and their lives. To make a volunteer experience the best, make sure you allow enough time at volunteer events to help volunteers know how they are helping and what they are doing at the event. Don’t leave your volunteers hanging!
Foster respect by:
● Valuing the opinions of each and every team member.
● Listening to what your teammates are saying at all times.
● Being sensitive to feelings and emotions.
● Avoiding and minimizing the risk of gossip.
● Being aware of comfort zones and not pressuring anyone into crossing out of theirs.
● Never creating a stereotype for anyone inside or outside of your team.
● Taking the time to learn something from each member.
● Understanding that relationships are the most important component of your team.
Recognition
Everyone likes to be recognized for their achievements. Recognition can promote a sense of gratitude and keep your team members engaged and motivated. Here are a few strategies to recognize volunteers:
● Thank volunteers personally or through team channels.
● Highlight the work of individual team members (“X made an awesome comment at last night’s city council meeting!”).
● Have team awards.
● Provide volunteers with food when they work.
● Feature your volunteer stories on digital channels.
● Keep the team up to date with the overall success of the team.
Self Care
It’s a Buzz Word it’s true, but it’s also really important for sustaining advocacy. Burnout and compassion fatigue are real and on the rise. It is frustrating work to change America’s car culture and sometimes you need a mental break. Take a look at these tips from the University of Michigan and also these resources from Self Care for Advocates. Lean on the group, take a walk and talk, get out for a bike ride on a car-free trail and take a break from talking about infrastructure.