Solar for Our Schools and The Long Tail:
Thoughts on Volunteering for Worthy Causes
Dr. Bill Fowler
It is hard to argue against the merits of using solar technologies in our schools, it seems the worthiest of causes. This post is not really about solar, though, it's about volunteering, especially this last weekend when I passed out literature at the Fallbrook Avocado Festival as part of the North County Climate Change Alliance outreach for sustainable energy use.
"Solar for our Schools!" is not a message that I thought would resonate with a large percentage of Festival goers. But with a crowd estimated at 80,000 to 100,000, there would still be a large number of interested people. And that makes this kind of outreach totally worth doing. It also means that I would successfully engage the tiniest number of people out of 10s of thousands.
Outreach is really hard. One of the many challenges of volunteering for outreach is that often the venue is without context. You have to establish context as you engage your target. It's not always easy. If you are phone banking the initial context is that you are some random telemarketer with something to sell.
At the Festival, the context was a guy (me) pushing a flyer in front of you, saying "Let's put Solar in our Schools to save money and create jobs." Many thought I was just another Home Solar installer using our schools as part of a sales pitch. "No thanks, we already have solar."
I estimated that I had a little more than 2 seconds to make eye contact with people walking by and engage them with a 5 word sentence. As I uttered the 6th word it was too late, they had already passed me me by. So I shortened it to "Solar for our Schools!" After a while I also dropped my requirement for making eye contact when I remembered that most people look away when I approach them purposefully with a flyer.
I also thought it made sense to concentrate on those pushing strollers occupied by children, though they were surprisingly as indifferent as anyone else. Then I decided to concentrate on those with a free hand to take the flyer. No love from them either.
In the end, those few people who were really interested in "Solar for our Schools!" came to me rather than the other way around.
Mostly they appeared out of nowhere, out of context. They were people who I guessed had read our great looking banner and that reminded them of their interest in "Solar for our Schools!" These were people without kids, or at least their kids didn't come to the fair with them. They seemed to literally emerge from the crowds of people, smiling and deliberately making eye contact and wanting, no -- eager, to discuss "Solar for our Schools." They were already interested in it, the dialog that ensued was hardly necessary. I could just point them to our table and tell them we also had a petition they could sign. They went over the table and more often than not engaged in lengthy and animated conversation with the keeper of our petition.
And this is where the long tail comes in to play. The theory of “The Long Tail” is that our internet economy has shifted many businesses away from mainstream products (the head of the demand curve) towards the huge number of niche products (the long tail of the demand curve). Amazon has a great business selling obscure books to a tiny percentage of buyers among millions of Amazon customers. And the long tail makes outreach to a relatively small percentage of people in a large population effective.
On Sunday, watching the long tail slither past me on Main Street Fallbrook made for some great people watching. It was also a fine time to ponder volunteering and understanding that it is never easy to engage a totally random sample of people which is what you find at an event like this. If you have enough volunteers, you will be able to tap into the long tail and those who are interested will find you. With enough volunteers you will then achieve the scale needed to be successful.
The more volunteers you have, the more engagement you have. That seems obvious, but what is not so obvious is that everyone, especially volunteers, must realize that any one volunteer's success will not be significant. It is a group effort. If the group is large enough, the outreach will succeed.
I would say we were very successful on Sunday, though I still don't quite understand why almost no one pushing a stroller with a kid was interested in "Solar for our Schools!"
Walking back to my car, I was stopped by a signature gatherer who asked if I was registered to vote. A fellow volunteer! Of course, I told him I was. He then pulled out, literally, 5 petitions for generally liberal causes. Obviously he was getting paid for this, so I only agreed to sign one. Frankly I thought my "Solar for our Schools" had a shorter tail than any of his issues.
Further down the road, I was approached by a man engaging in some kind of outreach. I absolutely knew how to handle him and a few of his cohorts nearby -- don't look at them, don't respond to them, ignore them. Out of the corner of my eye, though, I did see that they wore nice bright red polo shirts with the simple words in white stitching above their heart -- "Save the Children." I wonder if that message made a difference in the number of successful engagements with those pushing children in a stroller.
Did I stop and see what they wanted? Nah, I decided to let the long tail slither by.