Tabling Recruiting

Training: Tabling As A Learning Experience

Tabling is a good way to sharpen your communication skills and clarify your own ideas and messages. It is also a good way to understand the ideas of your audience. Tabling is an excellent first activity for a new volunteer where you can closely supervise them and provide helpful feedback to each other.

Recruitment: Setting Up New Activists

The ultimate success of outreach is to set up new people as empowered activists in their own right.

Tabling Demonstrations

You can do a demonstration of the tabling system to walk people through how it works. You may want to do this for people you give binders to (See Bindering). Ask them to reverse roles and pretend they are the activist and you are a visitor. Let them educate you and then provide feedback and let them try again until they feel comfortable doing it effectively.

You may even want to carry extra tables and chairs in your vehicle to provide enthusiastic new activists a complete solution on the spot.

Providing Equipment

When you set up a new activist, you can prepare yourself to have on hand everything they need to get started doing as you do. Empowerment activities should be organizable with mobile facilities that can be set up anywhere.

Sample Tabling Rap

You need to write a tabling presentation, or “rap.” A basic tabling rap includes an intro question to get attention, a description of the organization, a quick version of the problem you’re working on, what you’re doing about it, and how the person can help. It should end with a request for them to make a commitment (i.e., fill out an interest card, agree to come to an event). It is a lot like commercial sales except motivated by good rather than greed.