Postcards & Mailers Guide – Volunteer Blue

A heartfelt handwritten note can make an impact!

Campaigns and grassroots groups are producing handwritten postcards to voters, encouraging them to vote or to vote for a particular candidate.
Postcards are an easy way for people to reach out to voters in swing districts across the country.

Do they work?

Postcards can be very effective in influencing voters. One study shows that handwritten, personalized postcards sent to women who are occasional voters as part of a Get Out the Vote (GOTV) effort increased turnout by 1.4% over a control group

Postcards are a great way to energize volunteers. Volunteers enjoy postcard parties. They are easy to organize, they can be a nice social occasion, and they provide the satisfaction of accomplishment.

Postcarding is a great introduction to activism. Postcarding parties provides exposure to a community and encourages the activist to grow comfortable with other activities that have a greater impact, such as canvassing, texting and phone calling.

Preparing for your postcarding project

First, select the postcarding provider and the campaign that you want to work on. There are many postcarding providers, so feel free to explore to find the one that will inspire your group. You can start by looking at the action kits for several current postcarding projects posted here: postcarding and direct mail action kits.
When you reach out to the postcarding provider you’d like to support, you will be asked how many addresses you want. You can estimate that based on the number of volunteers you have and how much time each one is likely to spend. A typical volunteer will complete 15-20 postcards in 2 hours.
The postcard provider will send you by email a script and a list of the names and addresses that you will send postcards to. Some campaigns and groups will prefer to send you their pre-printed postcards to personalize. Most of the time you will be providing the stamps and postcards.
Some campaigns will ask that you send back the postcards with stamps on them so that they can be mailed from the district. Others will have you mail them yourself. Be sure to ask about that, so you know that to prepare for.

Visit any of the Postcarding Action Kits linked below for information about individual postcarding providers and the steps to get started: