LOCAL TEAM TOOLKIT

A guide to effective safe-streets advocacy in your own town 

1 - Effective Local Teams

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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:

●      Group rides (contact SVBC for insurance and waiver information) 

●      Bicycling films viewing (i.e.: see www.streetfilms.org)

●      Book discussion group

●      Bike path maintenance day

●      Ride to clean up the bay, Caltrain station, or some other area of your city

●      Meet up by bike at city events

●      Walking tour

●      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!
See visioning session agenda and campaign creation resources.

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
SVBC has relationships with many city, county, and state staff members in both San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties and can support relationship building between the city and the local team. Team leads should regularly meet with city staff to get 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. Remember to keep the relationship professional and treat individuals with respect and courtesy because you are speaking with them as a member of SVBC.

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
SVBC keeps an updated list of partner community-based organizations and other non-profits. If there is one in your area, we’ll work with you to get and stay connected. Look for climate action groups, sustainability groups, or active transportation organizations. These types of groups make great partners! Also, groups that work with underserved communities can bring perspectives and new voices to the discussion.

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:

  1. Growing the local team by XX number or XX% within the year

  2. Get a quick-build project in place

  3. More and better bike parking in the city

  4. Dedicated funding for Vision Zero infrastructure projects

  5. Market-based pricing for parking in downtown areas to better manage the city’s parking resources

  6. Start a regular bike bus to school

Specific Roles and Tasks

Team Leaders

SVBC appoints team leaders. We recommend a 3-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:

  1. Facilitate local team meetings

  2. Attend monthly Local Team Lead meetings with SVBC Staff

  3. Regularly check-in with assigned SVBC Community Organizer

  4. Meet with city staff

  5. Meet with elected officials

  6. Facilitate team goal setting

  7. 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.

Recruiting

You don’t have to wait for a team tabling event to recruit new members — every time you get on your bike is an opportunity to recruit new members to the team. We know that we are much more engaged in the community riding a bike than driving a car, and you can use that time to grow your team’s network. Same on social media – every time you engage with issues around biking or walking is an opportunity to recruit.

The team should have a sign-up flow. All of the teams have a google form people can fill out to introduce themselves and provide basic information. Make a QR code for the form so people can access it easily.

●      Carry a card with the QR code for your team’s sign-up form or have the QR code easily accessible on your phone. Or point them to another local team or the SVBC’s Local Team page if it’s a better geographic fit. Get their email if don’t want to fill out the form at that moment.

●      Ask people where they live, what they like about riding in their community and what they don’t like. Where do they ride and for what purposes. Ask questions so that you can understand their interests and what will draw them in to the work.

●      Invite them to the next Biketivist Forum and explain how it works.

●      Give some examples of what a local team has accomplished. Examples for each team are on the local team pages.

●      Be sure to set realistic expectations that we’re all learning together to try to make change. 

What’s to say Next:

  • Invite them to a ride of other event

  • Are there any trouble spots on your ride? In your neighborhood?

    • See that bike lane? We work with city councils to get more trails and bike lanes built.

  • If they say they would like to ride more but are afraid: Yeah, you’re not alone, a lot of people say that. That’s why we are so focused on making the streets safe for people to ride. We actually organize rides to help show folks where the safe routes are and offer classes to help boost rider confidence. In fact, we have some coming up! I’ll shoot you an email so that you can come along if you’re available. 

  • Have you heard of Bike to Work Day?

    • Yes: Awesome! Are you doing it this year?

    • No: It’s one time a year where everyone can try riding a bike and be fully supported by goodies and cheerleaders along the way.

  • Safe Routes to School

    • We’re organizing XX in our school district.

    • SVBC teaches kids to ride safely. We go into schools and introduce kids to the bike, creating fun memories that lead to lasting transportation habits that are good for the health of our bodies and planet.  

Always get their name and email address so that you can follow up personally.

  • Tell them you will follow up so that they expect to hear from you and will therefore be more likely to respond. 

  • If your team has a QR code signup card or flyer, carry it with you.

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