Commandeering the Database

The meeting was a success, but I wanted more, more outreach, more noise, more buzz, and ultimately less chance of missing a single soul at UGA who needs the disability community. Once I had done the boring-but-important stuff, the phone call about how to do official registration and working on scheduling, I got back to outreach. Having tried most other avenues, I resorted to nobody’s favorite: spam.

I feel like the end justified the means, and it was low-hanging fruit. UGA happens to have an online directory of student organizations. There are over 800 currently registered, and I went through them all. It only took a couple of hours to give each one a cursory look-over for signs of life. When one looked probably-not-defunct, I added it to a list, prioritizing groups to contact by how receptive to supporting a disability-related organization I thought they would be. Then, I spent about another hour writing a short form email and a short form Facebook message for groups that looked most active there. I tried hard to make them look personal and individual. I made small tweaks as I sent them out to make them feel as human as possible.

Now the responses are coming in. The response rate has been almost 2:3, which is better than I was expecting, and the only reply that was anything other than enthusiasm about spreading the word was a request for more information. I expect to reach 250–300 people this way, all outside of my existing networks. It will take $0.00 and about three hours of the kind of work I can do while I make small talk across a table in the law library or catch up on the news. If anyone I reach is interested in getting involved, I have both met my goal and found one or more new networks to tap.

This is grass roots organizing, the tricky part: finding people besides the ones you already know. What it lacks in speed and efficiency it makes up for in being inexpensive and honestly not that hard if you have the creativity to use the resources available. This is something anyone can do, and if there are problems in your community you want to solve, or you see room for good things to grow, I hope you will.