HOW TO BUILD A YOUTH WING

FIVE TOPICS TO CONSIDER AND DECIDE UPON
1st TOPIC
NAME, PURPOSE AND MEMBERSHIP
For people who agree upon your political foundation, it should be simple to
join. Formulate your membership criteria as simply as possible. A suggestion
would be to establish two categories with the following considerations:
Members: Two important issues for everybody to consider are the age criteria
and the membership fee. Furthermore, you can consider any other particular
membership issues applying to your party. This could be a free membership
of the mother party (if there is one).
Supporters: Having defined your membership criteria, you can establish a
group for those who are likely to support you (e.g. financially or just moral support),
but do not fall within your criteria for full membership.
2nd TOPIC
RECRUITMENT OF MEMBERS
Your members are the pillars of your party. For some parties it will be important
to have a lot of members, whereas for others the emphasis is more on the
loyalty and the dedication of their members.
Your initial discussions might be: Where do you see your party within two
to five years? How many members do you have? Who are they in terms of gender,
social background, regional representation, etc.? What kind of activities are
they carrying out? What are you offering to challenge them, keep them, and
empower them?
The answers to these questions will substantiate your membership strategy.
Starting from your political programme, you can formulate three strong
reasons to join your party. You can focus on political messages, but also on the
advantages enjoyed by members, such as access to political discussion and activities
to promote change etc.
Keep the same messages on all recruitment material, both online and offline.
And make it easy to get membership material through Facebook, your
website – or on the spot.
On the basis of your political platform, you will also want to discuss the target
group for your party. Whose position are you taking? Would young people
from this group become members of your youth wing – or should you implement
specific activities to reach them?
The crucial issue is how to get people to actually sign up and become members.
A lot of people will show sympathy, join you for demonstrations or smaller
events – but to actually sign up as a member is often a big step.
All youth wings have realised that it is of major importance to meet people
where they are (schools, universities, demonstrations, debates etc.), open the
dialogue, listen – and see how you together can make a difference. People tend
not to sign up at the first request, but if they are invited to your events and
called a couple of times they eventually get more involved and might want to
sign up.
HOW TO BUILD A YOUTH WING DANIsH INsTITUTe fOr pArTIes AND DemOcrAcY pAGe 29