I'm one of the Columbus Kerry volunteers that will be floating through your internship. Here's a couple of things for you to consider as you jump into this. Please don't take any part of this personally, because I have no earthly idea who you are and you haven't even started work yet LOL! I've been wanting to smack a couple of coordinators over the last few weeks and that's just not productive, so I'll put my thoughts down here instead.

Find us more places to go where we can staff tables or just walk around with a clipboard.  Many of the volunteers have never done campaign work and are really nervous about doing door to door or calling. However, we WILL happily stand anywhere for hours on end doing voter registration and signing up other volunteers. Remember, you've got to work with our strengths too.

A lot of us are old enough that email is still awkward to manage, so don't dis the volunteers who don't do technology well. Also, be polite to the volunteers and think through things when you're  coordinating events. Please don't assume that I am able to read the critical email that you send to my work email at 10 pm on Saturday night, with information I need to have before an event the next morning (people keep doing stuff like that). You get frustrated, I have no info, everybody loses.

There are a whole lot of us and we're all adults, so we will show up most of the time. Make sure we know who to call if we can't make it-not just the campaign line, but a person.

Show some forethought- if you have 40 phones, don't have 80 people show up to phone bank. If we give you our one free night a week, we don't want to mill around aimlessly. If we don't have things to do that clearly contribute to the cause, we may get frustrated and not want to come the next time.

 We're not stupid. Explain clearly the nature of the activity and any limitations to what we can do or say, write down any numbers/addresses that we may need for crib notes later, and then just stand back and let us do our thing. Most of the time, we are really good at talking to people because we have been in the workforce for years. You don't have to micromanage us unless we ask for that level of help.

There are a lot of volunteers and not that many events left to work before the voter registration cutoff (and we think that's critically important in Ohio).  Make it easier  for us to work at multiple locations. In Columbus, I haven't seen anybody in front of grocery stores, churches, post offices or banks doing voter registration (and a lot of them would allow that if we're not too partisan). Find a way for us to hit things other than fairs/festivals. For example, the local Oktoberfest is at the end of September and you will discover that it's already over-booked with eager volunteers. Kroger and Meijers are open every day- how about producing do it yourself GOTV/Kerry lobby kits and reaching out to local establishments to set up ground rules for volunteers? We show up, pick up materials from you, do the local thing, then drop off the results.

Don't think that we underestimate the value of what you're doing. We wish that we could take off work and do the same thing, but we're the ones that are struggling with stagnant wages in an impossibly brutal employment market. We're counting on you to help us direct our efforts so that we can make a difference, too. Also, don't be shy about telling us why you're there and what you want to do with your life. We know people who might give you a job, and we can write hellacious recommendations, too.

You can't save the world from Bush all by yourself, so don't worry yourself into high blood pressure about this election. You will just get over-anxious and drive us all nuts. The volunteers already know that together, WE can save this country from another four years of this thoughtless megalomaniac. That's why we're volunteering in unprecedented numbers, because despite our grave concerns about this country, we know we CAN make a difference. Figure out where to point us, and we will get the job done.