Guide 11

How to Plan and Run a Canvassing Campaign, Step by Step

A canvassing campaign is an organized series of door-to-door visits with a clear goal, a defined list of households, a map divided into walkable areas, a short script, a trained team, a schedule and a record of what happened at every door. The same plan works for a candidate asking for votes, an advocacy group building support, a nonprofit signing up members and a sales team booking appointments.

To plan one, work through nine steps in order: set a goal you can count, decide who to reach, divide the map into turf, write the script and the door questions, build the team, set the schedule, launch, track every door and follow up. Each step below explains what to decide, gives an example for a campaign and for a business, and points to a more detailed guide where one exists.

This page is the planning guide. If you are new to canvassing itself, including how a conversation at the door works and how to handle objections, start with our door-to-door canvassing guide and return here when you are ready to plan.

Who this guide is for

• Political campaigns, from school board and village races to larger districts, along with ballot measure committees and advocacy groups. More on how Beacon supports campaign field programs is on our political campaigns page.
• Field sales teams in home services, solar, roofing, pest control, internet service and similar trades. See our door-to-door sales page.
• Nonprofits and community groups running membership drives, outreach programs or door-to-door fundraising.
• Real estate agents working a neighborhood. Our guide to real estate door knocking covers scripts, timing and follow-up for agents.

The vocabulary changes from one group to another (voters or leads, canvassers or reps), but the planning steps are the same. Every number in this guide is an example or a planning assumption, and each one is labeled. Replace them with your own figures as soon as you have a weekend of real results.

The plan at a glance

1. Goal: one number that defines success, such as supporters identified or appointments booked.
2. Who to reach: the full list of households you will visit, called the universe.
3. Turf: the universe divided into areas one person can cover in one shift.
4. Script and questions: what canvassers say, and the few answers they record.
5. Team: who knocks, who leads each shift, and how everyone is trained.
6. Schedule: shifts, days, hours and the number of visits to each area.
7. Launch: the first day, run as a careful rehearsal for the rest of the campaign.
8. Tracking: a result for every door, reviewed after every shift.
9. Follow-up: return visits, promised callbacks and a final pass.

Step 1: Set one goal you can count

Start with the result you want at the end and work backward to doors. A goal that cannot be counted at the door, such as "raise awareness", gives canvassers nothing to aim for and gives you no way to judge whether the plan is working.

For a campaign, the goal usually starts with the win number, which is the number of votes needed to win based on the turnout you expect. From there, decide what the door program will do. It might persuade undecided voters, identify supporters so you can remind them to vote, or carry out GOTV (getting out the vote), which means reminding known supporters to vote in the final days. A campaign can do all three in sequence, but each pass through the turf should have one job.

For a business, the goal is usually appointments booked, quotes given or sales closed in a set period. For a nonprofit, it might be members signed up, volunteers recruited or pledges made.

Turn the goal into a door count with a few planning assumptions: how many conversations you expect per 100 doors, how many of those conversations end in a yes, and how many doors one person covers in a shift.

Example (planning assumptions): a sales team wants 30 booked appointments a month. If 1 in 10 conversations books an appointment, the team needs 300 conversations. If 1 in 4 doors produces a conversation, that means about 1,200 door knocks a month.

Our field plan guide walks through this arithmetic in full, with a campaign version and a sales version, and shows how to turn the door count into a weekly schedule. If you are still deciding whether door knocking is worth the effort, our summary of what the published research says about door knocking covers the field experiments on the question.

Finally, decide what success looks like at a single door. Write down which answers count toward the goal, such as "supports us", "wants a quote" or "signed up", so that every canvasser records the same thing in the same way.

Step 2: Decide who to reach

Your universe is the full list of households you plan to visit. A focused universe is worth more than a large team, because every door outside it uses time that could have gone to a door that counts toward the goal.

For a campaign, the universe usually starts from the registered voter list, which is available from your election authority or your party. Narrow it to the voters most likely to take part in this election and to the areas where your message is most relevant.

For a business, start with the neighborhoods where your service fits: the right kind of housing, streets near jobs you have already completed, or areas where an earlier mailing or event drew a good response. For a nonprofit, start with the people you serve, past supporters, or a single neighborhood where you want to build a presence.

Then decide how you will reach each part of the universe. Some households call for a conversation. Others need only a reminder or an announcement, and a literature drop, where volunteers leave a printed piece at each door without knocking, can cover them much faster. Our guide to lit drops explains when to drop literature and when to knock.

Before you finalize the universe, check the rules where you will be working. Cities, villages and counties set their own rules on soliciting, permits and hours, and those rules differ from place to place. Our post on whether door-to-door canvassing is legal explains what to look for and whom to ask.

Step 3: Divide the map into turf

Turf is the set of streets or buildings assigned to one canvasser, or one pair, for one shift. The list of households in a turf, in the order a canvasser will visit them, is called the walk list.

Good turf has three qualities:

• It fits one shift. Size each turf to the number of doors one person can finish in a shift, with a few extra for fast walkers. Example (planning assumption): a 3-hour shift at 15 doors an hour is about 45 doors.
• It is easy to walk. Keep each turf on one side of a busy road, inside natural boundaries such as rivers, rail lines or large parks, and close to where canvassers will park.
• It does not overlap another turf. Two canvassers on the same street waste a shift and frustrate residents.

Apartment buildings, rural roads and dense city blocks each change the pace, so size those turfs from your own experience rather than from a single number. Our guide to turf cutting covers sizing and boundaries in more detail.

Keep a few turfs in reserve. When more people arrive than you expected, you can send them out right away instead of drawing new turf at the sign-in table.

Step 4: Write the script and the door questions

The script is a short guide to the conversation. It should fit on one phone screen: an introduction (your name, who you are with and why you are at the door), one or two sentences on the main point, one question, and a clear request. Canvassers should know it well enough to say it in their own words.

Hi, I'm [Name], a volunteer with [Campaign]. We're talking with neighbors about [issue] before the election on [date]. Can we count on your support?

Hi, I'm [Name] with [Company]. We're finishing a [service] job on [Street] this week and offering free estimates to neighbors. Would a quote be helpful for your home?

The door questions are the short set of questions whose answers you record at each door. Keep them to two to four, and make sure each one serves the goal from Step 1. A campaign might ask about support on a 1 to 5 scale and the voter's top issue. A sales team might ask whether the homeowner wants a quote and the best time to call back. Decide how each answer will be recorded, so that every canvasser writes it down the same way.

Agree on the door results before launch as well. A door result is the short code that records what happened at a door, such as contacted, not home, refused or come back later. Define each one in writing, so that "come back later" means the same thing to every canvasser and every not-home door is recorded.

For opening lines and wording that keeps a conversation going, see our guide on what to say when canvassing.

Step 5: Build the team

Every canvassing campaign needs three kinds of people: canvassers who knock on doors, a field lead who runs each shift, and someone who looks after the data (turf, walk lists and results). On a small campaign, the candidate or the business owner may fill two of those roles.

The number of canvassers comes from your field plan. Total door knocks divided by doors per shift gives the number of shifts. Shifts divided by the weeks available gives the shifts you need to fill each week. Then schedule extra people, because some will cancel. Our post on how many volunteers a campaign needs works through that math and covers recruiting and scheduling volunteers.

Train everyone before the first shift. A one-hour session on the script and its questions, the door results, safety and the app is enough to start. Pair new canvassers with experienced ones for their first shift or two. Our guide to training new canvassers in their first week has a day-by-day outline. Sales teams will also cover the pitch, pricing questions and how to book an appointment on the spot.

Step 6: Set the schedule

Build the schedule backward from the end date: Election Day, the end of the sales quarter or the close of the drive.

• Shift length. Plan volunteer shifts of two to three hours, which is long enough to finish a turf and short enough for people to say yes. Paid staff may work longer shifts.
• Days and hours. Knock when people are likely to be home and when it is light enough to read house numbers. Weekday evenings and weekend late mornings and afternoons are the usual starting point, adjusted for your area, the season and any local hour limits. Our guide to the best time to knock on doors explains the reasoning for campaigns and for sales teams.
• Passes. Plan how many times you will visit each turf. A first pass reaches the households that are home. A second pass, on a different day and at a different time, reaches more of the not-home doors. A campaign can add a final pass to supporters in the last days before the election.
• Fixed, repeating shifts. Use the same times every week, for example Saturday 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and Wednesday 5 to 7 p.m., so that people can plan around them.
• Weather and daylight. Decide in advance when you will cancel or shorten a shift for heat, cold, storms or early darkness, and tell the team before the season starts.
• A check every two weeks. Compare doors knocked with doors planned and adjust the schedule.

Step 7: Launch

The canvass launch is the first organized day of door knocking. Treat it as a rehearsal for the rest of the campaign. Start with a short briefing at a staging location, practice the script in pairs, send people out to turf that is easy to walk, and bring everyone back for a debrief.

Keep the first day small enough to manage: a few turfs, experienced people where possible, and a shift of normal length. Check that everyone can sign in to the app, see the campaign, download a walk list, record a door result and add a rating and a note. Fix anything that goes wrong before you add more canvassers.

Our guide to running a canvass launch day covers the week before, the staging location, the briefing and the debrief. If you use Beacon, our step-by-step guide to setting up your first door-knocking campaign in Beacon covers the setup screens in order.

Step 8: Track every door

Record a result at every door, including not-home doors, refusals and vacant houses. A not-home door that goes unrecorded looks the same as a door nobody visited, and someone will knock on it again for no reason.

During and after each shift, look at five numbers:

• Doors attempted: every door a canvasser reached, whether or not anyone answered.
• Contacts: conversations with the person you meant to reach.
• Contact rate: contacts divided by doors attempted. Example: 12 contacts at 48 doors is a contact rate of 25 percent.
• Turf completion: the share of each turf's doors that have a result.
• Goal results: the answers that count toward the goal from Step 1.

Use the numbers to make decisions. If contact rates are low on weekday afternoons, move those shifts to evenings. If a turf takes twice as long as planned, split it. If one canvasser's results look very different from everyone else's, talk with that person. Their turf may be harder, or they may need help with the script.

Share progress with the team. Canvassers come back when they can see that their shift moved the campaign forward, so post the totals after each shift and thank people by name.

Step 9: Follow up

The follow-up turns a good conversation into a result.

• Come back later. Return to those doors at the time the resident asked for.
• Not home. Schedule a second pass on a different day and at a different time.
• Promises. Do what was promised at the door within a day or two: send the quote, the information or the yard sign.
• Supporters. A campaign's list of identified supporters becomes the list for the final GOTV pass.
• Appointments. A sales team hands each booked appointment to the person who will run it, with the notes from the door.

If you also want to text the people you meet, use a texting service such as CampaignCNX+, which is a separate product from Beacon. Text only people who have agreed to receive texts from you. A friendly conversation at the door is not agreement by itself, so ask directly, and record the answer and the date (a short line in the door's notes works well for this).

When the campaign ends, export the results and keep them. The door history from this campaign is the starting point for the next one.

Running the plan in Beacon

Beacon is a door-to-door canvassing app for campaigns, advocacy groups, nonprofits and field sales teams. It is a web app that canvassers open on their phones, and each step of the plan above has a place in it:

• Turf: draw territories on the map, assign them to canvassers, and reassign them when someone cancels.
• Walk lists: when a canvasser downloads a walk list, the stops are ordered by distance.
• Script: the New Campaign form has a Script field and a Load from Script Library option, and the script appears on the canvasser's door screen.
• Door results: eight result codes (contacted, not home, refused, moved, deceased, inaccessible, come back later and left literature), plus a 1 to 5 rating and notes, which hold the answers to your door questions.
• Literature drops: a Literature Drop campaign type for drop days.
• Tracking: a leaderboard, turf completion percentages and heat views of the results. Live GPS of canvassers is available on Growth and higher plans, and a geofence warning appears on the canvasser's own phone on every plan.
• Signal loss: if a canvasser loses signal partway through a shift, their results are queued and sent when the signal returns.
• Exports: CSV and PDF exports of contacts and door results.
• Team: organization roles (owner, admin, manager and canvasser), and several campaigns under one organization.

Beacon is priced by the number of contacts, with unlimited canvassers on every plan. Starter is $59 a month ($47 a month billed annually) for 2,500 contacts, and Growth is $129 a month ($103 billed annually) for 10,000 contacts.

Frequently asked questions

How do I start a canvassing campaign?

Start with one goal you can count, such as supporters identified or appointments booked. Then define the households you will visit, divide them into turf that one person can cover in a shift, write a short script and the questions you will ask at every door, recruit and train a team, and set a schedule. Launch with a small first day, record a result at every door, and follow up on every promise made at the door.

How many doors should we plan to knock?

Work backward from the goal. Divide the number of yes answers you need by the share of conversations you expect to end in a yes, then divide that by your expected contact rate. Example (planning assumptions): 300 sign-ups at 1 yes in 5 conversations is 1,500 conversations, and at a 25 percent contact rate that is 6,000 door knocks. Our field plan guide has the full method.

How long should a canvassing shift be?

Two to three hours is a reasonable plan for volunteers, because it is long enough to finish a turf and short enough to fit around work and family. Paid canvassers and sales reps often work longer shifts. Whatever the length, size each turf so that it can be finished within one shift.

What is the difference between canvassing and a lit drop?

Canvassing means knocking and talking with the resident, and recording the result. A lit drop means leaving a printed piece at each door without knocking. A lit drop covers more doors per hour, but it produces no conversation and no answers to record. Never leave literature in or on a mailbox.

Can a business run a door knocking campaign?

Yes. The same nine steps apply to a sales team or a service business. The goal becomes appointments, quotes or sales, the universe becomes the neighborhoods where the service fits, and the door questions record interest and the best time to follow up. Check local soliciting and permit rules before the first shift, because they vary by city and county.

How far ahead should we start planning?

Give yourself enough time to set the goal, define the universe, cut turf, recruit and train before the first shift. For a small campaign, two to three weeks of preparation is a workable planning assumption. Then plan to knock for as many weeks as the field plan requires, with a check every two weeks.

Put your plan on the map

Draw your turf, write your script, and send your first canvassers out with walk lists ordered by distance. The trial includes the Starter plan's features and needs no card. Start a 14-day trial and set up your first campaign this week.