How to Effectively Use Canvas Maps

Once you have your canvas maps you need to start planning on how to effectively use them during your daily activities. Let’s start off by looking at how small to medium sized campaigns should use their canvas maps. A small to medium sized campaign is a campaign where you may have a few or no volunteers working with you, and for the most part, you will be doing all the campaign related activities (i.e. canvassing, phone calling, setting up events, etc.). Since you are going to be the person responsible for most of the work, you need to plan your day accordingly because canvassing can and probably will take up most of your time. The first thing to do once you have your canvas maps, is decide how long each map will take to complete, and what time you should start. Remember, that since you are trying to reach people while they are home, you want to be at their house after work hours (approximately 3pm - 7pm) or on the weekend. You can easily visit earlier than that, but they may not be home and are more likely to not answer the door. Depending on how many houses and how far they are from each other, canvassing could take anywhere from 20 minutes for 6 hours. 

Now that you have allocated the time you need to canvas, let’s talk about how you can use them more effectively.  Canvas maps will give you better insight into how the community feels and what issues they are facing. It also gives your constituents the ability to meet you and see what you and your campaign are about. To more effectively use your canvas maps, you will need to take notes. Using APS Sciences tools, taking notes while out canvassing will be significantly easier for you, because of our pre-made form fillable boxes. During your canvassing, you will need to note whether or not they were home and answered, if anything has changed (i.e. they moved or passed away), what kind of issues do they have, what kind of policies they’d like to see, any safety concerns for you or your volunteers, and additional notes that might be useful for you to know, for either a follow up meeting or just to help you make better policy decisions in the future.

For medium to large sized campaigns, you will have a team of volunteers and professionals helping you make the most of your time. While canvassing is still a very important tool to add to any campaign, many large campaigns tend to have volunteers canvas due to the sheer number of houses that need to be visited.  For large campaigns, allocating who and where your volunteers go is the most effective strategy. After they return you will then need to ensure that their data that they got while canvassing is inputted into the system and then reviewed by you when you have a chance to. Another way medium to large campaigns can use canvas maps, is to visit houses of your strongest supporters or those that have helped your campaign out the most. This helps improve your likelihood that they will help you, and that their support truly means a lot to you. This is just another tool in your arsenal for you to drum up support. 

All campaigns need to make sure that they take good notes and visit as many houses as they can. If a house isn’t visited or they weren’t home, then it needs to be noted so that you can revisit them in the future. Canvas maps are very effective at getting people to vote for you because they can provide your constituents an insight on who you are, what your policies are, and it shows that you care for them more than your opponent. Many people may vote for you just because of name and face recognition, and it could be the difference between winning and losing your election.