Once you’ve got the rap down, you can ad-lib. Some canvassing tips:
<ul>
<li> Look decent—appeal to everybody.
<li> A clipboard makes you look really good, gives you something to write on, and gives you something to put in their hands. This seems to be really effective, especially if it has a form on the top with the names of some of their neighbors, showing that they’ve been contributing. It might look like a “Statement of Support” with columns like Name, Address, Amount, and Comments.
<li> Professional-looking background material on whatever issue you’re working on, to impress them.
<li> To train, you should “role-play.” Take turns being the canvasser and canvassee. Play being friendly, skeptical, stony-faced, and downright hostile. Sure it’ll feel embarrassing and awkward, but how much worse will it be with strangers in their bathrobes?  Keep at it until you feel comfortable.
<li> When you do finally go out, pair up. Two people feel more confident and can back each other up when one of them stumbles. (Apparently a woman and a man together get the best response.)  Also, new people should go out with more experienced people, and should discuss what happened after each door. Canvassing is one of those things with a lot of little learned skills to pick up.
<li> KEEP GOOD RECORDS!  Just as with phone calling, you need to keep track of where you’ve been, what they said, if they were interested, and so on. Your records need to be good enough so that others can pick up where you left off, so don’t rely on your memory and don’t leave your friends scraps of paper to decipher.
</ul>

Note a few good points about canvassing. A lot of big organizations hire students to canvass, pay them a cut, fire them unless they make $100 a day and give them no involvement whatsoever in the group. This is hardly the way to run a democratic, cynicism-free organization. So if you want to canvass the SEAC way:
<ul>
<li> Have your own members, bona fide activists, do the canvassing.
<li> Just collect as much as people feel comfortable with—don’t set a quota.
<li> Don’t avoid low-income neighborhoods just because you can’t raise money there. You can still petition, educate, and activate.
<li> Take people’s ideas on local projects seriously and get back to them. This is what makes you a lot more attractive than some big national group cruising through the town.
</ul><br>
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