FOR POLITICAL DIRECTORS AT UNION COUNCILS AND LOCALS
Your List Is Not Your Universe. The Gap Costs You Dues Payers.
Without a research department. Without staff to delegate it to. Without the three weeks you don’t have. Six steps, from how many people do we actually need to reach to a one-page recommendation your executive board can approve.
WHAT’S INSIDE THE WORKBOOK
Six Steps. 15 Pages. Two Steps Nobody Runs.
This isn’t a demo and it isn’t a rate card. It’s the calculation you’re expected to arrive with, written for someone who has run programs for twenty years and was simply never handed the model.
Most locals hold back a share of the roster from program contact — commonly a fifth to two-fifths. In a public-sector local that isn’t an unsubscribe, it’s a resignation, and the dues leave with the member.
A 10.8¢-per-minute rate is not 10.8¢ a person. At a 30-second message it’s closer to 5¢. One line of conversion, and it’s the number you’ll repeat from memory upstairs.
Twenty volunteers, two three-hour sessions a week, over nine weeks, is roughly 119,000 live-calling attempts. That’s the ceiling. Everything above it has to run on a channel that needs no volunteer — and which ones those are, at what cost.
NUHW’s messages were long and some were in Spanish, so every Spanish send billed as several segments instead of one. Moving to MMS cut the cost 55% — same list, same reach, same plan.
The comparison isn’t another vendor, it’s free. Don’t argue price against the tool your international pays for — argue on launching without asking, and proof of contact that’s yours. Plus what trusteeship changes.
The one page that actually gets approved: the ask, the reach, the unit cost, the constraint, the alternative you considered, and who signs — by name — and by when.
A ten-question self-audit that maps your program against the six steps, so you can see which gap is costing you most before leadership asks.
Sourced and dated. Every rate is CallHub’s published list price, verified 1 September 2026. The suppression range is what directors report in practice — we say so rather than dress it as a statistic. Check every number.
YOUR NEXT MOVE
The Meeting Happens Either Way.
The assignment rarely arrives with notice. A program lands on your desk and sometimes you get a season, sometimes a morning — and the first question is always the same one, asked by people who control the money and not the work.
Then there’s the harder room, the one after the program, when someone asks whether it was worth it. What you’ll be able to show is decided before the first message goes out, not after.
Get the workbook. Run the ten questions. Fill in Step 2 before your next leadership meeting.