Conversation Guide Basics

The conversation guide is a general outline of the dialogue canvassers will seek to have with people at doors. While most deep canvassing projects refer to this as a “script,” we at CC NH call it a “guide” to emphasize its flexibility. It does follow a pattern, but canvassers do not need to memorize and repeat it word for word.

The conversation guide your team uses will depend on your purpose: What’s the issue your canvass will address?

Deciding this will also help you shape the opening question you’ll ask voters. It’s important to plan backward from your goal in choosing or creating your guide.

Once you have decided on your issue and opening question, you can use our template to develop your own guide. Note that there are two primary options:

• You can ask voters what issues matter to them. If this kind of general survey is the goal, canvassers will select the voter’s top issue from the list in the MiniVAN app. You can see an example here.
• You can choose a single issue, such as climate change or reproductive freedom or the economy. In this case, the canvasser will always click that same issue when recording data in the MiniVAn app.

We are also providing examples from our own pilot project and others:

• 2022 New Hampshire conversation canvassing on the issue of voter registration and commitment: You can see both the complete, annotated 2022 NH Long Guide and a condensed 2022 NH Short Guide. These are the conversations shown in our videos.
• Sample scripts on a range of issues: Deep Canvassing Scripts Commons Library 

At The Commons, an online Social Change Library, you’ll find sample scripts and articles on a variety of issues: abortion, climate change, gender, immigrants and health care, jails/prisons, marriage equality, race, and voting. 

For more background on developing your own conversation guides, we recommend the article Deep Canvassing to Shift Hearts, Minds, and Votes by Caitlin Homrich-Knieling of We the People Michigan. 

CC NH members stand ready to provide support as you develop your local conversation guide. Contact us if you’d like help preparing your guide.  

After your team has had some experience, we’ll also be very glad to post your guide as an example for others. Let us know  if you have an effective conversation guide you’d like to share.