Host a Postcard Party: In-person or Virtual

The biggest objective of hosting a postcard party is to write a lot of postcards! Anything you can do to make it easy for people will help.

Postcard Party Ideas 

• Invite  club or group of friends or neighbors
• Invite friends, family, grandchildren, young people – Get your teenagers to participate in democracy in action!
• Host a postcard party at your retirement center.
• Host a postcard party on Zoom with friends near and far.

Tips for Organizing Your Postcard Party

1. Invite people to your home, a local coffee shop, out for happy hour, a park or another gathering place, or online on Zoom.
2. Gather your supplies and ask other participants to help. Decide on whether you (the host) are supplying all the postcards and stamps or whether you are asking participants to bring their own. See this resource about postcards and postage, including a downloadable, print-at-home Third Act postcard. If hosting a virtual event, everyone will provide their own postcards, stamps, writing supplies, and voter addresses. Provide as many of the tools to make actually writing the cards easy: postcards, pens (lots of colors makes it extra fun!), stamps (it’s totally reasonable to ask people to contribute to the cost of the stamps), addresses, talking points, etc. Extra copies really help, so there are plenty to go around. You can divide addresses onto separate pages so everyone can get their own page (just remember to have them mark off the ones they’ve written to avoid duplicates).
3. Request voter addresses from Activate America – make sure that you (as the host) or participants request the voter addresses at least two days before the party. Plan to print the voter addresses on enough pieces of paper so you can share with participants. Get more details about requesting voter addresses. 
4. Provide some snacks and drinks if meeting in-person. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but postcard writing can be hard work. A bowl of mini chocolate bars or cookies, and even water somehow help reduce the stress level. If you’re meeting at a restaurant, ask people to buy something to support the business. If you are meeting virtually, you can ask people to bring snacks and drinks to nosh while they write and chat.
5. Share instructions. Start off with a conversation about the effectiveness of personalized contact in voter mobilization. Share about why writing postcards is effective (learn more here). Go over the instructions on what to do: the sample Get Out the Vote postcard scripts, the list of voter addresses and checking them off as you go, the stamps, etc.
6. Write your postcards. Aim for each participant to write 5-10 postcards each. The short messages and addresses should be handwritten. Remind them to write clearly!
7. Collect the postcards at the end of the event and encourage participants to host their own postcard parties. Don’t forget to thank all participants before they leave.
8. Mail the postcards. Follow the deadlines given to you by Activate America. There are different deadlines depending on the specific postcard campaign.
9. Send a thank-you message after the party and update to all attendees. 
10. Report back to us. Send an email to takingaction@thirdact.org and tell us: your name and email, how many postcards did you send, and share a photo or two from your party (but cover up any names and addresses of voters).