East Hampshire Green Party – The Way Forward

Report by Judith Riggs

At the June 2023 meeting of East Hampshire Green Party, we recognised the massive potential for us to become much more effective. As the first step I looked at the roles and responsibilities within the Party.  I also identified the critical need to share these roles between as many members as possible.

Initially I collated all of the roles that are currently being undertaken by various members. I also considered aspirational roles needed to make progress. These can be found in the document Key Roles and Responsibilities.

Four main areas were identified:

1. Administration
2. Membership
3. Public Engagement
4. Councillors/Elections

In order to be able to discuss this with the wider membership an afternoon tea and brainstorming session was arranged (this ended up over running and was also the next monthly meeting as well).

During these sessions a lot of positive feedback was given and the overall areas and aims were agreed on, however it did become apparent that due to the limited membership as well as the time commitments everyone is able to make that we were being a little ambitious and may need to grow the active membership before filling all of these roles.

The key outcomes from these discussions: 

Local Representatives – the simple functions:

1. Be first point of contact for new members – details to be sent by membership coordinator (Phill) to relevant representative
2. Be a buddy for local members.
3. Ensure contact details are included in any relevant local magazines (e.g. parish) and local social media groups etc.
4. Notify EHGP of any events in the area
5. Notify EHGP of any news in the area – provide a full article or details to write one for the newsletter.

Skills Audit – Audit the membership for any skills we might not know about and to try to engage members that want to do more but don’t know how.

• This was a slightly divisive idea as there was a couple of concerns help and are we currently able to do this.
  • How many members will actually get to respond
  • If members do respond we need to take them up on any offers of help and are we currently able to do this?
• Overall it was decided to not do a full skills audit as it was too open ended and instead focus on specific tasks and request specific help when required.
• An email requesting help with a number of tasks was sent out but didn’t receive any responses, showing how important it is we grow our membership as well as try to more actively/regularly engage with them.
• Although there was mention of a number of specific tasks there was also a general call for help and therefore could have been too open ended.
• There is still not enough known about the skills within the membership so some sort of database/audit would still be beneficial, an email with specific questions to respond to rather than so open ended may get a better response?

Overall there are not enough active members to fill all roles so for now we need to simplify and focus on the following key areas

Public engagement (1):

• We can’t grow our membership without this
• It is key for the Green Party to be seen and to get our message out there.
• Key way to engage with the voting public.

Membership engagement (2):

• We need to ensure all members are welcomed to the group (by their local representative)
• Ongoing engagement – action days/regular meetings and social activities.

Candidates and elections (3):

• We need to have more active members who are willing to be candidates for district/county/parliamentary elections.
• By focusing on public and membership engagement we will hopefully grow the membership.
• We will also need to identify target seats for the next district (collate data from election to find target seats; request marked register for all of East Hampshire) 

Currently the plan is to set up three working groups to enable us to focus on fulfilling these objectives. The working groups will be:

Newsletter Working Group (#1) - for full details see Newsletter Working Group

• Create a basic standard layout for a newsletter for members and supporters
  • Content requirements
  • List of local representatives
  • List of diary dates/calendar (from calender working group)

Calendar Working Group (#2) - for full details see Events Calendar Working Group

• Create a calendar of events
• Key areas
  • EHGP meetings – 2nd Thursday
  • Action days – leafleting/canvassing
  • Members Social Events.
  • Public Engagements
• Secondary areas
  • National Green Party events
  • South East Green Party events?
  • Other local events
  • Other Local Green Party action days.

Event Stand Working Group (#3)

• Stand Requirements/Design/Budget/Storage/Order
• Public Engagement Activities
• Literature for the stand