Black Lives Action Committee Guide
How to Diversify Local Party Membership
The Lib Dem leadership agrees that the more diverse our team of activists, members, and candidates are, the more relevant, resourceful, and representative our Party is. Diversity contributes to a better overall performance in business, politics, and life. The more diverse the Lib Dem family is, the better the election results we will achieve.
1. Acknowledge it’s not easy to be a minority member. New members are taking a risk leaping into a new Lib Dem culture, and they want to understand what challenges may lie ahead. Listen to concerns and build your recruiting strategy from the inside. Allow time for social interaction to introduce them to other members.
2. Meet potential new members where they are. Most local parties recruit members who are personal friends. Although this is welcome and builds local membership, these recruits often lack diversity. Diversify your new members’ search by meeting people in a variety of communities. Reach out to professional associations, clubs, and religious groups that already function as a hub for diverse people.
3. Let potential members know you value diversity and inclusion. Honesty is always the best policy. If you want more diverse members, say that! But avoid tokenism; telling potential members that the Party knows it is too White and wants to make itself open to new people is the quickest and easiest way to get the word out, just as long as you are serious about inclusivity.
4. Segment diversity prospects and target appropriately. Local parties need to identify their overall goals for diversity according to the different demographics that comprise it. Once determined, use a targeted approach that positively impacts both the targeted community and the local Party. If there is a lack of initial interest, the Party can build a pipeline using community initiatives.
5. Avoid The ‘Quick Candidate’ local parties should make candidates diversity a high priority by ensuring that there are many diverse Party members in the candidate pool for all open positions.
6. Look beyond the usual. Diversity isn’t just about skin colour, sexual orientation, or physical characteristics. To seek diverse members, a local Party must be open to someone whose background does not fit into a cookie-cutter mold. Don’t regard ’different’ as potential trouble, regard people’s differences instead as an opportunity to learn and share. Make an effort to welcome and include people who don’t typically dress or speak like other members.
7. Build a diverse local Party executive. Seeking out diverse membership isn’t that hard. Recruiting members and placing them in an environment where different backgrounds, cultures, and experiences are appreciated is more complicated. If a local Party has done this correctly, it should be reflected in the Executive team’s makeup. Once a local Party has this kind of environment, diverse members will come and stay. Don’t automatically assume because a diverse member joins the Party, they want to be a diversity officer or a candidate – let them decide what they want to do as a member.
8. Send the right message. It’s crucial to send a clear statement in terms of marketing the local Party as a diverse team and inviting people to join the party. Demonstrate how the local Party is doing this in line with its liberal values to attract the right members. Enlist volunteers to assist in creating this environment and recruitment, and make it easy and fun. Be proactive in meeting the needs of potential members. Find a team to support you with the causes you are passionate about.
9. Advertise in diverse media instead of advertising in the usual places, seek out media whose readers/viewers/listeners are diverse. Find different religious, cultural, and ethnic publications, radio stations, websites, etc., and place invitations to join the Party ads there.
10. Embrace and respecting new members’ contributions. A team that makes an effort to be inclusive to a diverse membership should also have inclusive decision-making processes. Don’t forget to include new members in decision making. Respecting each other will encourage friends and family to join and contribute to the local Party’s growth. Make an effort to be aware of the views of as wide a range of members as possible, including members of underrepresented groups, before forming your opinion if you are an elected representative.
12. Supporting the efforts of the Lib Dem diversity and inclusion teams across the UK by creating a space for them to improve diversity standards in your local Party.