Canvassing to Support the Save Our Safety Net Campaign

I’d consider myself someone who has mastered the art of fundraising – starting in high school with KEY Club, Caitlin and I weren’t afraid to ask anyone we’d ever met for money so that we could further some sort of Adopt-A-Family project or fundraising cause like Relay for Life. Through the different service experiences in both high school and college, I honed my ability to talk with people about why they needed to give money to my cause, whether it was for the East L.A. alternative spring break trip, or the Kennedale Park planting project.

That being said, canvassing is a different challenge. Unlike fundraising (mostly just asking for money), canvassing involves asking someone to commit their values in writing. For us, it involved going into an affluent neighborhood in D.C. to ask residents if they’d support a nominal (less than 1%) increase in income taxes for residents making over $200,000 each year. Hoping that these signatures would sway the votes of the City Council, we went door-to-door, explaining the mission and goals of the Save Our Safety Net Campaign***.



Half of the people we spoke with weren’t interested in the message. Understandably - who honestly wants to see their taxes increase, even if it is a nominal amount? Perhaps more powerful though, was other half of the people we talked with. The people who wrestled with the idea as we stood on their doorstep… the people who thought about our IDA clients and our clients needing job training and child care… about our homeless men, women, and families who depend on D.C.’s safety net during the winter months. Ultimately, whether it was out of an engrained belief in the needs of our poor, or a beautiful transformation when hearing the cries of our poor, these men and women signed the petition urging their council man or woman to raise their own taxes.

I think that during these moments – when I watched fellow D.C. residents wrestling with their own tax burden increasing so that they could guarantee that our city’s poor could afford to merely live – these moments were moments of social change. It wasn’t the social change I see each day at Bread for the City, the change that involves winning a battle at Landlord-Tenant Court or a change that involves a family receiving enough food for the rest of the month. Rather, this social change was a change in attitude, a change in heart. A change towards realizing our common humanity.

It is this change that makes me want to canvas again – so that both the social safety net will ensure our clients will have enough this next year, and so that our wealthier residents will have a transformation of heart.


***For more information about the Save Our Safety Net Campaign and for information on how to get involved, please click here.