It was an ironic twist of fate that delegates to the Liberal Party of Canada’s 2012 biennial in Ottawa would vote to create a supporter
system and elect a decided supporter system skeptic – Matthew Certosimo – as national
membership secretary, with the task of creating and overseeing the system in
time for the 2013 leadership race.
Two years later, with over 300,000 members and supporters
having been recruited by the end of the leadership race, Certosimo is leaving
office a confirmed supporter convert. Liberal delegates to February’s biennial convention in Montreal will elect his successor, and I recently spoke with Certosimo about his term, the supporter experiment, and how the next membership secretary
can carry it forward.
The following is an edited transcript of our conversation.
How would you
describe the role of membership secretary?
I always felt from the beginning, and this was reinforced during
my term, that is was a combination of cheerleader – someone whose job is to
encourage participation in the party – and the rules person, an individual in a
secretary capacity who works hard to ensure that those who become members and
supporters do so in compliance with the rules and under the relevant bylaws,
and the decision-making that falls on the shoulders of the national membership
secretary to interpret the rules and issue interpretation bulletins. A
combination of cheerleader/chief recruiter and rules person.
What were the goals
you had set for yourself going in?
I talked during my campaign about connect, engage and inspire
being the three pillars of why I wanted the job.
I felt we had to do a better job of connecting the party at
every level to enhance our ability to be more than just a party, but a
movement. We had to do a better job welcoming people when they joined our
movement and engage them. And third, we had to do things as a party and a
movement that would make people want to be a part of the effort.
Some of that would fall to the parliamentary wing of the
party, of course, but I felt the party itself, and the national membership
secretary specifically, needed to keep the objective of motivation, of inspiring
our supporters and members, at the front of centre of how we approach what we
do.
And looking back now,
how do you feel you did against those three pillars?
Frankly, I think we did a great job. The whole team, the
table offices and the board, all deserve credit in this regard. We’ve had a
pretty heavy agenda over the two years since the last biennial. I was fortunate
to have great support from the board, the table officers, and especially our
president, Mike (Crawley).
Right away, with the assistance of Rob Jamieson and the
staff at the Ottawa office, we developed and implemented what I called Take
Notice. In essence, it was a regular, automatic e-mail communication to every
riding in the country with updates on new members, volunteers and donors, and
eventually we added supporters. Before people didn’t know what was happening,
they didn’t know how to use Liberalist to get updates, and there was a lot of concern
about sharing this kind of information between the centre and the ridings. For
both pragmatic and symbolic reasons, my first initiative after I became
national membership secretary was to launch this communications vehicle. I
heard across the country that the ridings were very appreciative of this; they
really felt as though it enhanced the connection between the party office and
each of the ridings.
On engagement, the entire effort around the launch of
supporters was, of course, an engagement and recruitment initiative. I think we
could say objectively that the supporter experiment was a tremendous success in
engaging people beyond the narrow band of those who would be prepared to become
a member, and encouraged them in participating at a level the party had never
seen before.
It’s hard for me to comment on the inspiration. That would
be for others to say. In terms of how I conducted myself, I tried to ensure the
way we did what we did was always consistent with the principles of inclusion,
transparency and openness, and what we walked the talk, and in doing so, I’m
hoping that inspired people to trust and continue to be involved in our effort.
Looking back at our
first leadership race under the supporter system, what worked well and what
didn't?
We had to reconcile the idealistic objective of the supporter
category being an open, accessible way for people who wouldn’t want to become
members to get involved with our movement, with the more pragmatic concern many
in the party had with the security and verifiability and legitimacy of the election
of our leader.
Those are potentially conflicting principles, but we
reconciled them through what I called the funnel model. It's wide open at the
front end (letting supporters sign up with minimal data provided), and as we
narrow it down towards the vote we increase the security around the legitimacy
of the vote by requiring a supporter to register for the vote.
In an ideal world, we wouldn’t have had to, for an online
vote, put members through the registration process. If our system had the
benefit of being built and programmed so that, when members went into our
system, all the security measures related to their identity were in place, they
wouldn’t have had to go through that process. If we’re looking at improvements
for next time, we should lay the groundwork for members to be pre-registered,
and have all the security measures around identity and so in place in our
system.
Overall, I don’t think anyone can argue that having almost
130,000 people vote directly for the leader of our party was anything other
than a tremendous success. It was the biggest national leadership election in
our country’s history, and it was an accomplishment I believe we as a party should
be tremendously proud of.
How can we continue building
the supporter system outside of a leadership race?
I believe the supporter experiment taught us that those who
had said different people want to engage in our party in different ways, and that
we need to have structures in place with respect to that, were right. And I say
that with humility and as a bit of a mea culpa, as I am a reformed supporter
skeptic. I did not support the adoption of the supporter category, but I became
a believer that it was the right decision by the party.
I think the next step is to build on the principles of a
multi-level engagement model that allows people to become involved in our party
at different levels and in different ways, as suits their particular preference.
The free, easily accessible, relatively modest engagement category that is the
supporter can be maintained and be a way of encouraging people to remain
connected to the party, coming to the party with their ideas and the like,
without taking out a membership.
And there are rights that come along with a membership, such
as choosing candidates for the local nomination for the riding. That’s an
incentive for someone to go up to the next level of engagement. I think that’s
a perfectly reasonable and wise model to have in place.
Whether or not the party wants to consider further reforms
of the membership model to make it easier for people to become members is, I think,
something that deserves some further thought. When I ran for national
membership secretary I was of the view that, rather than adopting a supporter
category, we should look at making membership free. On reflection, I don’t
think we need to do that – we can keep the supporter category as the free model
of participation and charge something for membership, but we could consider
whether it should be a membership fee or part and parcel with participation in the
Victory Fund.
The main thing though is that we not be rigid in the
categories or the different ways in which people can engage; I think that’s the
key lesson from the supporter experience.
What would you say is
the biggest challenge facing your successor?
The good news for my successor is that, unlike the last two
years, he or she won’t have to launch the supporter category, build the
infrastructure and then oversee the election of a leader.
They will be in place though as we move through the
nomination process. Whomever takes on the role of national membership secretary
will have to be involved in overseeing membership-related considerations relating
to participation in nomination meetings across the country. They don’t run
those meetings, but they must ensure the national membership registry is in
place so there are limited disputes over the right to vote in nominations.
What advice would you
give your successor?
Have fun. To be honest, and this is not a word of exaggeration,
I was so inspired by this party over the last two years, and in particular the
way people came forward and achieved the adoption of the supporter system, and
then helped build what was ultimately a supporter category of over 300,000
people.
The leadership process that followed, all things considered,
and despite the fact it was the first time we did something like this, was relatively
pain-free because of the way the party rallied behind, accepted, and made work
the supporter/member, one member one vote national leadership election. The
effort of the new leader and the work the new leader has been doing since is
the natural next step in what was really an inspirational evolution in our
party’s history.
For the next national membership secretary, and the table
offices and the board generally, it’s a fun time to be part of this movement,
and I hope they’ll take the kind of inspiration from it that I was able to for
the last two years.
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