The Five Numbers Your Campaign Should Check Every Monday
Campaign meetings drift. They fill with whoever is most persuasive in the room, the loudest complaint of the week, and a long discussion of a poster.
Five numbers, read in the same order every Monday before anybody speaks, convert that into a short meeting with decisions in it. Here they are, and here is what each one is for.
1. Identified supporters, and how many are new this week
Not the total. The change.
The total is a comfort. The weekly addition tells you whether the operation is running, and it is the single number most closely tied to your eventual result, because identified supporters are the people you can call on 10 August 2027 and ask to go and vote.
Break it down by ward. A campaign adding 300 supporters a week across six wards is in a very different position from one adding 300 across two wards and nothing across the other four.
Related: why weekly tracking beats a running total.
2. Contacts per active volunteer
Divide contacts made by the number of volunteers who actually went out.
This separates two problems that look identical on the headline figure. If contacts fall because fewer people went out, that is a recruitment and management problem. If contacts fall because each person did less, that is a training, materials or morale problem. The fixes are completely different and a campaign that cannot tell them apart applies the wrong one.
The word doing the work in that sentence is active. A volunteer who has registered and never appeared is not a volunteer for this purpose.
3. Polling streams with a confirmed agent, and the gap
Report the gap, not the total.
A campaign that says it has recruited 84 agents has told you nothing about whether those 84 cover 84 different streams. The number that matters is how many streams still have nobody, because those are the counts you will not see.
Confirmed means somebody has phoned the person recently and they said yes. Names collected months ago and never re-checked are a memory of coverage rather than coverage.
Related: prove the coverage, stream by stream.
4. Money spent this week, and what it bought
Two figures side by side: spent this week, and remaining.
Then one question that is not a figure. Which polling stations did this week's spending benefit? A week where most of the money went somewhere you were always going to win is a week to notice early rather than in the reconciliation.
Recording spending weekly also means that when the campaign finance return is due you are compiling records rather than manufacturing them.
Related: allocate the money by station.
5. Volunteers who did something this week
Not volunteers registered. Volunteers who did a task and it was recorded.
This is the harshest number on the list and the most useful. Every campaign has a large sign-up list and a much smaller working group, and the ratio between them is the true measure of whether your volunteer operation functions.
It also tells you when to recruit. Recruiting more names when the active share is falling adds to a list that is already not being called.
Related: the volunteer who was never called.
How to run the twenty minutes, starting next Monday
Same five numbers, same order, same sheet, every week, with last week's figures printed beside this week's.
Read them out before discussion starts. Discussion after the numbers is about the numbers. Discussion before the numbers is about whoever spoke first.
Then pick the one ward with the worst movement and spend the rest of the meeting on it. Not all six wards. One. A meeting that touches everything decides nothing.
Anything that is not one of the five and not this week's problem ward goes on a list for the end, and most of it will turn out not to have needed a meeting at all.
Related: what a nerve centre does with these numbers.
Start next Monday with whatever you have. You will not have all five in the first week. Report the ones you have and write unknown against the rest, in the meeting, out loud.
Unknown is a finding. A campaign in 2026 that discovers it cannot produce its own agent gap has eighteen months to fix that. A campaign that discovers it in July 2027 has a problem it will carry to the polling station.
Frequently Asked Questions
What should a campaign report on every week?
New identified supporters, contacts per active volunteer, polling streams still without a confirmed agent, money spent and what it bought, and volunteers who actually completed a task. Report the change since last week rather than running totals, and keep the order and the definitions identical from week to week.
Why report the agent gap instead of the number recruited?
Because a recruitment total does not tell you whether those people cover different streams. Enthusiastic areas over-recruit while quiet ones get nothing, and the recruitment figure looks the same either way. The uncovered streams are the counts you will not witness, and that is the number a coordinator can act on.
What if we do not have all five numbers yet?
Report the ones you have and say unknown for the rest, out loud, in the meeting. An unknown is itself a finding and it tends to get fixed once it is stated weekly. Discovering a missing number early leaves time to build the process behind it, which is not true a month before polling day.