Recruiting Participants

How you promote Getting Ahead and recruit and select participants (called “investigators”) will vary depending upon your setting – whether your initiative is taking place in a community organization, workplace, prison, domestic violence shelter, foster home, or other environment.

Regardless of where you recruit, however, the information from the Facilitator Notes for Getting Ahead in a Just-Gettin’-By World will help you get off to a good start.

Motivation for Participating

People come to Getting Ahead for a variety of reasons, and you may want to highlight some of these reasons in your recruiting materials. Sources of motivation may include:

  • Helping others. Investigators are problem solvers. They will contribute to community solutions in many ways. The idea of helping others has attracted many people to Getting Ahead.
  • Finding solutions for oneself. Some people are looking for a way out, getting unstuck, starting over, changing their lives.
  • Getting paid. Some people come almost solely for the stipend, which compensates investigators for their time and the knowledge they share with the group. This is fine because it is in the Getting Ahead experience that many people find their true motivation. There are exceptions to the general rule of paying investigators, such as prisons.

Tips for Recruiting

For best results, build a diverse group of willing participants:

  • The more diversity in the group, the better – gender, age, race, and especially, people experiencing different levels of poverty and instability.
  • Don’t use coercion. Forcing someone to attend Getting Ahead is not consistent with the premise that people in poverty are problem solvers, partners, and individuals with vital information.
  • Some people are not ready for Getting Ahead and should be encouraged to consider Getting Ahead another time.
  • If possible, recruit from the whole continuum of situations: from people living in very unstable conditions and in generational and persistent poverty, to people who may be in near-poverty or situational poverty, whose resources may be higher and situations relatively stable.

For more information about the steps associated with launching a Getting Ahead initiative, click on the links below:

Ready to start recruiting? Call us at (800) 424-9484, or send us an email.