PCUN: Staff Support and Training to Expand Membership

Founded as Oregon's only farmworker union, PCUN (Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste) has spent decades organizing and empowering Latinx families and farmworkers across the state. The organization works to create meaningful policy change at the state and national levels while building a strong base of engaged members who can advocate for themselves and their communities.

Overview

With a grant from Progressive Multiplier, PCUN developed a membership welcome video and tested three distinct
distribution channels to convert supporters into dues-paying members. The project came at a critical moment when the organization needed to shift community perception away from their COVID-era role as emergency responders and back to their core mission of policy advocacy and power-building. By testing SMS text distribution, social media outreach, and in-person QR code sharing, PCUN discovered which approaches resonated most with their farmworker base and created a roadmap for sustainable membership growth.

Key Strategies & Tactics

PCUN's membership recruitment experiment consisted of three integrated distribution strategies designed to reach their community through different touchpoints:

SMS Text Distribution: The team sent 350 messages per month to contacts in their database of over 21,000 people who hadn't been recently engaged, directing them to watch the membership video via a text link.

Social Media Campaign: Initially sharing the full membership video weekly, the team pivoted to creating short reels posted four times per week across Facebook and Instagram platforms.

QR Code In-Person Outreach: Organizers distributed flyers with QR codes at community events, membership meetings, and outreach activities, allowing people to scan and watch the video immediately while having face-to-face conversations about membership.

Lessons Learned

Meet Your Base Where They Are: Farmworkers strongly preferred in-person interactions and were often hesitant to trust text message links or provide financial information over the phone.

Create Welcoming Spaces: Offering free childcare, food, and educational presentations at membership meetings removed barriers to participation and created an environment where families could engage fully.

Adapt Digital Content for Platform Behavior: Switching from long videos to short reels dramatically increased social media engagement, with link clicks jumping from 1,300 to 13,000 in just two months.

Build Systems on What Already Works: Rather than inventing entirely new approaches, the team found more success enhancing and scaling their existing in-person outreach strategies.

Plan for Staff Transitions: Having clear documentation and systems in place proved essential when key team members departed mid-project.

Recognize Cultural Context: Simple additions like offering PCUN ID cards for an extra five dollars gave farmworkers an additional form of identification and deepened their sense of organizational belonging.

By the Numbers

Impact

Through this experiment, PCUN discovered something fundamental about serving their farmworker community. While digital tools and social media created awareness and engagement, the path to membership conversion required the trust and connection that only face-to-face interaction could provide. The QR code approach proved most successful precisely because it combined the efficiency of digital tools with the authenticity of personal relationships.

The project's impact extended far beyond individual membership conversions. As organizing director Marlina Campos noted, the membership meetings began attracting so many new faces that the organization started outgrowing its venue space. This growth challenge reflected a deeper shift in community engagement and organizational momentum.

The May Day celebration provided dramatic evidence of this expanding reach. Where the previous year had drawn about a thousand participants, the 2024 event brought thirty-five hundred people together. In a climate of heightened immigration enforcement fears, the turnout demonstrated both the organization's growing influence and the community's need for spaces of solidarity and support. People who couldn't attend themselves because of documentation concerns saw neighbors and allies showing up on their behalf, strengthening bonds across the entire community.

The social media component, while not directly driving membership conversions, played its own important role. The shift to short reels and more frequent posting built PCUN's follower base and kept the organization visible during critical moments. These digital touchpoints helped maintain connection with supporters and created pathways for future engagement, even when immediate conversion didn't occur.

Perhaps most significantly, the project helped PCUN refocus its community identity. After spending the pandemic as an emergency response organization, the membership video and accompanying outreach clarified what the organization does at its core: building farmworker power through policy advocacy, candidate endorsement, and base-building. As the team works toward their North Star goals of one thousand Legacy members, one thousand People's Union members, and two hundred leaders by 2028, they now have tested strategies and proven approaches to guide their growth.

The lessons from PCUN's experience hold value for other organizations serving immigrant and working-class communities. Digital tools can amplify reach and create awareness, but they work best when integrated with the trust-building and relationship-centered approaches that have always been fundamental to community organizing. Food, childcare, education, and face-to-face conversation aren't just nice additions to membership recruitment. For many communities, they're the foundation that makes everything else possible.