Welcome to the Oklahoma Veterans Coalitions Director/Team Training Part 2!
State Veterans Coalition Manual.
1. Learning the Acronyms & Setting up Your Technology
The Convention of States uses a lot of Acronyms. Use this Acronym Guide to find the meanings when you run into new ones (Print the Guide)
Open the email asking you to confirm your new COS email account and click the link inside.
Download the COS Action App to your phone (iPhone / Android) and sign into it.
Watch the App Introduction Video.
Watch Telepatriot training videos.
As a Veterans Coalitions Director/Team member (VCD & VCD Team), you can make telepatriot calls if you want to, but it is not one of your responsibilities.
Join the two Slack Workspaces (Oklahoma & VETS4COS) via the email invitations that you will receive.
Introduction to Slack
2. Convention of States University (3 hrs, 15 min)
COS 300 Convention of States Culture (57 min)
COS 400 Leadership & Activism (58 min)
LL 200 How to Influence Your Legislator (1 hr 16 min) - As a VCD or VCD Team member, you will encourage veterans to build relationships with their legislators. This course will provide you with some practical tactics to pass on.
3. Your District Numbers, State Representative, and State Senator
Before you go any further, you must discover your Representative, Senator, House District (HD), and Senate District (SD). Use the instructions below to find your legislators and district numbers, and save that information somewhere you can easily refer to. If you already know all four things, move on to step 4.
Find your State Representative and House District
Find your State Senator and Senate District
4. Citizen Builder/Dashboard
Citizen Builder (also known as Dashboard) is where local COS volunteers and veterans will be found. It is also where you send email blasts, create pages, polls, surveys, action reports, upload files, and research legislators' Convention of States positions.
Watch Introduction to Citizen Builder for Veterans Coalitions Team
While it is essential that you know these tools exist and are available, don't worry if you don't have them all memorized by the end of this training. You can return to this page if you need to remember how to do something.
5. Leaders Directory
The Leaders Directory is one of the best tools for finding your Veteran's coalition team, State Leaders, and out-of-state leaders.
Watch Using State Directory to find State Leaders.
6. Searching for People and your local volunteer team
The Leaders Directory is fantastic, but it won't give you a short and sweet list of all the volunteers and local cos volunteer leaders near you, nor will it show you all the veteran signers in your area. To do those things, you will need to go to Dashboard and do a search.
Watch Searching for People in the Dashboard
7. Files & Pages
Watch How to Create Website Pages
Contact your State Director for assistance if you create a page and want to publish it.
Watch How to Create Files
8. Polls & Surveys
Watch How to Create Polls
Survey Instructions are in the works.
9. Action Reports
Action Reports are critical to uniting all our efforts into one focused movement. They can be made through the COS Action App or the COS Website. Watch the videos below and save/print the instructions for future reference.
Watch Action Reports from the COS Action app.
(COS Action App) Action Report Instructions: Print/Download (text) (text with screenshots) This still needs to be created
Watch Action Reports from the COS Website
(Website) Action Report Instructions: Print/Download (text) (text and images)
Direct Link for submitting New Action Reports
10. LMS (Legislative Management System)
Watch Training on the LMS
11. Email Blasts
Watch How to Set Up an Email
Watch Email Checklist
Watch Crafting Effective Subject Lines
Read Best Practices
12. Veterans Coalitions Team
Who's who on the VCD Team? The titles on this team are somewhat confusing, so here's a basic breakdown of what they mean.
State VCD: The State VCD is responsible for the entire statewide VCD Team.
VCD: VCD works to reach veteran organizations within their Region.
VCD Team: The VCD Team works to reach veteran organizations within their House District.
13. Setting Yourself Up for Success
While you now know pretty much everything you need to get started, the following steps will help you be genuinely prepared to do this job.
Save your State VCD's contact information and expect to reach out often.
Van W. Walter Oklahoma VCD van.walter@cosaction.com PH# 337-255-4373
I plan to attend the National VCD Meetings when they come up.
Plan to attend Regional Meetings and get to know your local volunteer team so that you can help them engage with your efforts.
Save the Oklahoma Resources Page to your Browser for quick access.
If you have completed all these things, call/text/slack/or email your State Director and let them know you are ready for your final Zoom training.
