Chapter Growth: NYC-DSA Casebook
Originally published to DSA forums by the 2024-2025 Steering Committee
Note: This was originally written by the 2024-2025 Steering Committee (including myself) as a resource to share with other DSA chapters. Due to heavy interest in this topic, and the relative inaccessibility of an old forum post, I have decided to upload this to my blog.
This piece was not purely my own, though I was a contributor.
It was published in April 2025 - since then we have grown from 8000 members listed here to over 13000 as of January 2026. Our growth was largely powered by Zohran Mamdani’s victory and the practices laid out here.
Hello everyone - we are the NYC-DSA Steering Committee.
We are proud to share that our chapter recently surpassed 8,000 members in good standing, an all-time high. While some other chapters have achieved high percentage growth, NYC-DSA has consistently led in total growth. Notably, we maintained membership levels in 2024 pre-Trump, and held membership stable throughout 2023 and 2024. We have put considerable time and energy into membership recruitment, retention and development. Our available data suggests that our growth would have been much lower without this work.
As a mass membership organization, growing our ranks is tremendously important. And we wanted to share an overview of our recruitment work and swap tips with other chapters as we work together to build DSA nationally. This is what has worked for us:
Encouraging a Culture of Member Recruitment & Retention
All of our work to build chapter membership is downstream of NYC-DSA making recruitment and retention priorities. This is reflected in our leadership structure - our Steering Committee includes a Membership Coordinator who oversees our Membership Committee and is responsible for onboarding and recruitment work. We also mandate regular membership reports during our Citywide Leadership Committee (CLC) meetings detailing our current membership count and providing analysis on recent trends. An example of a recent report can be found here - CLC 2025.02 Membership Report.
Additionally, we consistently discuss and pass membership recruitment plans at our Conventions, CLC and Steering meetings.
Using Source Coded Join Links
The NYC-DSA Steering Committee has made a habit of using distinct source codes for every major Join DSA ask we make. For example, our DSA 101s attach ?source=dsa101 on all join links provided to new members—including via QR codes and follow-up emails. This allows us to track the effectiveness and efficiency of our channels and tactics. Ideally all DSA chapters should be applying this and writing up the results so we can collectively identify best practices.
Building our Email and Contact List (List Building)
NYC-DSA has prioritized growing our list of contacts (a.k.a. list building) via our campaigns and actions. As a result, nonmembers often make up a high percentage of RSVPs to our events, signatures on our petitions and other actions taken. This is important because it creates a list of people who may be politically aligned with us who we can follow up with and even build stronger alignment. Examples of effective list building we have done include:
Hosting high profile public events which appeal to the broader left, for example our panel with Palestinian-American scholar Rashid Khalidi or event with French politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon;
Organizing DSA contingents (that are welcoming of non-members) to large demonstrations, such as our ongoing Build to May Day action series;
Organizing social events, such as our soccer league and our book clubs;
Creating letter tools with wide appeal on timely issues, like our letter tool demanding that NYU-Langone stop denying healthcare to trans youth which led to more than one hundred thousand letters sent by thousands of supporters.
We also encourage our geographic branches, working groups, and campaigns to collect supporter information from actions NYC-DSA organizes, endorses, or otherwise supports, wherever possible.
Sending Regular Texts, Calls, & Emails
NYC-DSA has run an average of one or more recruitment textbanks with Join DSA copy a month since our 2024 Membership Drive resolution passed at local convention in October. Each of these textbanks has resulted in anywhere from dozens to hundreds of joins. We have found that the most effective outreach occurs when timed in response to major political moments like Trump’s election and inauguration. Promoting members-only events has also been very effective.
We also often pair these textbanks with emails containing similar copy. Our targeting has varied, but on average we target a list of action takers within the last 90 days. We always have secondary, fall back asks. If someone isn’t ready to join, the secondary ask is often attending a DSA 101 where we can introduce them to DSA and ask again.
Additionally, we send regular emails to recently lapsed and soon to lapse members asking them to renew their dues.
Organizing Ongoing DSA 101s
DSA 101s are designed for potential and new members to get to know the org and orient themselves to the many facets of our work. Refined and popularized by NYC-DSA members, they are a staple of both our member onboarding and member recruitment work. They are well regarded by attendees, and we schedule them several times a month so that they are always available. Our DSA 101 organizers make Join DSA asks both as part of the 101 and in conversation with attendees afterwards; and the follow up email includes an additional Join DSA ask. This makes DSA 101s effective events for prospective members and we use them to recruit several dozen new members each month.
Hosting Member-Only Events
NYC-DSA has held high-profile members-only meetings for several years. Our candidate endorsement forums are only open to members, and we frequently see an uptick in member joins and renewals ahead of these meetings. In 2024 we saw a notable bump from our Jamaal Bowman endorsement forum, and have since prioritized running more member-only events. Recently we recruited over 100 new members with an Ask Me Anything event with Zohran and several dozen more using a call with Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and Zohran. As a rule, anything high profile or exciting to which we can limit access to is effective.
Member only events are especially effective as a way to capitalize on list building - providing an incentive for nonmembers on our lists to join DSA.