SAMPLE PERSUASIVE OUTLINE
Volunteering in Your Community
Specific Purpose: To persuade the members of my audience to volunteer in their local community.
Thesis Statement: Volunteering in your local community will help those around you and help you feel like you contributed something positive.
Organizational Pattern: Monroe’s Motivated Sequence
Introduction (Attention)
I. Attention-Getting Device—Has anyone ever stopped to help you when you were in need? How did it make you feel?
II. Introduce Your Topic—Volunteering in your local community is great way to give back and set a positive example.
III. Demonstrating the Importance—If we all did something to help those in need, we would have a better and safer community and have a greater sense of accomplishment. I try and do one volunteer activity each month and can tell you of the personal benefits from volunteering.
IV. Preview of Main Points—Today, I will discuss the needs in our community, ways you can help, and what our community might look like if we all gave a hand.
Body
I. Need: The problems in our community are great and affect us all.
A. Families living in poverty in our community have significant needs, which need to be addressed.
1. This increased rate of poverty has been especially tough on the children.
a. There has been an increase in preventable childhood diseases (CDC, 2009).
b. Many of these children only get a full meal during school at lunch, so many of these children go hungry.
c. At the same time, standardized test scores for these children have been decreasing.
2. Because of the increased levels of poverty in our community, shelters and food pantries are over capacity.
a. The largest homeless shelter has started to limit the amount of time a person can stay due to increased demand (MLive.com, 2010).
b. One food pantry has had to limit its operating hours simply because it does not have enough food (personal communication, 2010).
B. The crime rates in our community have increased due to the increases in poverty.
1. The local paper reports a 14% increase in petty theft of property (Kalamazoo Gazette, 2010).
2. The community police report that many of these increased thefts are due to people pawning stolen property to pay for food and medicine.
T
ransition: Clearly our local community is in great need, but fortunately there are many ways to solve some of these problems.
II. Satisfaction: If we all agreed to volunteer at least once a month to help out those in need, many of the problems could be alleviated.
A. According to the local food pantry, it is always in need of more canned goods.
1. One step would be for us to create a continuous food drive in our residential halls here at college and encourage students to donate a few cans of food each week.
2. The food pantry also is currently seeking long-term volunteers to help organize and deliver food to those in need.