Looking for articles, books, case studies, tips about social change and activism? You’ve found the right place – The Commons Social Change Library.
A summary of Bill Moyer’s Movement Action Plan. He describes eight stages through which social movements normally progress over a period of years and decades. It provides organizers with a map of the long road of successful movements.
A short guide to getting started with Twitter. Twitter Best Practice: Short tweets get retweeted more often; Tweet as-it-happens: people love to be in the know and up-to-the-minute tweets win; add a comment to your retweets to give them your own spin, or explain why you’re sharing them.
Joel Dignam reviews Jane McAlevey’s No Shortcuts: Organising for Power in the Gilded Age. McAlevey outlines a critique of most contemporary union campaigning, using case studies and other analysis to argue for a deeper more rigorous approach to organising.
Anita Tang reflects on meeting Daniel Hunter and reading his book Strategy and Soul. She shares insights from his work which can contribute to strategic and soulful campaigning.
This tool will guide your team through a power mapping analysis to inform your campaign strategy with a thorough picture of the players, and their power. It runs step by step through a collaborative exercise where your team can all contribute to visual map of power holders and power relationships affecting your issue and campaign.
From time to time, you may need to respond to a difficult situation on your organisation’s social media networks. Keep this crisis checklist on hand to ensure that you can deal with any problems that arise quickly and effectively.
Evaluating the impact of advocacy campaigns can seem impossible. Here are three handy guides that can help you undertake effective monitoring and evaluation of your advocacy and campaigning.
A clear Facebook comments policy is central to making sure everyone is aware of how they are expected to behave when engaging in your community’s online conversation. Take some inspiration from this example written by Jessie Mawson for Amnesty International Australia.
Writing a great media release or alert can be challenging – they need to be short, snappy, and easy to read. Creating the perfect media release will make life easy for the people you are communicating with, and then you can rest assured that your message has been communicated effectively. Everyone wins!
For volunteers or staff to be driven to do their work, it must be motivational, both ‘extrinsically’ and ‘intrinsically’. However, we often the intrinsic elements of the work. Read on to learn about how to design tasks to make them more intrinsically motivational. Your staff and volunteers will benefit!
Social media is a powerful tool for creating change. Your tweets and Facebook posts have the potential to raise awareness of your cause, to get people talking, and to inspire your community to action. Not sure if your online activity is helping to maximise your impact? This how-to guide will help you ensure that your […]
Learn from research conducted by the Asylum Seeker Resouce Centre on what language/messaging is most effective in getting others to shift their ideas on people seeking asylum.
Here are some simple tips for getting the most out of meetings, relevant to collectives, committees and action groups.
Community organising is a term that is being used more and more in Australian social movements – but what does it really mean? Here’s a brief introduction to some of the key principles.
We’ve all been there – you need an elephant costume or a Nemo suit for a press conference this afternoon, or a chicken suit for your factory farming protest. Find out who has one here, and add your own!
Using incredible language data from advocacy, opposition, political speech and popular culture, Anat Shenker-Osorio’s latest research analyses why certain messages resonate where others falter in the human rights sector across Australia, the UK and the US.
Australian Progress analysed the language people in Australia use to speak about economics (and tax, welfare, aid, privatisation, work and more). These new messaging resources will be useful for communicators, campaigners and advocates for more progressive economic policy.