The big organising approach utilised in the Bernie Sanders campaign offers several valuable rules to scale up your efforts, empower members and supporters, and catch the fire of momentum. Hear from Becky Bond, co-author of Rules for Revolutionaries.
Amanda Tattersall cautions campaigners, organisers and activists to not take Bond & Exley’s rules” as gospel. While the book puts forward valuable insights into the Bernie Sanders campaign the focus is tactics and mobilisation rather than deep organising.
Ed Miliband, leader of the United Kingdom Labour Party, describes how political parties can be agents for major change.
GetUp is one of Australia’s most impactful and influential community organisations, and Paul Oosting is their national director. We discuss what GetUp learnt from the 2019 Federal Election campaign. We find out Paul’s insights about what it’s like to operate under the pressure of media and political attack.
We have radical challenges like climate change and inequality but not many radical political leaders. What does it take to find and elect leaders like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez who is trail blazing a new political agenda in the United States? Becky Bond was one of the Field Directors for the Bernie Sanders campaign and she shares her experience of combining radical agendas and political parties.
Hahrie Han is one of the world’s top researchers studying ways of strengthening civic engagement. We explore the different strategies you can use to build people power and the journey she took to become one of the world’s top researchers in this space.
Everyone is talking about the Covid-19 pandemic and the way it is shaking up our lives! You’ll find Coronavirus related content on most podcasts you could listen to. These ones have a particular focus on the implications for social movements.
The ChangeMakers podcast is short series podcast that tells stories about people who are striving for social change across the world.
The ChangeMakers podcast is short series podcast that tells stories about people who are striving for social change across the world.
The right tech tools can make a huge difference to the effectiveness of a campaign or organising project. Check out Tijuana (campaign CRM), Neighbourly (doorknocking walk-list tool) and Spoke (p2p text tool).
Nothing precedes purpose. The starting point for every organisation or movement should be the question ‘Why do we exist’? A number of tips for focusing an organisation on vision and purpose. An excerpt from Purpose Driven Campaigning, based on Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Church.
Rick Warren focuses on five ‘circles of commitment’ – community, crowd, congregation, committed and core, and argue that it’s important to recognise where your supporters fall in these categories, and develop processes to move them from the outside in. An excerpt from Purpose Driven Campaigning.
Tips for training or other events which connect people to a campaign and help individuals overcome their barriers to action. As organisers we can use the momentum of the group to leverage people to action – like a turbo-charged persuasive conversation.
Here is a list of crowdsourced ideas on how to make meetings and activism more welcoming and inclusive for parents/carers and their families.
The Community Organising Guide is 296 pages of training resources to deepen our understanding of core organising skills: relational meetings and self-interest, the power of story in organising, building alliances, coalitions and networks, holding decision-makers accountable, leadership development, recruitment, doorknocking and phonebanking.
This short case study shares some of the keys to success of the Lock The Gate approach – unusual alliances, non-violent direct action & more.
Keith Kelleher tells the history of fastfood worker organising – complete with employer dirty tricks, ambitious organisers, and efforts to rapidly scale up. Low wage workers are now organising nationwide for a new minimum wage – The Fight for $15.
Joel Dignam reviews Marshall Ganz’ approach to story as fundamental to organising. Through story we understand happenings, communicate our values, and make sense of our choices.
Joel Dignam reviews Ground Wars, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen’s hands-on ethnographic study of two competitive congressional campaigns in the 2008 US election. The book is a richly-detailed portrait of contemporary field campaigning.
Civic associations depend upon volunteers to get their work done. Joel Dignam distils insights from Ruth Wageman and Richard Hackman’s “Designing work for individuals and for groups” from Perspectives on Behavior in Organizations.