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The Definitive Distributed Organizing Guide

By ,

Introduction

Welcome to The Definitive Distributed Organizing Guide! This guide is designed to provide Democratic candidates, campaign managers, and others involved in electoral work with the tools and information needed to implement a distributed organizing approach.

It sets out clearly what distributed organizing is, its potential for winning electoral campaigns, how to do it, and how to find more information about distributed organizing.

Distributed organizing is a peoplepowered approach that blends mobilizing with organizing, ceding some level of decision-making from a central coordination team to supporters, creating opportunities and support for them to step into leading groups to achieve centrally prescribed goals.

The guide explores:

  • The potential value of distributed organizing (and what it can and cannot do for your campaign).
  • How to assess if a distributed approach is right for your campaign
  • The investment required and risks associated with implementing a decentralized program
  • How to set up your distributed organizing program for success – and avoid pitfalls – from the start
  • Comparisons of different distributed models and considerations in determining what level of decentralization your program should have
  • Keys for motivating action within a distributed framework
  • All the essential elements you need to consider in running a program, including tips on: creating a handbook, recruitment, group structure, leadership roles and coaching, culture, training, and supporting volunteers, among others.
  • Technologies and tools to support distributed organizing in electoral campaigns
  • A comprehensive set of references for further reading on the topic

Diagram showing two organising models. One on the left reads 'Snowflake model as implemented in Obama's campaign'. The diagram is haped liked a snowflake. The one on the right reads 'Big organizing like that in the Sander's campaign'. The diagram shows a central circle with branches leading to groups of smaller circles.

Contents

  • 1 Introduction
  • 2 The Potential of Distributed Organizing to Win Big
  • 3 What is Distributed Organizing?
    • 3.1 Tectonica’s Five-Part Framework for Digital Organizing
    • 3.2 A Couple Distributed Organizing Models to Consider
    • 3.3 Principles of Distributed Organizing
      • 3.3.1 The Campaign Situation Has Urgency and Big Goals, but Can Continue Beyond These
      • 3.3.2 The Work Builds Leadership, Collective Ownership, and Community Accountability
      • 3.3.3 Structures That Can Scale
      • 3.3.4 Comfort with Ceding Control
      • 3.3.5 Committing the Necessary Time and Resources3.3.6 Setting a Clear, Unifying Popular Goal
  • 4 Distributing Leadership & Balancing with Centralization
    • 4.1 Why Distributed Organizing Motivates Action
    • 4.2 Decentralizing Decision-Making
    • 4.3 Deciding the Level of Autonomy vs. Centralization
  • 5 How-To: Where to Start
    • 5.1 Is Distributed Organizing for Your Campaign?
      • 5.1.1 Is it Central to Your Strategy?
      • 5.1.2 Is Your Community Behind You?
      • 5.1.3 Are You Willing to Cede Power and Take Risks?
    • 5.2 Identify Your Community & Work Out How to Strategically Engage Them
      • 5.2.1 Your People & Your Groups Inform Your Strategy
      • 5.2.2 Volunteer Actions and Roles
      • 5.2.3 Your Model and Approach
      • 5.2.4 Engaging Leaders
      • 5.2.5 Engaging Your Supporters as Participants
    • 5.3 Resource and Structure Your Plan (Leaving Space for Iteration)
      • 5.3.1 Tools for Communication, Collaboration, and Data Management
      • 5.3.2 Training
      • 5.3.3 Culture
      • 5.3.4 Feedback Loops
  • 6 Campaign Mobilizing and GOTV with Distributed Groups
    • 6.1 Recruitment In Everything
    • 6.2 Voter Registration
    • 6.3 Early Voting
    • 6.4 Voter Contact – Phone and Text Banking, Canvassing, Turf Cutting, Events, and Other Outreach
      • 6.4.1 Determining Your Targeted Voter or Supporter Universe
      • 6.4.2 Door-to-Door Canvassing and Turf Cutting
      • 6.4.3 Phone Banking and Text Banking
      • 6.4.4 Creative Voter Contact
      • 6.4.5 Training
      • 6.4.6 Don’t Lose the Data
    • 6.5 Distributed Fundraising
    • 6.6 The Lead-Up to Election Dayç
      • 6.6.1 GOTV
      • 6.6.2 Election-mania – The Final Weeks
      • 6.6.3 Election Day Activities
  • 7 Using NGP VAN’s Suite of Tools in Distributed Organizing
    • 7.1 Introduction
    • 7.2 Replicating a Distributed Structure in VAN and Mobilize
    • 7.3 VAN Committees, Users, and Groups
    • 7.4 Mobilize Permission Tiers
    • 7.5 Train Your Leaders to Align and Unify Efforts
    • 7.6 Empowering Your Groups by Connecting to Other Tools: Mobilize and VAN
      • 7.6.1 Mobilize
      • 7.6.2 VAN
        • 7.6.2.1 Canvassing with MiniVAN
        • 7.6.2.2 Phone Banking with OpenVPB
    • 7.7 Manage All Your Groups and Distribute KPIs with Different Reports and Dashboards
    • 7.8 Choose Your Tech and Start Building Your Program
  • 8 External Resources / Articles
    • 8.1 Guides & Resources
    • 8.2 Articles
    • 8.3 Books and Broader Resources9 Definitions

     

Benefits of Distributed Organizing

Distributed organizing campaigns hold great power potential for a number of reasons:

  • It has the potential for scale. Because a successful distributed organizing program self-scales after a point with relatively low resource investment, distributed organizing campaigns can power surprising campaign wins. Having a mass of supporters involved and ready to mobilize on the days leading up to an election is a substantial prize for investing in distributed organizing. Distributed organizing’s potential to scale beyond the limits of campaign staff is enormous.
  • It has the potential to shift power from elites to communities. Rooted in people as an independent source of power, candidates and causes don’t need pre-existing ties or to be beholden to existing – and often moneyed – power. In an age where Democrats often face asymmetrical access to corporate money against Republican campaign opponents, democratizing our campaign practices through distributed organizing offers a unique advantage to any candidate or cause committed to their constituents and base.
  • It reaches more deeply into communities. And it does so more than any media, advertising, or social media effort.

    Traditional messaging and persuasion communications are limited by their medium. The participation of supporters in a distributed organizing program allows connection to their own community networks, which are likely unknown or out of reach to a campaign run only by staff. Moving the work of the campaign from a press briefing to a conversation between parents at the local soccer field holds deep potential for amplifying the campaign’s work in unimaginable ways.

  • Beyond the reach and connections to their networks, participants of distributed organizing programs bring their full and best human potential to the strategic capacity of the campaign, including their creativity, insights, enthusiasm, charisma, and leadership. By allowing autonomous groups to develop their own strategy, content, and issues, you bring important value to a campaign beyond just resources like money and volunteer time.
  • A campaign with constituent participation and ownership is more protected from the common attacks of distrust – from disinformation and fake news to the delegitimization of candidates as inauthentic and motivated only by seeking power. It’s easier to discredit a politician standing alone than a campaign rooted in a community. A campaign speaking against lies in the threads of its social media posts lacks power compared to a barrage of supporters defending the truth online and offline. Participation itself can also be deeply transformative in terms of commitment to and trust in the campaign cause for these supporters.
  • It can help inform the campaign’s direction and strategy as well as groundlevel tactics unhampered by the hierarchical processes of top-down campaigns.

    Being tapped into a grassroots supporter base can highlight emerging issues that a campaign needs to develop a response faster and more effectively than polling could do, offering deep value for guiding a campaign in our volatile world.

Access Distributed Organizing Guide

Watch Video

Watch a video recording of a webinar introducing the guide.

Webinar Distributed Organizing from Tectonica DCS on Vimeo.

About Tectonica and the Tectonica Organising Network (TON)

Tectonica is a movement building agency with a mission to create a seismic shift in the way politics are done, through innovations that empower social, economic, and environmental justice movements. With a broad array of strategic, creative and technological services, their work helps organisations, political parties, candidates and unions unlock transformational opportunities, build movement infrastructure, and run successful social and political campaigns rooted in people-power. 

As part of its social mission, Tectonica hosts the Tectonica Organising Network (TON) – a community of progressive campaigners working and innovating to win social and political change through people-based power. The community is a centre for best practices, resources, learning, and sharing. People can join here.

Explore a collection of Tectonica’s resources in the Commons Library.

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