Organising builds power by engaging and connecting people in collective action. The resources gathered here educate and inform about the craft of organising. You’ll find case studies, articles, practical tips, and training materials.
Australian Progress has prepared this 40-point summary of Pastor Rick Warren’s bestselling book The Purpose Driven Church. The resource is based on Rick Warren’s experience of growing his church, Saddleback, from scratch to 20,000 members attending every week. Saddleback is now the eighth biggest church in the United States.
This handbook, based on the work of Marshall Ganz, aims to support you in developing your capacity for effective community organizing. It covers five key practices of organizing.
This excerpt from the Community Organising Guide provides an introduction to community organising. Organising is about generating and wielding people power.
This practical community organising guide by the Australian Conservation Foundation is a good example of how to start, set up and support community action groups.
Community organisers need to continually analyse their communities. What’s going on that has implications for our issue and campaign? Which groups do we need to be connecting with? How is power being exercised?
This article outlines three frameworks of organising. They are broad based organising; social movement organising; and community development informed organising.
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.
Community organising is a way of working that trains and builds citizen leaders inside community-based organisations. We need to build strong and vibrant civil society organisations that act for the common good.
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.
This article explores the ‘moving the rock’ concept put forward by Daniel Hunter in his book Strategy and Soul. The concept has been valuable for campaigners and organisations reassessing their theory of change and particularly how they engage politicians and supporters.
Strategic questioning is the skill of asking the questions that will make a difference. It is a powerful tool for personal and social change which helps people discover their own strategies and ideas for change. Strategic questioning can be valuable in campaign strategy, group consultation processes, one-to-one organising conversations, coaching and many other contexts.
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.
A follow up article from a workshop presented at Progress 2015 by Holly Hammond and Sam La Rocca with a video presentation from Daniel Hunter. The workshop explored Daniel’s metaphor ‘politicians are like a balloon tied to a rock’.
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.
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.
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.
Example organiser job advertisements and role descriptions from around the world.