Long before "Insta-Influencers" cluttered up the scene and distorted the meaning of "influencer," even long before the internet, there were political influencers who convinced people to change their opinions about issues and candidates, or at least take action on opinions they already held. Since the rise of social media, many old-school influencers and a host of new influencers leverage social media to dramatically increase the scale of their influence to reach citizens, voters, and activists to shape their views and move them to action.
What. On. Earth. Did. My. Organizer/Candidate/Member. Just. Say. OUT. LOUD?!?!
We want our organizers, candidates, and members to be the face and the voice of our movements, but keeping them on topic can be trying. This workshop will use some of the mistakes I've seen (and made) and channel it to positive work in the future. Training the trainers is an important step in making sure communicators for organizations and campaigns can prepare for public speaking and swift damage control.
You spend so much time writing emails to your supporters, you need your important messages to end up in the inbox! But Gmail, Yahoo, and other email providers are constantly changing how they sort your emails. Join deliverability experts from Twilio SendGrid and Action Network to learn how to ensure your emails get to your activists every time. We’ll cover how email providers determine what’s spam and what isn’t, how the algorithms have changed in the past year, and how you can test your email program to ensure deliverability. You’ll also have a chance to learn new strategies, practice techniques like testing down the list, and ask questions to some of the foremost experts in the email deliverability field.
Facebook is still the most dominant social media platform. We pretty much all use it, but managing an organizational presence is a different task. We'll break down the difference between profiles, groups, and pages, discuss how to pick the right one, and share some tips for better engagement and organizing.
With an uncertain future for peer-to-peer texting, more and more organizations and campaigns are pivoting to Broadcast SMS. In this training, we'll cover the basics on how to get your organization or campaign set up to do Broadcast SMS including how to set up an opt-in path, creative ways to grow and engage your list, and how to use Broadcast SMS for organizing and fundraising.
201-level training on power mapping with a digital lens, and how to effectively choose digital tactics to reach your targets. Ideal for somewhat experienced campaigners newer to digital.
We will cover: finding & researching target, examining relationships, choosing tactics, tools like landscape analysis & relationship circulars, and brief references to cool examples using New/Mode, obviously.
Last March, immigrant leaders from Movimiento Cosecha launched the national Undocumented Worker Fund to create a way for people everywhere to support families affected by COVID-19. In April, when the first round of government stimulus checks went out — excluding undocumented immigrants — Cosecha received a huge volume of donations from a brand new audience, ultimately raising over $2 million._x000D_ _x000D_ Join this session to learn: _x000D_ _x000D_ * Why and how Cosecha decided to launch the Undocumented Worker Fund_x000D_ * Cosecha’s general principles for rapid response fundraising (How to always be prepared for a big moment!)_x000D_ * How Cosecha used Facebook ads to extend our viral moment_x000D_ * What makes the Undocumented Worker Fund unique — and how this helped us reach new donors and new people to organize_x000D_ _x000D_ This session will be particularly useful for small- to mid-size organizations with basic experience in online fundraising.
When organizational or political campaigns are working on a field plan, there is a lot of focus on voter turnout. However, taking a look at voter density can also help you decide which tools in the field toolbox will serve you best. A field strategy aimed at reaching people who live in a high rise with 300+ likely voters should be different than a strategy aimed at reaching voters who live in single-family homes.
We will start by mapping voter density vs. voter turnout, brain-storming which field activities (door knocking, text banking, community events, etc.) are best for each situation. We’ll also walk folks through a data template that will help campaigns do the same analysis on their voter data.
This training is great for people who are either new to working with field data for a campaign or local organization, or for anyone looking to improve their skill in analyzing such data.
Have you attended a session where the facilitator says it will be interactive, only to find out that the Q&A section is the "interaction?" Putting questions in the chat is a good start but should not count as engagement! We want participants to be active learners in our workshops; we must provide opportunities to practice the new skill introduced, demonstrate a new concept for themselves or interpret new information in their own way. Our role should be a facilitator - facilitating knowledge. In this session, we will discuss and brainstorm ways to "engage-ify" training, either online or off. And by "discuss," we don't mean endless slides and a presenter talking for 45 minutes.
How organizers and organizations can use culturally relevant organic content to engage audiences in a deeper way. The focus on organic content is intentionally designed to circumvent the paid digital industrial complex.
Today, smart marketers and organizers understand that building an engaged and loyal community is far more valuable than the most viral of posts. And that's why Facebook Groups are the future of effective social media marketing! They are a powerful tool for growing and engaging an audience, and for learning and networking to stay at the top of your game.
In this session, led by digital storyteller and strategist Josh Klemons, you’ll learn the basics of how groups work, get tips and tricks for growing and moderating your group, explore examples of brands who really who are using them well and more.
Over a billion Facebook users are already actively using Facebook Groups. Join them!
Never Tweeted before? Whether you don’t even have an account — or set one up but never figured out how to use it — this session is for you. What is a hashtag anyway? Find out!
Attendees will learn about the ongoing temporary protected status fight led by migrants and how to power up grassroots organizing efforts using digital tools to reach English and Spanish audiences.
Deep Canvassing is a form of organizing based on having real conversations with people to move them to action or even change their minds. Dom will share what he learned leading Pennsylvania Stands Up's deep canvassing efforts that resulted in tens of thousands of directly persuaded voters in the 2020 election. This training will help you prepare to be an effective deep canvasser through an interactive experience focused on story sharing, story eliciting, and non-judgemental listening.
After a year of communicating without wearing pants, it’ll soon be time to communicate face to face. We’re getting ready to ease back into in-person life, but perhaps with some trepidation. Silly as it might seem, we can all use a refresher on how to maintain a powerful public presence. The secret? Body language. You’re saying more than you know without saying a thing. Learn (or re-learn) how to be welcoming, attentive, and confident IRL.
Many unions are facing daunting prospects for the future due to automation, shifts in the market, etc. What can be done to secure a prosperous future for workers and the communities they live in? Hear from CUPW, the Canadian union which is campaigning to revolutionize the postal service in that country. We will also be joined by ACRE which is helping community organizations partner with unions to get community benefit agreements with employers.
2021 is a monumental local election year, with the mayoralty and two thirds of the City Council up for grabs. The People’s Plan NYC offers the priorities of hundreds of organizers and advocates through a comprehensive, multi-issue roadmap around housing, anti-criminalization, education, economy, climate, transit, and health. The intent of The People’s Plan is to set the agenda for the city and provide a clear people-centered mandate to the incoming elected officials running the City in 2022 and beyond.
This session will go over how to build a multi-issues platform like the peoples plan, the process of evaluating and aligning on policy priorities, and how to use such a platform to build electoral power and influence an incoming administration. Attendees will leave this session having a clearer idea of how to plug into multi-issue electoral organizing in NYC, or how to build this kind of platform in your own city!
This training will help you get laser-focused on finding powerful information online for your campaigns. You’ll learn hands-on tools to find hidden documents and data, outsmart Google’s search logic, and turn page after page of useless results into targeted findings for maximum impact.
According to the American Pet Products Association, 67% of U.S. households, or about 85 million families, own a pet. Political candidates like Senator Elizabeth Warren and Secretary Pete Buttigieg are famous dog owners: Warren’s golden retriever, Bailey, appeared as a 25-foot inflatable outside a Democratic Party event in Des Moines; President’s Biden’s two German Shepherds are featured numerous times in his presidential digital ads; and Buttigieg’s two pups have a fan-run Twitter account with more than 90,000 followers. Candidates are using their pets to relate to their public and establish their humanity vis-à-vis their animal friends. And organizations use this tactic, too -- the organizing platform, Action Network, is among the organizations that utilize images of dogs and cats on website error pages. The usage of cute animals conveys humanity (“I have a dog, therefore I’m human” or “We all make mistakes -- here’s a cute cat!”), while simultaneously relating to an audience.
In this training, we’ll tell you more about this cute pet phenomenon and teach you whether and how to adapt these humanity-conveying strategies for your cause, organization, or campaign. Guest appearances include our pets, Kikue, the cat, and Lilly, the dog.
What is Clubhouse? Learn about the audio-only social media app that’s taking activist spaces by storm, how it works, and how you can use it to hold authentic and informative discussions in an increasingly virtual world.
I can run an intro to Facebook ads manager training, walking through how to get started, the different types of ad objectives, how to build quality audiences, understanding analytics and more.
Want to reach young people? You probably need Instagram. Find out if the social media platform is a fit for your organizing needs and how to develop meaningful Instagram content that can be used to mobilize and reach new audiences you won't find elsewhere. Yes, even if you can't do graphic design.
For almost 15 years Elana has taught digital strategy in the labor movement. Seeing the need for a digital skills training conference for labor unions and community organizations Elana co-founded Organizing 2.0 a decade ago. She now serves as Program Director for New Media Mentors... Read More →
Whether you are new to email writing or just looking to freshen up your skills, this session will teach you the best tips and tricks to make your emails really pop. We will discuss how to pick a subject line, the basic formula of a winning email, all the rules to make your emails an organizing success, and when to break the rules and flip the script. After this training you will be able to draft a variety of email blasts to raise money, turnout for events, and compel your supporters to take action.
How a small, local (chicago) mutual aid project helped distribute PPE and other urgent support to most COVID affected areas. What is mutual aid? Who can participate? How to use your current (digital) network to connect and expand your collective power.
For unions and others organizing workers. Learn how we pitch digital organizing internally to supervisors and field organizers, how we set up digital card signing infrastructure, and big picture strategy around branding, top line messaging, and calls to action for lead generation.
From long-dominant voting blocs in Florida and New York and Arizona to emerging influence in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, this panel will address the best strategies and tactics from old and new. The right wing is not ignoring the latinx powerhouse - we will also address how disinformation targets these communities and how organizers can help fight this influence. As we gear up to get appropriate access to the Biden White House and put our plans in place for 2022, where should Latinx organizers and those who can learn from them be focused?
It’s no secret that organizing is hard work. At the same time, talking with people, knowing them, creating relationships, and building leaders is what has, and will, advance our progressive movement. Plus, it’s what sustains us, protects our most vulnerable, and for many of us, it’s what brings us joy. We are at a pivotal moment in time where we know the importance of high-attention short-term events like elections, voter registration pushes, and Census outreach. This is, and has been, our bread and butter for base building. Our challenge, and the next step, is molding these moments into long-term power building opportunities for our communities.
Program leaders, organizers, and volunteers alike are encouraged to join us for this session where we will dive into how programs can successfully integrate mobilizing and organizing efforts.This often looks like "both and" where we can prioritize both voting and organizing, moments and movements, winning and wielding power, local resources and national resources, high tech and high touch, mobilizing folks and building leaders, C3 and C4, and practicing passion and patience.
An energizing look at creative activism around the globe. 60-90 min session with signature BeautifulTrouble Creative Actions slide deck; with or without a panel discussion of BT activists from around the world.
Due to the pandemic, many nonprofit organizations have had to quickly shift direction and move into the virtual world to engage their constituents and continue grassroots organizing. Unfortunately, most have had to do this without guidance on the best methods for virtual collaboration. This session will give nonprofit organizers and leaders essential guidance and best practices that will help you make each your virtual meetings more engaging and productive and help you make all of your participants feel heard and respected. Topics covered will include: * Creating a realistic agenda * Selecting and getting the most out of your technology * Making the best use of pre-work * Making meetings more inclusive * Establishing and reinforcing meeting norms * Keeping people engaged and focused * Encouraging and balancing participation * Managing difficult behaviors and dynamics
Attendees of this session will learn why it is important to treat email communities with respect and some helpful best practices and tips for doing so. Attendees will learn about email list acquisition, email list hygiene, email program management and email writing. We’ll cover the importance of being honest and accurate in email communications, the potential deliverability consequences of mistreating your email community and the ethics of email program management. This panel will be relevant to anyone who works on email programs for organizations or campaigns and anyone else who has a stake in the success of organizational and campaign digital programs.
Now you've been through some trainings or you just attended a great conference...how do you know which parts of what you learned you need and which parts aren't applicable to you? How do you know what's working for you and what isn't? In this session we'll provide some tips and tricks for auditing your own digital work in order to make change, set up testing and really move your organization's success up a notch._x000D_ intermediate to advanced.
Cybersecurity has been top of mind in recent years and sometimes can be a very daunting topic to cover. Some may think that these bad things will never happen to us, until unfortunately they do. We'll cover our unique threat landscape and concrete ways that you can protect yourself and your campaign or organization.
You'll leave this session with an understanding of what these cyberattacks look like and how we can detect and prevent them.
As we like to say, the best time to prepare is in peacetime!
Young activists are the lifeblood of this movement. The youth members of the Working Families Party have developed creative new ways to make virtual volunteering fun and meaningful. Come hear about the work of the WFP Pups last year and our tips on empowering youth activists.
When Facebook and Twitter decided to ban political ads everyone freaked out-- progressives too-- because we have relied on those ads for our campaigns. But social media platforms aren't the only game in town when it comes to digital ads. In this session we will demystify the jargon and talk about the options available for paid advertising in places you may not have placed it before-- everything from streaming TV to audio ads on podcasts.
This training focuses on how to reach workers for new organizing campaigns using paid ads on Facebook/Instagram. We will discuss topics such as creative, messaging, effective calls to action, targeting, metrics/analytics and creating organizing systems to connect online with offline.
The target audience for this session are lead organizers, people who manage organizers, and people on the ladder to becoming leads and managers. Attendees will learn how to center their values with being an effective manager, and how to lead and train organizers without bullying them or burning them out. We can win and win the right way!
One of the most intimidating things for organizers and volunteer leaders is asking someone to give their time. This session will address how to frame the question to get to a yes. It will deconstruct examples of a good hard ask, show common mistakes, and demonstrate phrases to use. The target audience is any organizer or volunteer who attempts to recruit others for their campaign work, no matter the setting.
One emphasis this training would make is to meet people where they are. This means keeping in mind how people want to help and what their abilities are. As such, there will also be a component on active listening.
This would be offered as a pre-recorded session. This webinar on Democracy Defense was hosted in partnership with Nonviolence International with the following panelists: Philippine professor and activist Joaquin Gonzalez, Serbian professor and nonviolent organizer Ivan Marovic, Gambian organizer and activist Muhammed Lamin Saidykhan, American professor and author Stephen Zunes, Brazilian organizer and activist Joana Varon, and author and activist Maria J. Stephan.
If facts and statistics could speak for themselves, we'd win our campaigns in no time, right? Wrong! Humans are narrative creatures which is why telling The Story of our campaigns is crucial to mobilizing and empowering our bases. In this session, we'll explore how to use narrative structures to help craft email action alert copy that moves our audiences to take action or donate money. This is an intermediate skill-level session! A background in writing and running email-based activism will be assumed.
If the a state-wide Democratic Party can re-think it's approach to digital to become an innovative, year-round, in-house program, so can your organization. I'm Senior Digital Director at the Wisconsin Democratic Party and I'll show you how to explain to the decision makers at your organization (or yourself):
1) Why building a year-round digital department is vital, 2) How to get organizational buy-in (especially from leaders), and 3) How my department is structured and what our goals are, and how this allows us to stay nimble and creative The audience for this session is anybody who works in an organization old enough to hold a driver's license. Those who attend will leave the session with a stronger understanding of what Digital departments do, why it's important to bring them in-house, and how to make the case to the stakeholders they're working with/for.
Reaching your organizing goals is key to bringing about real, lasting change in your community. Whether you're running a campaign or mobilizing to build political power, it's important to make sure your digital organizing is reflective of the times in which we live. Communities all over the country are banding together to fight the impact of the pandemic, combat racism and systems of oppression, and pooling resources to ensure we build healthcare and education systems that work for all of us. Small-dollar donors are an important part of this work, forming a powerful base of supporters who are ready to get involved and push your team over the finish line. During this training, digital fundraising experts from ActBlue, a nonprofit organization that builds online fundraising tools, will help show you how to build an online fundraising program that empowers your supporters to take action online. _x000D_ _x000D_ What attendees will learn: _x000D_ The basics of building a digital fundraising program _x000D_ How to build a virtual fundraising ask_x000D_ How to utilize ActBlue tools to fundraise online_x000D_
Our annual gathering to talk about what's new and different on Facebook since the last time we gathered including changes to the algorithm, new features and upcoming big changes like the upcoming "disappearance" of analytics which aren't really disappearing but moving to a new home.
Did you get thrown into designing? Ever wonder how you can get someone to stop and look at your work? Do you think that your design looks amateurish and don’t quite know how to fix it? Why do you stop and look at some billboards, but not others?
How can 2D lines make us feel layered emotion? Why did you decide to not recycle one of those political mailers you got but read another?
I’ll cover how humans process visual information and what motivates us to act. This training will cover the basics of photo-based design and help you improve your understanding of the many visual communications that surround you. We'll end the session designing something together, live!
This training is for both beginners/non-designers as well as intermediate designers/communication professionals who want to improve their design and communication skills.
The rules for texting are in continual flux, and the carriers released some major changes in 2020 and now in 2021 that will greatly influence how campaigns and nonprofit organizations use both Broadcast and Peer-to-Peer texting. This is a required session for any person who currently manages a texting program, or plans to in the next couple of years. You will learn the new rules of the game when it comes to compliance (10DLC, Toll-Free and Shortcode) and how to ensure your messages are delivered and received by your target audiences.
It’s no secret that organizing is hard work. Talking with people, creating relationships, and building leaders is what has, and will continue to, advance our movement. We're at a pivotal moment where we know the importance of high-attention, short-term events like elections, voter registration pushes, and Census outreach.
Our challenge is molding these moments into long-term power building opportunities for our communities. This training will cover the basics of the "leaderful" organizing model—including assessments, one-on-ones and more—and how to bring them all together into an effective, power-building organizing program that identifies and develops leaders to help scale progressive movements. We will define 5 core attributes of the organizing and contextualize each one with first-hand stories from real world scenarios. This training is for anyone interested in learning how to build power through organizing.
After a year-long organizing fight, excluded workers will finally get the relief and support they need and deserve to survive this pandemic. Last week, New York State secured a $2.1 billion excluded workers fund to support workers who lost their jobs or income during the COVID-19 pandemic. Make the Road NY's Digital Organizer, Diego de la Vega will join us to share on the digital organizing efforts to lead the Fund Excluded Workers coalition, including the recent hunger strike which was shared widely across social media and the press.
Over the last two years, organizing has won dramatic changes in New York, with many still unfolding. From winning 2.1 BILLION$ for workers who'd been excluded from COVID relief, to finally getting our schools the money they're owed, to all the new faces we see up in the State House.
What do these changes mean for organizers? What does it mean for our labor movement? What is changing in NY politics, what is likely to stay the same? And what should activists in other states be on the lookout for?
We are living in a time of rapid social innovation and technological transformation. This session talks through the trends happening now in the realms of AI, Machine Learning, Bots, Deepfake videos, New Platforms, Internet of Things (IoT), Augmented Reality, Blockchain and more to help you :_x000D_ _x000D_ * Better understand how your organization can effectively utilize emerging tech & new ideas_x000D_ _x000D_ * Get familiar with trends in how people are using the internet now and in the future for planning purposes_x000D_ _x000D_ * Be more ready to respond with maximum impact in this moment as innovation in tech and society accelerates_x000D_
Georgia’s massive successful organizing campaign is an example for the rest of the country and raises critically important questions for our democracy. How do we create and engage enduring, respectful coalitions of color? How do we fight back against voter suppression? How does Georgia show us how to balance black and brown turnout against recent conservative inroads into communities or color? How do we use the Georgia model in other states? Our esteemed panelists will help us - with the benefit of much more detailed voter data - understand where Democrats in Georgia are coming from, and where they are going, with lessons for the entire country.
Our traditional communications and digital strategy should be working hand-in-hand but often we realize we are not speaking the same language at all resulting in Too Long To Tweet press releases or spoiled exclusives. In this session aimed at staff in either department we’ll talk about how we’ve learned to work together and what communications needs to know about digital and what digital need to know about communications.
New social platforms pop to the forefront on the regular. Most recently, of course, Clubhouse. For every great platform there are 5 that disappear quickly and for ever 5 with staying power maybe 2 of them are actually going to be useful in the organizing work we do. In this session we will talk about strategies for evaluating whether or not your organization needs to jump on the hot new thing. What are the questions you need to ask yourself and what kinds of answers should you need to hear in order to make such decisions.
Every campaign and organization has a dreaded info@ email account, but those accounts are jam packed with potential – potential voters, potential supporters, potential donors! We’ll break down the best tools for managing an info@ account, creating a prioritization strategy, and proactively building your base through your inbox.
Too often the social media accounts of unions, governmental agencies and other storied institutions are drained of all personality-- which is a shame because the people we represent have so much character! Find out how the folks behind some of the most popular labor and governmental accounts come up with their content. Learn how to get the leeway you need to run a twitter account that people will actually engage with.
For almost 15 years Elana has taught digital strategy in the labor movement. Seeing the need for a digital skills training conference for labor unions and community organizations Elana co-founded Organizing 2.0 a decade ago. She now serves as Program Director for New Media Mentors... Read More →
To win transformative victories, we need to build power in our communities from the ground up, 365 days a year — not just when an election is around the corner. Relational organizing is how we win. It’s not just a buzzword for the most effective voter contact method at our disposal; it is a methodology at the center of how communities have always organized and built power to meet their needs. One thing we’ve seen time and time again, whether from unions, campaigns, grassroots community groups or large distributed organizations, is that relationships are our greatest source of power, and when we center them in our work, we have the capacity to create transformative change.
This session will teach you how to create a relational-forward organizing program that empowers leaders to leverage power for tangible victories, from issue and electoral outcomes to building your base.
The Campaign Workers Guild was formed in 2017. Since then, we’ve grown to have 500+ dues paying members and led the effort to bring campaign unionization to the forefront of the 2020 election cycle.
In this session, we’ll give attendees the basic tools and knowledge to organize their own workplaces, particularly campaigns and political organizations. We’ll share our own reasons for starting CWG and our experience since then, dig deep on our theory of building authentic campaign worker power, and share how attendees can be part of our movement for structural change in our industry.
Our target audience of former, current, and aspiring campaign and political workers will walk away from this session knowing the practical steps of unionization, the nuances of unionizing in campaign and political spaces, and what it takes to win.
Ranked Choice Voting isn’t the only major shift in NYC politics. We’ve also seen nonprofit groups start partisan efforts like The Jewish Vote or VOCAL Action Fund, the transformation of the Working Families Party from a local labor backed entity to a broader base building dynamo, and a mayoral race that remains surprisingly open.
Come to this panel to deepen your understanding of the innovative work you haven’t heard about - and the opportunities for you, your favorite candidates and most important issues.
You've got an issue and a goal — or a big problem — and now it's time to make a campaign. How do we figure out who to target to get what we want? We'll discuss the foundations of assessing power and criteria for targets, learn ways of power-mapping your issue, and how to pick a clear target that can shape your story and focus your power to win!
This training is for anyone involved in advocacy or activist campaigns!
Need an injection of outside-the-box thinking for your direct action or campaign? Jump into Beautiful Trouble’s signature toolbox and develop an action on your own campaign or another topical issue.
How can you get your content to spread online? Email lists, private DM groups and Signal groups, crossposting or sharing on Facebook, it can look easy but involve a lot of behind the scenes work and prep too.
Digital/New Nedia and Communications Strategist, PowerThru Consulting
Laura Packard is a digital/new media and communications strategist, progressive political consultant, health care advocate, writer, and small business owner, currently based in Denver. She has worked on Democratic campaigns from city council to U.S. Senate and with unions and small... Read More →
Saturday April 17, 2021 12:30pm - 1:30pm EDT
Hopin
Many organizers and digital campaigners see search engine optimization as a mystery – but it doesn’t have to be complicated. SEO is really just the science of tweaking, adjusting, and improving parts of your website to help search engines help your audiences find your content when searching the web. Learn the basics and best practices on how to evaluate and improve your website’s SEO to increase your website’s visibility and drive more people to find our movements.
As our communities continue to stand up against injustice and discrimination, we must lean into core principles of organizing to build power. Essential to building power is bringing our people and financial resources together. Michelle Whittaker, is a campaign strategists with deep experience advocating for and using public financing systems to build power and transformational electoral campaigns. Michelle will share her lessons and how to use the same organizing tools to win political and advocacy campaigns.
Whether you are running a complex multi-year campaign that encapsulates multiple policy positions or just a campaign for the school board, you need to consider your brand. A well-considered brand works as a guide for your entire campaign and defines a consistent voice you want your supporters to emotionally connect with, which in turn, can be crucial in building momentum and awareness. In this session, we’ll review what a brand is, why you need one, and a few examples of inspiring brands. A particular spotlight will be on the Delivering Community Power campaign for the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW).
Let’s talk politics. Real politics. Not who the Mayor is, or what the Comptroller does, but the systems and procedures that shape how people take power that are obscured from the people they’re meant to serve. This session will take on politics from an insider's view and cover:
Local party politics Political machines NYC government
The Georgia runoffs resulted in historic AAPI voter turnout. Find out what it took to flip Georgia using an integrated digital strategy. AAPI organizers will talk about winning media, digital, and field strategies that helped flip Georgia in a historic runoff election.
This introductory training explores the role of money in politics and policy by shining a light on the relationship between candidates and elected officials and their donors. We’ll show you how to find political contributions using open data sources, and discuss ways to leverage this information to hold powerful individuals and companies accountable.
Sourced from 200+ frontline activists around the world, the toolbox is online, free, and available in five languages. Join us for a guided tour of the many features of this toolbox.
Text messaging has grown into a major component of outreach efforts for campaigns and civic participation organizations alike. However, SMS efforts can be impacted by problems with deliverability, such as when carriers reject their messages as spam. Because carrier decision-making is opaque, it is often unclear exactly why certain messages are being rejected while others aren't. We will begin with a broad survey of SMS deliverability issues, and then present findings from detailed analyses of three large SMS campaigns carried out in 2020, covering tens of millions of messages.
This session will go beyond the basics to explore how campaigns, organizations and activists can use digital ads to reach voters, build capacity and pressure decisionmakers. We'll examine how to craft and target Facebook/Instagram ads, programmatic banner and video ads, and even promoted tweets to get results from even tiny budgets. If you want to create the "illusion of ubiquity", you have come to the right place.
Our target audience is digital activists and campaign staff. Our goal is to show how to think about direct action in a virtual space and create actions that cause disruption in the real world—from flooding Twitter mentions to taking over virtual town hall meetings to hijacking a target's inbox.
If QAnon is the question, what is the answer? This training assumes an understanding that our body politic now includes millions of voters who enthusiastically support alternative versions of reality, akin to actual cult members. Our focus will be on rhetoric, behavior, and practices that help rescue loved ones and community members from collective delusions.
Hear how a small but savvy team on the Biden-Harris Coordinated Campaign was able to build the largest calling program in electoral history in just 3 ½ months. We’ll share the distributed organizing tips and tricks we used to cultivate a community of over 100,000 volunteers who made millions of calls to voters each day and consistently deemed it the “most meaningful and fun” volunteering experience they’d ever had.
Mass, virtual, volunteer-powered organizing has vast power and potential; we want to share our secret sauce so that you too can go on to build direct voter contact programs bigger than your wildest dreams! Whether you’re an experienced mobilization practitioner or just starting out, the lessons we learned are applicable to almost any organizing context. Come nerd out with us!
Organizations committed to justice must constantly examine our practices. Diversity, equity and inclusion should go beyond recruitment and hiring. Are we agitating to disrupt systems of oppression? This session will help organization and campaign leaders identify places in their work that may perpetuate traditions of injustice and provide space to brainstorm solutions.
Attendees will learn about the county committee system in NY, why its important, and how they and their constituents can become elected officials with a few dozen signatures on a petition.
We've seen a resurgence of tools like astrology, tarot, and non-traditional spiritual practices. Systemic issues can't be resolved by some crystals and meditation, yet there is a possibility to use these tools to help build our organizing work in a way that illuminates systemic ills, instead of obscuring them with capitalist nonsense like prosperity gospel and the law of attraction.
As organizers, and movement communicators, we want to facilitate the exploration of these tools to support personal growth, and our ability to reach people who aren't in traditional movement circles.
Discover how to up-level your virtual events beyond Zoom, with immersive platforms, premium production, and community-building experiences. This engaging workshop will show you how to innovate and build intimacy, raise funds, maximize reach, and create memorable experiences that get people even more passionate about your causes and campaigns.
Facebook Stories...Instagram Stories...Twitter Fleets...stories are the hot thing on social media and aren't going away anytime soon so let's talk Story Strategy. Why use them? Best use cases and more.
This session will cover: (1) The basics of facilitating a Zoom meeting from the tech tools and options a host has to facilitation strategies for different types of meetings to approaches to delegating roles to make for smoother meetings. (2) Tips for training others to organize on Zoom too. (3) Different ways to use Zoom as a tool for your organizing, whether it's lobby meetings, press conferences, team check-ins, mass calls, recording video content, or just your standard organizing meeting. The session will focus specifically on the mechanics, features, and interface of Zoom, but many of the tools and strategies are applicable across other video conference platforms as well.
Pop culture shapes our perception of the world and organizers have been incorporating it into campaigns more and more - but not every campaign experiences success and buy-in with fans! In this session, we'll explore how to find and engage key fan partners, identify and build different types of pop culture campaigns, and turn fans into engaged, impactful activists!
For almost 15 years Elana has taught digital strategy in the labor movement. Seeing the need for a digital skills training conference for labor unions and community organizations Elana co-founded Organizing 2.0 a decade ago. She now serves as Program Director for New Media Mentors... Read More →
New technologies have provided organizers with ways of reaching far beyond our previous capacities, speaking to broader audiences, and taking action at a rapid pace at a large scale. However, as we do this, we run the risk of losing the personal connection we have with our members, and the opportunity to engage new members through in person outreach. In using peer to peer texting (P2P) as a way to communicate urgent needs and calls to action, we could be missing out on the opportunity to build human connections.
As organizations are still trying to move urgent issue advocacy in the space of Covid, we also need to be aware that folks’ basic human and emotional needs may not be met at this moment. By connecting with folks via P2P and offering our support, we can open up new pathways toward trust and communication, and bring folks closer to our work.
Movement Labs is innovating how P2P can be used to reach members of disenfranchised communities and work to change their material conditions. Traditionally we see P2P being used as a tool to get folks out to vote, but we're thinking differently. How can P2P truly work for the folks who are organizing for justice? Within the session we’ll share case studies of work Movement Labs spearheaded with partner organizations:
• With Black Voters Matter, we reached out to community members in Louisiana to participate in a Warrant Clinic, a one day community court event where people can eliminate their warrants. Our volunteers sent 40,000 texts to Black Voters; 2227 people self identified as impacted; 1,000 folks showed up; and the organization was able to clear 250 warrants and over 1000 attachments while saving folks $2,000,000.
• Movement Labs and our trusted ally Black Voters Matter used SMS for early Covid response in March of 2020, at a time when our government failed to take swift action. Our campaign reached 295,000 vulnerable Black folks in the rural South to get them real time updates on Covid-19, stay at home orders, and resources to meet their needs. Through this process we were able to help nearly 7,000 people get crucial information and PPE, and recruit 130 new volunteers for the organization.
• With Forward Tennessee, we are currently texting low propensity Black voters across Tennessee to offer mutual aid. If they are in need, we are connecting them with groups on the ground offering any manner of support, from medical care, PPE, testing, and vaccinations; to childcare, food, and financial support or support applying for unemployment benefits. When we find folks not in need, we get them to take action immediately to call on the Governor to help Tennesseans in need of immediate support during Covid and the economic crisis.
This session will teach organizers how to use SMS as a tool to build affinity with their base through mutual aid work and meeting members’ personal needs, and follow this throughline to deepen and strengthen their advocacy programs.
Writing postcards to voters has emerged as one of the most popular volunteer grassroots activities over the past 4 years. But do they work? In this session you will hear how postcards not only boost voter turnout (especially in tight races and elections with low turnout) but also build community and energize volunteers for ongoing civic engagement. We will share how since 2017 Postcards4VA has help postcard groups throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia write for local, state, and federal candidates. It’s all about building community one postcard party (in person or virtual) at a time.
Our session will outline our MOVE Texas disaster response 'wellness check' campaign that was launched during the winter storm and Texas power outage a few weeks ago. We'll cover our personal stories, our organizational response, and the organizing that took place after to demand accountability. Our hope is to provide attendees an outline of elements to incorporate into disaster response toolkits and a case study to draw inspiration from as weather patterns become more violent due to climate inaction. The panel will be from the perspective of field organizers, advocacy organizers, and the broader community that made our outreach possible.
Have you ever wondered how many buildings your landlord owns in New York City? Have you ever been curious about the zoning of your neighborhood? Luckily, existing housing justice technology in New York City can tell us all of these things and more! _x000D_ This training will provide participants with a base understanding of how to utilize publicly databases and resources such as Who Owns What, ACRIS, and ZOLA (New York City’s Zoning Map). We will also discuss how these important technologies can help organizers find solutions to problems they face in housing organizing!
In this training session for any progressive digital practitioner (including volunteer organizers!), we'll discuss how campaigns can build, engage, and celebrate meaningfully diverse, inclusive, and accessible online communities and movements—through social media.
Target audience: anyone utilizing social media or gathering stories for campaigns - From concept to creation, how to turn social justice issues into compelling content - How to capitalize on internet trends, to create for the cultural zeitgeist - Best practices for emerging platforms (TikTok, IGTV, IG Reels)
In this training, you will learn to do's and don'ts of conducting online debates/forums, including viewing bloopers and discussing how these can have a meaningful impact on local and statewide elections.
In order to grow our movements, we need to design programs that can scale in digital spaces. Learn how to design a distributed campaign by rooting the campaign in key values, develop shared practices and systems and more.
We'll share the skills you'll need to organize and conduct a Youth Climate Court in your community or school, with no funding necessary. You will learn to hold your local governments accountable for their action or inaction in protecting your rights in relation to the climate crisis. If the court finds the government guilty, they issue mandates to the government specifying remedies. This is geared for people ages teens to mid-20s.
•How to use Pirate Radio for safer, more engaging, and more effective car actions •General tutorials on setting up sound systems for maximum coverage •Holding hybrid digital/in-person events both with live-streaming and with zoom for remote call-ins
No experience needed, tech jargon will be avoided (or immediately explained) and plenty of links will be provided to in-depth tutorials.
The evolution of organizing continues apace, with a range of new tools developed in the last few years, often championed by new kinds of organizations. This session is NOT a technical training in any of them, but a top-level survey to help orient folks in the digital organizing landscape. This is designed to be accessible for beginners (newcomers even) but will have valuable information for anyone interested in the backbone of the progressive organizing world, viewed through a technical lens.
Those on the left and right alike decry “cancel culture.” But what is “canceling” someone but a public attempt to hold them accountable? How can we effectively hold individuals and organizations accountable without the disruption and privacy violations that often work opposite of what is intended, and can discourage those who have been harmed from reporting it?
We will discuss the necessary components of a survivor-centered, trauma informed accountability process that is not based upon organizing around other people or "Trial by Twitter." Building accountability into our institutions and leaders means we don’t have to destroy or “cancel” them in order to recognize and repair harm. Organizers will leave with the tools to begin transforming their community spaces in healthy, positive ways to provide needed accountability and demonstrate leadership.
Target audience is anyone with an interest in leading or supporting efforts to combat toxic cultures in their organizations, workplaces and other movement spaces, by limiting harm caused by harassment, bullying, racism and misogyny.
The way media is developed and consumed continues to radically morph and change. Platform-agnostic offerings that push content into people’s social media streams is the latest iteration. Meanwhile, traditional television continues to splinter - over half of video content is consumed via streaming platforms. Regardless of how we (activists, organizers) consume media, these shifts in media consumption require changes in how we engage with voters, from press strategy to advertising.
Our esteemed panelists will give their take, with an emphasis on what everyone needs to know, from pacs and candidates with big budgets to small and local advocacy nonprofits.
