
We focus our efforts on activities which help economic justice organizations develop their capacity to scale and equip grassroots leaders with pathways to participate, recruit others and lead teams.
Training
Initially developed in partnership with Power Labs, our curriculum is grounded in community, labor and electoral organizing practices, social movement history, behavioral, social science and management research, the work of Marshall Ganz, strategies and ideas emerging through alumni of some of the Momentum organizations and our own experiences, ideas and original curriculum. Knowing that organizations learn best from concrete examples and experimentation, we bring in case studies from organizations that are implementing distributed organizing practices.
Our interactive training takes place over the course of 16-20 hours, guiding participants in how to build out pathways of participation, organizational systems, campaign structures and teams that facilitate grassroots leaders’ developing the ability to plan and carry out meetings and actions, recruit newcomers, fulfill specific roles and take on leadership of local teams, and coach other leaders over time. By building in hands-on activities for every practice taught, we ensure that organizations walk away with the beginnings of new systems and structures they can build on.
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Intensive Follow-Up Planning, Coaching and Evaluation
We know that training is never enough. Post-training, organizations that demonstrate an interest and commitment to building out a distributed organizing model are eligible to receive one-on-one and group coaching to help ground and instill the curriculum practices. We meet with organizational leaders, lead organizers and their teams to understand current recruitment and campaign goals, structures, systems and practices. Through a series of intensive conversations, retreats, workshops and one-on-one coaching, we think together to take the next steps in designing, implementing and refining new recruitment and participation pathways, structures and systems.
Our coaches have significant experience implementing the organizing models we teach. They work with organizers directly to help instill the distributed organizing model within the specific culture and constituency base of the organization.
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Community of Learning and Practice
We know that organizers gain enormously from sharing experiences with their peers. Organizations that have participated in the training and are intensively working to build their bases will be invited to participate in a monthly community of learning and practice to share ideas, resources and lessons learned with others who are on the same journey in a facilitated space.
5 Core Ideas and Practices Fueling Organizational Growth
How our innate cognitive capacity affects the number of people an individual organizer can relate to and why organizations have to “get smaller” in order to get bigger!
How to design systems for leadership development and member participation at scale
How to use every public action to recruit people into the organization and start them on a successful pathway to meaningful and long-term participation
How to design structures and roles so that teams function well, get stronger over time, contribute to team members’ growth and learning, and can be led by volunteer leaders
How to increase members’ commitment and leadership skills and embed leaders coaching other leaders into the ongoing life of teams and organizations