community organising
Cancer Council NSW Organising Model
Cancer Council NSW developed this model to engage, mobilise and organise community members to influence public policy about cancer. While the context of their model is health specific, some of the principles and processes are relevant for other social issues. You can...
Networked change in Canada | Jason Mogus and Tom Liacas
This groundbreaking report maps out the strategies and practices that lie behind today’s most successful advocacy campaigns both in Canada and abroad. In the process, it demonstrates how and why they succeed in creating lasting change on the issues they address while...
People Power training guides: Campaign Strategy and Community Organising
The People Power manual has been written primarily for educators, trainers and facilitators who are looking for processes to use in their activist education work. The first two volumes focus on Campaign Strategy and Community Organising, with dozens of participatory...
Can The Democrats Get Organized? An Interview With Marshall Ganz
In the spring of 2007, famed union organizer Marshall Ganz began meeting with the Obama campaign. Ganz persuaded them to create a field operation using the techniques that Ganz had developed with the United Farm Workers in California. Thus the army of thousands of...
Process Guide | Transactional and relational approaches
This 90-minute workshop helps differentiate between transactional approaches that aim to mobilise large numbers of people and relational approaches that form deeper connections and identify shared values and self-interest. Participants assess the...
On Activism and Organizing: There is a Distinction
What’s the difference between an organizer, an activist, and someone who is just plain fighting for their life, on a personal level? Organizing is a more complicated matter than simply throwing down or flexing a skill, and it should be named as such. One of my own...
The Sierra Club Movement Organising Manual 2016
This manual is designed to aid your work as an organiser: building campaigns that enlist grassroots power to achieve outcomes that improve the world. Our objective is to lay out key ideas and practices that, in our experience, result in campaigns that succeed. This...
What makes me tired when organising with middle class comrades
After years and years of organising, coming up against similar frustrations, and after lots of conversations between working class mates, grassroots organiser Nicole Vosper writes about what is draining about working with some middle class activists: “You expect...
Important qualities of authentic relationships across differences
Karen Pace and Dionardo Pizana write: “Our commitment to the ongoing process of developing an authentic relationship across racial and gender differences has helped us to identify important foundational qualities of our relationship. These characteristics are...
Against activism | Astra Taylor
““A pejorative term for an individual who repeatedly and vehemently engages in arguments on social justice on the Internet, often in a shallow or not well-thought-out way, for the purpose of raising their own personal reputation… Successful organizers, by...
Not so grassroots: How the snowflake model is transforming political campaigns
Stephen Mills writes: “Campaigning has broken out from the electoral context and evolved into a new tool for business, government and civil society actors. Campaigning is now the dominant form of collective political activity in Australia. Waves of...
Part 2: Community Building & Community Organising are an essential prelude to co-production & Community Engagement
We believe that the practices of Community Building and Community Organising are an essential prelude to co-production and indeed to effective Community Engagement in general. After all, especially when it comes to engagement, how can you engage with a community...
Part 1. How Community Organising & Community Building can work together: the two-fisted fight
New forms of collective action are emerging in the UK. With growing frequency people are taking to the streets to defend the rights of citizens against outside forces; this trend is unfolding alongside an increasing and often jarring rhetoric of devolution and...
Would Saul Alinsky break his own rules?
Alinsky’s influence today is also present in networks such as PICO, DART, USAction/Citizen Action, the Gamaliel Foundation, and the former branches of ACORN. Collectively these organizations claim several million members, and the tradition has spread internationally...
New Zealand Fellowship > applications open now
First round applications close on 15 December for our first New Zealand Fellowship – an intensive skills turbo boost in advocacy and campaigning for leading changemakers. The fellowship involves five evening webinars with expert presenters, and is book-ended by two...
THE ART OF STORYTELLING, ACCORDING TO THE FOUNDERS OF STORYCORPS AND HUMANS OF NEW YORK
Engage deeply. Interrupt kindly. People aren’t very good at knowing how to tell their own stories, says Stanton, and that means that they’re often vague and imprecise. Cutting through that is part of the interviewer’s job. “Interviewing someone is a very proactive...
Hahrie Han on how relationships improve mobilisation
I have shocking news for you: people are more likely to take action if a relationship exists. The are particular ideas associated with relational engagement, and using these ideas can improve mobilisation outcomes… “Responsiveness can take multiple forms,...
Base building (CVH Organizing Tool Kit)
Why is it important to build a large base of people? An organization or a campaign builds a large base in order to have enough power to win. Numbers matter! The more people we can mobilize to show our power, the more power we will have to make policy changes to...