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Access document below or as a PDF – Community Organizing Facilitators’ Notes
 

BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS

YOU MUST HELP YOUR TEAM TO:

• Practice 1:1 meeting going through the five steps
• End the 1:1 with a commitment
• Explore shared values and interests, building on the story of self
• Discover resources that their team members possess
• Reflect on this practice of relational leadership as distinct from other ways of interacting and leading

COMMON CHALLENGES:

• Team members avoid asking probing questions and exchanging stories by chit-chatting or discussing their resumes (lack of focus)
• Team members ask ‘why we are doing this’ – instead of doing it
• Team members fail to follow the intentional steps of a 1:1
• As a facilitator, you may feel hesitant to interrupt ongoing conversations

BEST PRACTICES:

• Be mindful of how you pair participants to maximize ‘weak ties’
• Remind participants before they begin to follow the 5 steps, providing the page number in their manual where these steps are outlined
• Inform participants before you begin that you’ll be listening in on their conversations and potentially intervening to coach them
• Intervene when participants are wandering, chit-chatting, or discussing their resumes instead of exploring stories. Effective coaching questions/interventions can include:
  • What are you learning about so-and-so’s values/interests/resources?
  • Where are you going with this line of questioning?
  • This sounds like chit-chatting. How can you get to so-and-so’s story?
• As time for each 1:1 approaches an end, remind participants to get a commitment before they close.

BUILDING TEAMS

YOU MUST HELP YOUR TEAM TO:

• Establish a shared purpose
• Establish group norms which include norms around decision-making, communication, and a norm correction
• Design useful roles that your team members will assume over the course of their campaign, including functional and organizing roles
• Have fun and connect by establishing a team name and chant

COMMON CHALLENGES:

• There’s a lot to get done, and pacing can be a major challenge; it’s not likely you will cover everything with sufficient depth
• Team members begin advocating for a specific strategy or goal of the campaign, instead of a broader shared purpose
• Team members question their investment in a ‘real campaign’ versus a practice campaign
• Team members believe they are ‘too adult’ for a norm correction or cast it as punitive
• Team members are afraid of looking silly and don’t come up with a good team chant

BEST PRACTICES:

• Take control of scribing for the shared purpose activity in order to better steer the team’s direction
• Be ready to explain the purpose of self-correcting norms (and to provide examples)
• Be prepared to delegate the exact formulation of your team’s shared purpose to a participant, if necessary under time constraints
• Encourage people to embrace norms and norm corrections by emphasizing that norms are about honoring the group and by using humor! Be prepared to respond to those who have the impression they are punitive.
• Don’t undermine the importance of a team name and chant. The better, more fun, and more meaningful these are, the more pride and togetherness your team will experience on the whole!

STRATEGY I

PART 1: Getting Focused
YOU MUST HELP YOUR TEAM TO:

• Identify their ‘people’ – a real group of people in a specific locale that can be realistically organized
• Identify and critically analyze the problem facing their constituency (this analysis will provide initial ideas about a specific problem to tackle through their strategic goal).
• Identify a long-term goal analogous to ‘ending segregation’ – not as big or lofty as ‘ending institutionalized racism’ (your shared purpose) but not as specific as ‘desegregating buses in Montgomery, Alabama’ (your strategic goal)
• Vividly describe a hopeful vision of the future for their constituency if these problems are addressed

COMMON CHALLENGES:

• The group struggles to reach sufficient specificity for their constituency, or are connected to different constituencies and struggle to negotiate ‘their people’
• The group throws out categorical problems, instead of experiential ones
• The group gets hung up on their ‘big picture goal’ – either suggesting goals that are too specific or too broad.
• The group’s analysis of the problem is not sufficiently critical or deep

BEST PRACTICES:

• Get the team to a specific, local constituency either by being frank about the demands of organizing or asking good coaching questions:
  • Where do they live? How old are they? How will you access them?
  • About how many Muslim youth in MA do you think there are? Can we get more specific?
• Push the group to describe experiential problems versus categorical ones. For example, if someone suggests that the problem is ‘poverty,’ get the group to describe what that looks like in people’s daily lives (i.e. many people are evicted from their homes, the quality of their schools is poor, etc.).
• Encourage a “yes and” approach to brainstorming instead of “no but”
• Refer back to ‘desegregation’ in the Montgomery story to help people understand the scale of a ‘big picture goal’
• Assign a good timekeeper. You will need to stick to time limits to get through everything in Strategy I effectively

PART 2: Strategic Goal
YOU MUST HELP YOUR TEAM TO:

• Understand the criteria for a good strategic goal, and add their own criteria if they have suggestions
• Choose a strategic goal that:
  • Is both focused and important/motivating
  • Would make good use of your people’s unique resources
  • Would build capacity (i.e. leadership, the ability to organize future campaigns)
  • Can be emulated by other groups as you work towards the ‘big picture goal’ (i.e. desegregation in America took many smaller fights to desegregate buses, schools, restaurants, etc.)

COMMON CHALLENGES:

• The criteria go over people’s heads before they start brainstorming because they’re too abstract.
• Team members suggest strategic goals that do not build capacity and therefore don’t lend themselves to an organizing model.
• Team members become territorial about their ideas as the campaign becomes more ‘real.’

BEST PRACTICES:

• Start by identifying one of the challenges in the preceding ‘People/Problem’ exercise that generates enthusiasm from the team. Or invite the team to work backwards from the ‘big picture goal’ to identify a smaller win that would contribute to accomplishing the ‘big picture.’
• As people suggest potential goals, compare them against the criteria and do some teaching to better clarify what the criteria actually mean.
• As the campaign becomes more ‘real’ your role as a facilitator will be to negotiate between the push and pull of different interests in the room. You must remind your team to adopt a ‘rough draft’ mindset, synthesize suggestions where possible, and steer towards the more viable and ‘teachable’ options (esp in workshops that are centered on training participants).

PART 3: Theory of Change
YOU MUST HELP YOUR TEAM TO:

• Identify your people’s specific, unique resources
• Identify whether they are running a ‘power with’ or ‘power over’ campaign
• For ‘power with’:
  • Identify how your people can use their resources differently to achieve their goal
• For ‘power over’:
  • Identify who holds the decision making power and resources our people need
  • Identify the ways our people can use their resources to leverage the interests of key decision makers and stakeholders
• Articulate a compelling ‘theory of change’ that is convincing to you and to the group

COMMON CHALLENGES:

• Team members list resources that are too general and not concrete
• Teams don’t immediately understand from the prompt that they are being asked to identify who decision makers are
• Team members have faulty assumptions about how power works (i.e. we should ‘raise awareness’ and ‘dialogue’ with those in power to solve the problem). They push back against the idea of tension with decision makers or stakeholders.
• Team members default to habitual or familiar strategies instead of thinking critically about interests and resources.

BEST PRACTICES:

• This session sometimes requires facilitators to directly address/challenge the fearful or knee jerk reactions of team members when it comes to challenging power strategically. Often naming such reactions (i.e. the desire to dialogue with power players instead of critically analyzing interests) and questioning underlying assumptions and drawing on past experience helps teams get clarity. For example: “How many of you have ever been invited by the dean of the college to ‘dialogue’ about issues facing X group of students. Who’s agenda was it? Did you get what you wanted/needed?”
• In a ‘power over’ campaign – feel free to ask directly – “who holds the decision-making power?” though it is not listed directly as a prompt
• If you’re not convinced of a ‘theory of change,’ say so or help the group acknowledge that they are not all convinced.

PART 4: Visualization
YOU MUST HELP YOUR TEAM TO:

• Visualize what victory will look, sounds, feel, and smell like upon reaching your strategic goal, enabling participants to emotionally access a hopeful vision of the future and help others outside your group access this vision

COMMON CHALLENGES:

• Often, teams run out of time for this piece.
• Team members may have initial trouble moving from abstract and conceptual thinking about their victory to the concrete effects their campaign will have on the world
• Team members feel that the exercise is too sentimental or childish for them.

BEST PRACTICES:

• If you are running out of time, it may be helpful to delegate this piece to a couple participants to do quickly.
• Help participants access their creative and imaginative faculties by asking questions about the sensory details of their victory

STRATEGY II

PART 1: Tactics
YOU MUST HELP YOUR TEAM TO:

• Brainstorm and identify 3-4 tactics that will:
  • Make good use of your people’s resources
  • Build capacity
  • Help achieve the goal
  • Relate to the culture, values, and/or experiences of your people
  • Get people excited

COMMON CHALLENGES:

• The criteria for good tactics goes over people’s heads because it’s too abstract.
• Team members default to habitual or familiar tactics (i.e. let’s sign a petition)
• Teams forget to engage with the social and cultural ‘context’ of their people, producing boring, generic tactics
• Team members suggest tactics that may seem interesting, but do not work towards the campaign goal

BEST PRACTICES:

• As people suggest potential tactics, compare them against the criteria and do some teaching to better clarify what the criteria actually mean.
• Encourage creativity and thinking outside the box. Remind group members that good tactics are those that their people will find exciting.
• Try to generate as many ideas as possible before narrowing down to 3-4 viable tactics, remembering to refer back to the criteria.

PART 2: Campaign Timeline
YOU MUST HELP YOUR TEAM TO:

• Work backwards from the strategic goal and sequence tactics into peaks that build capacity over the course of the campaign
• Assign turnout goals for each peak
• Assign dates for each peak in a realistic timeline for your campaign

COMMON CHALLENGES:

• Team members propose a sequence of tactics haphazardly, often not understanding what is meant by ‘building capacity’
• Team members use a range of subtle tactics to avoid accountability on turnout goals: they are under ambitious, throw out fantastical numbers, want to ‘skip the numbers’, or give a range instead of committing to a real goal

BEST PRACTICES:

• Remind participants of the ‘snowflake’ or use concrete examples to help team members better understand how participation will grow over the course of the campaign.
• Hold team members accountable to committing to specific turnout goals that are a little bit of a reach, but still realistic.

 
PART 3: Kick-off Visualization
YOU MUST HELP YOUR TEAM TO:

• Visualize what the kick-occ of their campaign will look, sound, feel, and smell like, enabling them to emotionally access an energizing beginning to the work of this campaign

• To think through tactical design such that the event will build capacity, accomplish the goal, and motivate constituents by showing them their own strength and resources.

COMMON CHALLENGES:

• Often, teams run out of time for this piece.

• Team members feel that the exercise is too sentimental or childish for them.

BEST PRACTICES:

• If you are running out of time, it may be helpful to delegate this piece to a couple participants to do quickly.
• Help participants access their creative and imaginative faculties by asking questions about the sensory details
• While designing a fun kick-off, remind team members of the criteria for effective tactics to strengthen prior learning.

MOBILIZING
YOU MUST HELP YOUR TEAM TO:

• Practice mobilizing others, using the 4 Cs: Connection, Context, Commitment, Catapult
• Practice setting mobilizing goals
• Appreciate a culture of ‘learning through action’ by debriefing people’s experience of mobilizing, what was effective, and what was not
• Appreciate the ‘numbers’ involved in organizing and its emphasis on concrete, measurable goals/outcomes and accountability to the collective

COMMON CHALLENGES:

• Team members either over- or undercommit on their mobilizing goals
• Team members are initially hesitant to put themselves out there and talk to strangers about their campaign

BEST PRACTICES:

• Orient your team members to take on realistic goals that are a bit of a reach
• Model the high energy and enthusiasm required to engage in this module fully with a healthy competitive spirit