Building long-lasting grassroots power requires centering concrete issues and the humanity of individuals you’re organizing. Many organizations in West Virginia are cultivating organizers, building organizations that can sustainably organize local communities according to their needs for years to come, incorporating mutual aid, and more, in an effort to win and wield political power. In this article, The Forge contributor Mat Hanson discussed organizational strategies with multiple people involved in grassroots power building in West Virginia: Katey Lauer, co-chair of West Virginia Can’t Wait; Nicole McCormick, a founding member of the West Virginia United caucus and rank-and-file leader in the successful teacher’s strike; Dr. Shanequa Smith of Restorative Actions and the Black Voters Impact Initiative; and Joe Solomon, the co-founder and co-director of Solutions Oriented Addiction Response (SOAR), a volunteer-based organization that advocates for harm-reduction strategies to the opioid crisis.

This tipsheet lays out how advocates can build a relational climate conversations program to inspire supporters to take this most basic and neglected action: letting family members, friends, and neighbors know that they are not alone in caring about climate change, and that there are ways to face this crisis if they act together. The last page is a roadmap for how advocates can train supporters to hold productive conversations with their loved ones.

This resource is a curated a guide on Campaign and Movement Building. In this topic you’ll find handpicked resources related to current issues, different regions, and innovations. This resource includes links to guides on how to plan campaigns (by highlighting case studies) and how-to trainings to prepare campaigners. Links for case studies from regions such as Africa, Asia, Europe, Middle East, North America, Latin America, and Oceania are also included.

State Voices' 2022 Tools & Tech Guide has the latest digital tools and vendors, including texting services, cell-compliant dialers, digital organizing, online fundraising, relational organizing, digital marketing, advocacy, and bill tracking. This resource is the result of multi-year research from State Voices' Data and Technology Department. You can also learn more about technology recommendations for essential items like office chairs, laptops, webcams, docking stations, headphones, scheduling tools, computer monitors, and security software.

Build real power in congressional districts and persuade representatives to vote your way using multiple coordinated steps. Center the experience of real people doing the activism—employ tactics that energize people. Focus on building meaningful relationships with other activists, with other groups, and with the member of Congress’ office. Develop organic leaders through training and giving responsibility. Create cohesive grassroots groups. It’s ideal to plan a meeting 1-3 weeks ahead of time with the member of Congress’ office—it’s best to schedule the meeting, but it’s also possible to just drop in. Say “active political donors” want to meet—that will yield meetings with more senior staff in the congressional office. Recruit activists through multiple channels: peer-to-peer texting, phone-banking, email, bulk voicemail delivery, and Facebook ads, for example. To keep activists involved, use 1:1 and small group meetings and encourage participants to talk and reflect. Center personal stories in molding activists’ involvement and how they message the campaign.

There are a variety of components to successful community or political organizing. This webpage resource provides guidance on organizing skills such as building relationships and one-on-ones, house meetings, team building, developing leadership, creating strategy, structure and capacity, and public narrative. This resource also includes a list of overall organizing guides and manuals, tips on tools and graphics, links to online organizing courses, other training resources, and relevant videos and podcasts.             

This tipsheet covers six principles to help organizations interested in developing and implementing a relational organizing strategy. These tips include:

• Relationships are key to keeping people engaged and ready to take action
• Developing a relational organizing strategy takes time
• A variety of relational organizing approaches is the spice of life!
• Relational organizing is power-building
• 1-on-1s are about creating long-lasting, transformative relationships
• Relational organizing and cultural organizing can be very effective together

A good formula for leveraging health messaging for climate advocacy: Tell people about the health consequences of climate change, health benefits of climate solutions, and include a call-to-action. This experiment found that each of these categories was worth including in a message to help motivate Americans to contact Congress. Within each of these categories, a variety of specific types of information were tested, with the most effective overall combination being a message that first described the negative impacts of climate change on air quality, then explained how transitioning to clean energy will benefit people’s health, and ended by explaining that most Americans support this solution, and many are taking action to advocate for it.             

There are six key steps to executing the best “one-on-one” conversation—specific to a union organizing setting, but potentially applicable to other settings. Step One: Discover the issues—ask open-ended questions to understand the problems the worker cares most about. Step Two: Agitate—ask provocative questions about the frustrations expressed by the worker. Step Three: Elucidate—provide your worker with alternatives, such as enhancing worker power with a union. Step Four: Make an “ask”—before assuming you will be rejected, ask the worker to take a concrete action. Step Five: Innoculate—prepare the worker for the toxic arguments that the boss will give in fighting union power. Step Six: Follow up—check in after the conversation to try to ensure consistent communication and action.             

Figuring out where to start with digital tools can be daunting. Check out these practical tips for moving forward incorporating digital tools into your climte advocacy work. Here are the first three tips – open up the tip sheet to see more!