This might mean learning new skills, understanding different decision-making approaches, working out the best strategies and tactics to achieve your goals, finding training for yourself or others, and of course the day-to-day logistics that keep the wheels turning.
Practical tools
Movement Building
Strategy and tactics
Lobbying and advocacy
Direct action
Community organising
Public campaigns
Digital campaigns
Training
Many organisations offer great training on movement building, organising, communications, facilitation and messaging.
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NEON’s training programme covers a wide range of topics from communication skills to messaging to movement building. Their help desk also offers coaching and support for movement actors. It’s free for unfunded groups and individuals and has a sliding fee scale for funded organisations.
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UK Movement Ecology run a three day training course, with fees on a sliding scale so that cost should not be a barrier.
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Social Movement Technologies offer training specifically geared to ‘winning in the digital age’. They’re US-based but offer training to organisations worldwide. Training for Change is another US based organisation who offer many online training options on a range of topics.
- The Ayni Institute cover a range of topics from social movements to leadership skills. They offer online training and workshops, some of which you can do online, at your own pace. All the training videos of US-based Momentum are available online.
Sustaining your organisation
Sustaining your organisation means first sustaining yourself. It can be exhausting always swimming against the tide and burnout is real. So it is important to take care of yourself and everyone else.
In this section, we give some pointers to resources on how to create a great organisational culture, one that values group and individual wellbeing.
Culture and care
The Activist Wellbeing Handbook is a brilliant place to start. It covers broad topics like group wellbeing and self care and some specifics like tactics for de-escalation to make sure protests remain non-violent.
NEON’s Organisational culture toolkit helps you identify what your organisation is doing well, what you might be able to do better, and how to do it. It’s all great but jump to chapter 7 if you are particularly focused on sustainability and care.
The Commons Library has put together a collection of 10 great resources for activist wellbeing and at a practical organisational level, the Resource Centre’s guide to health and safety is a useful sense check for community groups.
The Racial Justice Network works with communities to challenge oppressive practices. As well as the many resources on their site, they organise events, spaces and forums specifically for Black and Brown communities to connect, share and repair.
Act Build Change runs a workshop for community organisers which introduces the foundational principles of collective care and Healing Justice London runs a range of community programmes on healing and learning. Internal communication
It’s important to be able to communicate easily with everyone in your organisation. There’s a great choice of digital platforms that can help you. Some of the most popular are Whatsapp which is used inside and outside the workplace and Slack which was designed more specifically for working teams and offers more functionality. This is a useful summary of the pros and cons of each. Some groups use Signal which is much like the other platforms but has stronger rules on privacy.
You can easily do small group meetings on these platforms. For bigger meetings, you might need to consider other online platforms. Two of the most commonly used are Zoom and Google Meet, both of which offer free meetings with a time limit (40 minutes for Zoom, 60 minutes for Google Meet).
There is also plenty of choice for places that will help you organise and plan. Some of the most popular are Notion and Asana, both of which offer free plans.
The Activist Handbook has a very thoroughguide to digital tools and apps for every need, from social media to file storage systems.
Collaboration
You’ll probably have more impact if you join forces with others. But how do you make sure you build effective coalitions?
If you want to get going straight away, The Building Movement Project has a very useable tool to help organisations figure out their shared values - in just 90 minutes!
The Commons Library has a brilliant guide to building coalitions which walks you through the promises, pitfalls and practicalities of bringing different organisations together successfully.