Tag Archives: technology

Get Organizing Training in your Pajamas!

Posted on January 18, 2011 by | Leave a comment

I think that this site was actually launched in mid-December, but, you know, I’ve been on vacation.

Still, it’s a good way to kick off the new year, hitting all of the major resolutions: work smarter, connect with cool people, save money, and, of course, enhance your grassroots organizing skills (or are those just my resolutions?)

The New Organizing Institute’s Toolbox isn’t a complete substitute for dynamic in-person training, where you get a chance to build relationships with organizers working on social justice issues that connect to yours. It’s not designed to be, I don’t think. What it does offer, that’s pretty awesome, is a completely free, very accessible, and quite high-quality training program that you can do totally online, as an introduction to grassroots organizing principles (tell your story, build a strong structure, plan and execute powerful actions), as a refresher, or (and this is the part I like the best) as a train-the-trainer model that you can then use to build the capacity of those with whom you’re working on the ground.

It uses the best of current technology, with videos of trainers conducting presentations and interactive materials, and it’s in the fullest spirit of the exciting transparency movement: everything is downloadable and free and open for sharing.

THAT’s empowering, and it’s welcome.

I spent some time looking through the site and found several pieces valuable to me, even after years of organizing experience. They’re all time-tested and refined from work in the field, which is especially important to me (I cannot sit through another talk about power from people who’ve obviously never been close to it). And they’re still adding content (and accepting submissions, if there are examples from your work that you want to share).

Check it out, and let me know what you think, please, or share your own resources for community organizing. And consider yourself on the way to your 2011 resolutions!

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How should we spend our cognitive surplus?

Posted on January 10, 2011 by | 1 Comment

I read all the time.

And, every once in a while, I read something that blows my mind, like the chart in Outliers that details how much of the achievement gap between rich and poorer kids accrues during summer vacation (and how well schools do at closing it, really, during the year).

And this, from Cognitive Surplus:

Americans watch 200 billion hours of television every year (p. 10).

This is not a TV-bashing post. I’m sure that there are some wonderful things on television. The point of the book, and my reflection on it, is simply to point out that watching television has been a default use of one of the greatest expanding resources of our age: free time. And that our use of time, when aggregated as technology now gives us the capability to do, may be key to changing how we approach the challenges that face us.

One of the key pieces in the book comes early, on page 17, as Clay Shirky describes the lessons learned from projects such as Ushahidi (my paraphrases):

  • People want to make the world a better place.
  • They will help when they are invited.
  • Cheap, flexible tools remove many of the barriers to collective action.
  • We can harness this cognitive surplus–the time and brainpower freed up because most of us don’t have to labor all day just to eat–to dramatically improve our lives, and the lives of others.

    Shirky is careful to emphasize that such positive impacts will not automatically flow from the existence of tools that facilitate sharing, connect people to those of like mind, and allow people’s passions an outlet. After all, the same technology that gave us Ushahidi birthed ICanHasCheezburger (disclaimer: my husband’s all-time favorite site). What we need are civic applications of these tools, in order to create real value. Civic sharing, as Shirky defines it, is about really trying to transform society, not just generating a sense of community for participants or even adding some knowledge to the public sphere. We’re going to “get what we celebrate” (p. 176), and so those of us with civic ideas for how to direct this cognitive surplus need to register our desires now, no offense to my husband’s great affinity for ironic traffic signs and email pranks.

    So, picking up on this idea, that we should treat those 200 billion hours a year as a shared resource that can and should be put to work, I plan to use some of my own free time to create a sort of “to-do list” for my fellow Americans, a “honey-do” that might prompt us to turn away from the television and, in the process, realize some of the good life that was supposed to come in this age of leisure. I want to hear from you–what are the best ideas you’ve found for capitalizing on this surplus, and what would you like to see our society collectively tackle in our free time? And, really, 200 billion hours is a lot of time, so if we can carve out just a little bit of it, I agree with Shirky, we could make some really good things happen.

    I want to hear your ideas for how to harness the potential power of this tremendous resource–what are the tools, and the motives, and the opportunities that we need to be developing? How does our culture currently support such collective civic action, and how does it discourage it? On the issues on which you work most closely, how would you use some of your neighbors’ free time to make a real difference (be those your physical neighbors, or those around the world)?

    And, of course, the critical question: how do we make such actions compelling enough to lure people away from Shark Week?

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    In the rearview mirror: thoughts on virtually teaching social policy, virtually

    Posted on December 14, 2010 by | Leave a comment

    At the end of this first semester of “blended” (half online, half traditional classroom instruction) social policy teaching, I’m fairly conflicted. There were some aspects of the experience that I found very rewarding, especially the blurring of the lines between “learning time” and “regular life”–I tend to think about social policy a lot of the time, weaving my ruminations into my daily interactions, and I think that the more fluid nature of the blended course prompted that among my students, too. But it was a semester with considerably more angst than usual, which, for someone who teaches people who want to be social workers about the part of social work (social policy) that we tend not to think too much about, is really saying something. I would love to share this discussion with my own students, current and former, as well as other students and instructors who have engaged in online or blended learning. Here’s where I sit, with one semester down:

  • Part of the psychological challenge for my students was that they did not have a choice to select blended instruction or a traditional model, and, while it hadn’t truly seemed like a make-it-or-break-it thing to me initially, it pretty quickly became obvious that it was: we know that people everywhere are resistant to change and, quite expectedly, more resistant when they didn’t choose the change. We’re now trying to figure out ways to build an element of choice into the curriculum design, because it seems that its lack is a hurdle that students struggled to get past.
  • Online instruction doesn’t seem to work as well in a course, like this one, where students are diverging into pretty new material, and, indeed, a new understanding of their profession, as compared to those courses which are an extension of what they already know. A lot of my job as a policy instructor is to make policy relevant, and accessible, and, indeed, conquerable for social work students, and that’s harder to do without the sustained face-to-face contact.
  • Students need real-time access to the instructor. We started off the semester with this blog, and closed-circuit discussion boards, and other online communication structures built in, but without a real-time chat set up, and I’m going to include that for sure next time. Students want to process their readings, in particular, and need a sort of free-form discussion in which to do that. Live and learn.
  • My sense that this blended model would work particularly well for certain students with certain learning styles was confirmed; I had several students who really flourished, for example, with the discussion boards, because they could look up material in advance, make connections between different parts of the course, and engage in “conversation” with students in other sections. I was right about that, but I underestimated the extent to which online instruction would fail students with other learning styles, and it was really a nightmare for students whose primary learning style is through oral communication with peers. There’s just no way to really replicate that outside of a classroom.
  • Online instruction is different, in so many ways, from a traditional classroom, that instructors are well-served to not try to pretend that it’s similar. I made the decision to allow students to engage in the online content for any week’s unit at any point in the semester, rather than assigning artificial due dates to “contain” that content, and that was the right decision.

    I believe that online instruction, in some form, will continue to play an increasingly prominent role in higher education, so it’s critical that we get this right. I worked harder this semester than in any since the first time I taught the course, and I hope that those efforts helped to mitigate the losses that this cohort of students experienced by being the experimental first class.

    What do you think about online instruction in higher education, specifically social work? How can we make sure that this technology will work for students, and for our profession?

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    I call it organizing: “network weaving” and your nonprofit

    Posted on December 7, 2010 by | 2 Comments

    Remember, all comments on this week’s posts about The Networked Nonprofit will enter you in the running to win a free copy of the book!

    Yesterday, I wrote about some of the attributes that drive organizations towards social media parallel those that create the conditions for effective advocacy. Today, I’m thinking more about those overlaps, here in the context of “old-fashioned organizing” as compared to what Kanter and Fine refer to as “network weaving”.

    Both concepts have the same fundamental goals:

  • Identifying key individuals who you can connect to your cause
  • Connecting those individuals, also, to each other, in the recognition that collections of people are always more powerful than people in isolation
  • Building strong relationships that, while not “personal” in the classic sense, have a degree of intimacy, forged through both conflict and collaboration, that energizes a movement and transforms people’s lives
  • Finding ways to move people towards increasing levels of involvement, always with a dual focus on how the organizing effort can meet their own needs as well as those of the cause (Beth Kanter refers to this as “The Ladder of Engagement”)
  • Creating structures that give people, who would be relatively powerless alone, voice and power, and a mechanism through which to change their own lives, and the lives of others

    I share with the authors, as do almost all of the (many) grassroots organizers I know or have known in my career, a belief that organizations are stronger when they have a solid connection to those they serve, and that individuals’ lives are enriched by participation in something larger than themselves.

    And I don’t really care whether they call that network weaving, in language that perhaps feels more familiar to those figuring out social media will add to their nonprofit organization’s quest for justice, however they define it, or organizing, which, albeit in online form, it really is.

    But it does, for me, raise some real questions about where the points of divergence are. In other words, if networking weaving, as described here, is so much like community organizing, how is it different, not in technical ways (like the media used) but fundamental ones? Are online social networks, for example, more likely to be composed on homogenous groups, thus denying people one of the most enriching parts of organizing: joining forces with those different than ourselves? Are the relationships forged online significantly different (more shallow? more lasting?) than those built face-to-face? Is the role played by a network weaver substantially different than that of an organizer? Do the boundaries of expertise fade away more fluidly online?

    I don’t know the answers to these questions, and they are most likely only answerable by work with a relatively small number of individuals–those engaged in authentic online AND in-person networking weaving/grassroots organizing efforts. Because so many of the former organizations have little to no experience in grassroots organizing campaigns (having adopted the strategies specifically to advance their online efforts) and so many of the latter are working with populations that (correctly or not) they assume to prefer face-to-face work, definitive answers may elude us, at least for awhile.

    But, maybe, that’s okay. Maybe, for now, our challenge is to really contemplate the questions: to think about how (and when) network weaving complements how we engage people “offline”, and vice versa, and to prompt conversations with our constituents about the multiple ways in which they want to connect to each other, and to our shared work.

    Those of you who organize online and/or in-person, where do you see overlap and where do you see significant differences? How can practitioners committed to empowering participation use both strategies? What cross-learning do we need to advance these fields? And does language, how we talk about what we do, matter?

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    Why ‘networked nonprofits’ are better advocates

    Posted on December 6, 2010 by | 2 Comments

    Who likes presents?

    First (drumroll, please!), the holidays have arrived at Classroom to Capitol!

    At the end of this week, everyone who has commented on one of The Networked Nonprofit posts will be entered, at random, in a drawing (chosen blindly by my wonderful husband) to win a free copy of the book. I’ll even pay to ship it to you!

    So, read away, leave your thoughts, and get ready for a present! You are all a gift to me!

    What I like best about The Networked Nonprofit, co-written by authors whose own blogs I read regularly, is their clear view of social media as a set of tools to help in our common quest for social change, rather than gadgets to be worshipped in their own right.

    They urge nonprofit practitioners to use social media to change the way we think, not just the way we communicate, and that has me thinking (see–it works!) about how organizations that embrace social media as part of their strategy are more likely to also possess some of the attributes (or, at least, be open to them) that make organizations successful at advocacy, too.

    Some of this is certainly “chicken and the egg”–are organizations already predisposed to hold these ways of looking at the world, and their work, or does engaging their communities via social media bring about these transformations? The answer, I think, is probably some of both, but I’m most interested in the idea that integrating social media into an organization’s repertoire could better position its Board of Directors, executive staff, and entire set of stakeholders to approach advocacy, too.

    There were several points in the book when Kanter and Fine describe, and even sort of define, ‘networked nonprofits’, and it sounds a lot like how I talk about organizations that are advocacy-oriented vs. those that are more in the “band-aid business”.

    Some examples:

  • Simplicity and transparency: I’ve often had nonprofits tell me that they could never take on advocacy because they’re too small, but, in my practice, those smaller, more nimble organizations have a much easier time taking bold stances (even if they don’t have too many resources to put into campaigns) than those with complex structures and complicated hierarchies.
  • Organizational culture that accepts the inevitability of failure and the utility of risk: I know that I have a lot more work to do with an executive when he/she talks to me about a fear that the organization might fail in its advocacy efforts. The reality, of course, is that they absolutely will fail, that advocacy fails much more often than not, and that organizations need to construct campaigns where there will be some victory (in constituents empowered or policymakers enlightened or reputations enhanced) in the midst of failure.
  • Real curiosity and commitment to listening: The best advocates I know are great listeners; they know what policymakers, in particular, are trying to tell them, and they convey a sense of really wanting to understand others’ perspectives, rather than only trying to broadcast their own message.
  • Integrity and reciprocity: Another concern that I hear sometimes, especially from Boards of Directors, is a fear that their organizations will be pulled into “other people’s issues”. Again, the answer is “of course”, but that’s not a bad thing. Kanter and Fine talk about the concept of “karma banking”, which we think of in advocacy as “coalition-building”–if I’m there to support your domestic violence legislation today, you’ll stand with me on restrictive proposals regarding immigrants’ eligibility for social services. And we can trust each other on that.

    Obviously, advocacy and social media don’t correlate 1:1 in the nonprofit world: there are organizations excelling at advocacy through “old-fashioned” grassroots organizing and time-consuming relationship-building with policymakers, and there are organizations that are using social media incredibly effectively, but only to raise money, recruit volunteers, or promote their own work, not to change the policy environment that impacts their constituents.

    Still, there’s enough overlap that it’s making me think a bit differently about how I approach nonprofits on both of these fronts, and about how tackling one could reduce the gap to be hurdled for the other.

    What about your organization? If you’re involved in advocacy but not using social media, what’s holding you back from using these tools? If you’re fully on the Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare bandwagons, but not doing advocacy, why not? And if you’re doing neither, what aspects of your organization do you see as the biggest obstacles?

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    This time, it’s personal: “Rebooting America”

    Posted on October 18, 2010 by | Leave a comment

    If any of my readers attended the Personal Democracy Forum, just consider me jealous. I’ve added it to my list of “conferences I shall attend when the kids are older and I have a travel budget again.”

    Until then, I’ve consoled myself with Rebooting America, an edited collection of essays about how to use technology to transform government and reinvigorate our electoral process, among other ideas to change the world.

    I certainly don’t pretend to be as expert in how technology can transform our democracy as the diverse set of thinkers and practitioners contributing here, nor (at more than 230 pages) do I want to summarize all of the recommendations.

    Instead, consider this a sort of “greatest hits” list, at least from my perspective–the ideas that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about, and the ones that I believe have the most potential to truly change how we as citizens interface with each other, and with governance (note, not “government”, since several of the essays make a persuasive case that government as we know it may, in fact, be a concept with a limited future), not just putting a slick, “tech” face on the same old patterns.

    As we approach Election Day (another time-honored ritual whose time, I believe, has come–why can’t we vote online over a period of weeks, for example?), I want to hear your most fervent hopes for what tomorrow’s democracy will look like, and your best ideas for how technology can help us get there. How would you “reboot America”?

  • The essays that I highlighted the most all had in common a strong orientation towards participation that goes far beyond voting–a reimagination, in a way, of what it means to be a citizen, and an understanding that voting alone reduces us, really, to consumers choosing between two or more prepackaged products, which is, ultimately, a really narrow understanding of civic engagement. Several contributors talked about the need for “platforms that will actually engage people in effective, sustainable efforts aimed toward identifying our difference and commonalities, and acting together to further our common goal” (Yochai Benkler). Of course, the way the system is constructed today, voting still matters. But citizens who volunteer, work in their local communities, and debate issues will still vote, they’ll just have many alternative ways to express their values, beyond pushing a button. As Marie Wilson states, “true political participation is only achieved when a person’s voice counts as much as his or her vote.” Voting should be the floor of political participation, not the ceiling; as one contributor put it, “in a world where kids can be television stars just by finding a video camera and an Internet connection,” there’s no reason citizens should relegate ourselves to being the “television audience watching along at home” (Aaron Swartz).
  • Working within the world as it is, several of the essays made concrete suggestions on how to improve electoral politics, from having a checkbox on the ballot that asks voters whether they “gave serious consideration to the booklets or websites of several candidates” or inserting short political messages into random YouTube video introductions (Brad Templeton); requiring instant runoff voting as a way to give greater political opportunities to outsider candidates, including women and people of color (Marie Wilson); putting “none-of-the-above” on the ballot or allowing voters to add a comment that explains their votes, in a way that could be aggregated to provide greater insights into the electorate (Micah Sifry); or allowing the online voting I referenced above (Allison Fine). As with many things, we run our elections the way we do largely because we have, for as long as we can remember, and, as with many things, that’s just not a compelling reason to make the rather poor decisions we do about something this important.
  • The final set of themes in my notes from the volume relate to ways to improve governance, a sort of third leg in this democratic stool; if we enhance citizenship by giving people more meaningful ways to engage, and we change the way that people are elected in ways that should make them more representative of and accountable to that engaged citizenry, then we also need to create tools that will help those two groups work together effectively to do the business of governing. These include such ideas as marginalizing the role of the presidency in favor of a tiered council model (Jan Frel and Nicco Mele); creating “radar screens” of issues coming before the local government, with interactive ways for people to provide feedback (Susan Crawford); and crafting a “Delegation for Future Interests”, composed of young people and forward-thinking scientists who would focus on what our current government does very poorly–thinking about future challenges and the future implications of present decisions (Matthew Burton). This last set of ideas is obviously the most difficult. Technology alone can’t shift entrenched power positions or reenvision our framework of governance. But it can give us the tools to make those dreams more possible, and, therefore, give us license to dream them.

    Citizens for whom voting is just one piece of a seamless life of activism and participation, a democracy that facilitates the connections to each other and to a greater purpose that can animate our lives, and a system of governance worthy of our ideals and capable of rising to our challenges…an America to celebrate in the 21st Century.

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    Pie in the sky? What cloud computing means for social justice

    Posted on September 28, 2010 by | 1 Comment

    Photo via Flickr Creative Commons, credit Library of Congress

    This is not the place for an indepth discussion on the components of cloud computing. I’m not that much of a technology expert.

    But I do think that social workers, and advocates for social justice, need to think about what the move towards less reliance on computer hardware (and even software) and more integration through ‘virtual’ networks means, for issues of access to information, consumer protection, and efforts to close the digital divide.

    One of my favorite philanthropy blogs (and one of the very few to actually reference the work of front-line social workers) had a discussion about many of these issues last spring, which prompted my research into the term ‘cloud computing’ and my thinking about what this might mean for social workers in the field and for social work advocates.

    Because this is beyond my area of strongest expertise, I’ve got links to share and a lot of questions to ask, and the hopes that some of you who are currently thinking about how you might use new technology to really do your work differently (and what transitioning to a more ‘cloud-based’ model might mean for your thinking about how you organize other systems within your organization, too, because I’m of course concerned that an ‘on-demand’ orientation to software might lead to an (increased) ‘on-demand’ orientation towards human resources) will share what these conversations are looking like and what information and/or connections would help you approach them.

    1. Will transferring sensitive client data to the cloud increase security, because cloud systems may be more sophisticated than what we have internally and because the vendors have a strong incentive to protect data, or compromise it (and, therefore, the trust our clients have in us) by putting data into the Internet ‘netherworld’?

    2. Is moving to the cloud going to help close the digital divide, because of the low costs of entry (compared with expensive hardware requirements) or expand it, because there are still many parts of the world (and, indeed, the U.S.) without the broadband access that’s essential to meaningfully interface with the cloud?

    3. Will making it easier for organizations to share resources and communicate real content facilitate breaking down silos in social services, or will this just reveal the real barriers (more ideological and political than technical) to collaboration?

    4. Will Executive Directors and CEOs of nonprofit organizations pursue cloud computing because of a belief in the value of socially-oriented technologies, or in the hopes of reducing capital outlays and outsourcing more previously-internal functions? This last one isn’t so important for the cloud computing discussion itself, but, again, for what it might reflect about the overall disposition of managers within social work organizations, a disposition which has significant implications for working conditions, labor rights, and worker empowerment within organizations.

    So, coming down from the clouds, what do you think? Is your organization engaged in this shift today? Do you call it ‘cloud computing’? Do you think it will really change how you work? What about how you connect with others around advocacy? Any answers to my questions?

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    Leading your horses to water: Making social media easy for your activists

    Posted on September 21, 2010 by | 2 Comments

    Like so many things, it’s easy for social change activists to get really excited about social media and its capacity to bring people together around the causes we hold so dear, forgetting in the meantime that these new tools aren’t necessarily intuitive for all of those we’re trying to engage and, more importantly, that empowering people to use them successfully can be another opportunity to build capacity and strengthen our relationship with our constituents.

    That’s why I love what the Environmental Defense Action Fund has done with their Twitter Guide to the climate change bill.

    There is a lot that they’re doing so well with their web-based advocacy–great (as in horrifying and spell-binding) videos of the oil spill disaster in the Gulf, up-to-date blog posts, podcasts and other informative tools, and a good social media presence–but this Twitter guide is especially impressive because it manages to walk people through how to engage on this legislative issue on Twitter, without seeming condescending or too ‘tech-y’.

    And, while a guide like this can become outdated very quickly (as legislation changes and the Twitter discussion stream shifts), it provides an excellent model for organizations seeking to influence the online conversations their supporters have about their issues.

    Some of the essential elements:

  • Guide to the most common hashtags used by supporters and oppponents of the legislation (helps advocates organize their tweets, builds momentum around the topic, and facilitates monitoring)
  • Twitter-ready talking points (key messages, already formulated in short phrases suitable for tweeting)
  • Integration with Twitter (they include a link right next to each point that allows supporters to immediately tweet a given message–this serves two purposes: getting the message out quickly AND giving people a chance to practice interfacing with Twitter, if they’re new to that)
  • Beginner-friendly language that assumes neither that users have to be Twitter experts to get started nor that all of your followers are necessarily “Twitter fluent” (you could pick this up with only a very basic idea of what Twitter is and still get started–you really need to know more about how messaging and policy debate works, which is what you want to emphasize anyway; Twitter is just the medium)

    Does anyone have other examples of nonprofit advocacy groups producing tools like this to help advocates navigate the social media landscape? I’m especially interested in those that are campaign-specific and “battle-ready”, so to speak, so not the more involved guides that provide background information on the applications but rather quick, easy-to-use tools that can be immediately implemented in a campaign. Are you creating anything like this for your work, or might you?

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    Social by Social, for social workers

    Posted on August 10, 2010 by | Leave a comment

    Everyone likes free stuff, right?

    And when it’s free stuff that

  • Inspires you with awesome examples of how people are using emerging technologies to do amazing things in the world
  • Gives you a glossary of all the terms you need to know to live, and advocate, in the high-tech world (would be great to share with a confused or skeptical CEO!)
  • Provides social organizations, working on social problems, from a foundation of social conscience, with a guide to shape their work with social technologies
  • Shares expert advice for those currently engaged in social change campaigns, on how to integrate technology into your work
  • And lives the transparency credo that “social” is all about

    Well, that’s my very most favorite kind of free stuff!

    Social by Social is a free ebook that believes, as I do, that we should use technology to do the things that matter–who wants to read on Twitter that ants are taking over my kitchen? But what about using text messages to remind people to vote in the primary election? They call for fewer ‘cool new tools’ and more thinking about what we need in order to improve our world. They see technology the way that our organizations should–as a trigger, something that equips us to do what we should, and want, to do anyway (get our clients engaged in politics, connect our donors to advocacy, mobilize grassroots action on legislation) but found harder to do without these applications.

    This is the most fun “book” on social media for social good that you’ll ever see–it has a ton of hyperlinks embedded right into it, and quotes from super-smart, super-savvy people who write whole books on this stuff themselves, and enough how-to suggestions (how to: get buy-in from your organization to experiment with social technologies, avoid gadget-chasing, set goals for your experiments, monitor conversations about your work, use video, events, and photos in your campaigns, give up the search for ‘control’ in order to let the relationships you’ll need for action flourish, measuring return on investment) to make it a real resource to keep by your computer. It’s also British, and you know how i feel about the UK.

    But, by far, the best part is the inspirations. I’ll have posts on a couple of these individually over the next few weeks (okay, maybe months!), but check them out–you’ll find not only inspiration for your own online advocacy, but probably some campaigns that you want to participate in, too.

    And then it has a section on what these new technologies will mean for different people, trying to improve the world from a different sector’s vantage point. My favorite section is on campaigners: how can you not love someone who advises activists for social justice to “be promiscuous”–go where people are, don’t assume that anyone is closed to your message, and connect with people so that they become part of your movement.

    And, finally, I love that this project used the very technologies, and the very same ideology, or approach to the work, that it advocates for others. By living what they recommend, the Social by Social team provides a model for what this new engagement might look like for organisations (um, I mean, organizations).

    Happy social-izing!

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    Your very own MoveOn

    Posted on July 29, 2010 by | Leave a comment

    CitizenSpeak is a free email advocacy service for grassroots organizations (or, really, judging from current campaigns, also for individuals with a passion for a particular cause) that allows you to create a unique web address for your campaign, which you can then email as a link to your list of supporters. Obviously, you might have the ability to do some of these functions through your own agency website. But, if you’re a very small organization without much independent website capacity (like a neighborhood organization or a group of parents or a youth group) or, conversely, a very large, bureaucratic organization where getting approval to make a change to the agency’s website is an advocacy campaign in itself, then CitizenSpeak could be very helpful to you. Some of the features that I particularly like:

  • You can create sites in English o en español. Nice.
  • It comes with reports, so that you can collect personal statements from your supporters (to figure out their own connections to the issue and/or further refine your appeal) and track participation rates, both as an internal evaluation tool and to motivate additional action.
  • CitizenSpeak also has a blog, that includes highlights of successful campaigns using the technology and some tips. It’s awesome to see connectors connecting themselves. There’s a whole list of case studies, too, many of which are really, super inspiring.
  • There’s a list of active campaigns on the site, so you can make sure that no one has a campaign exactly like yours underway (or connect with them if they do!)
  • Did I mention that it’s free?

    I’d love to hear from anyone who has used CitizenSpeak for advocacy, to get your take on it. And I’ll be expecting some emails from some of you, too!

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    Posted in My New Favorite Thing

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