Engagment Organizing 101

“ Engagement Organizing ” by Matt Price & Jon Stahl “ Organizing: People, Power and Change ” A handbook adapted from the works of Marshall Ganz and New Organizing Institute. “ Big Organizing ” by Zack Exely and Becky Bonds Works of Marshall Ganz http://marshallganz.com/ Online course on public narrative. https://www.hks.harvard.edu/about/faculty-staff-directory/marshall-ganz

Do you have a clear sense of why engagement of people will help you achieve your goals? Can you easily frame this in an “If, Then, Because” sentence? Do you know who your priority people are? Do you know where and how best to recruit these people? Do you have a system to welcome new supporters to your initiative? Do you have an engagement pyramid that details clear steps to engagement within your initiative? Do you use this pyramid to guide communications activities? Do you have leadership teams with clearly define roles and purposes? Do you have a system to track supporters, communicate with supporters and segment your supporter lists based on their interests and involvement?

Do you have a system to track supporters, communicate with supporters and segment your supporter lists based on their interests and involvement? In this example, we have three segmented pathways to engagement supporters: Pathway #1: Signs a pledge → Receives Email → Becomes an action taker → Becomes a multiple action taker Pathway #2 → Signs a pledge → Receives Email → Signals interest in Volunteering →  Joins a Volunteer Team → Becomes a Team Lead Pathway #3 → Signs a pledge → Receives Email → Takes Action →  Becomes a Donor Becomes a Monthly Donor → Becomes a Major Donor Looking back on your engagement pyramid from Topic 3. 1. What core engagement segmentations exist (natural silo's for your engagement activities - ie. online action takers, volunteers, donors etc). 2. Define the pathways to engagement and leadership that exist for each of these segments. Map the interrelations across the silo's. The best contacts management systems will allow you to t...

The following table details some of the key questions you can reflect on when assessing the robustness of your volunteer programs and teams. If you are looking to scale up your volunteer activities to enable capacity to deepen engagement with larger numbers of engaged volunteers, again this table will offer you some reflection on what tools, supports and systems may need to be designed to be able to best support this.   Remember, whether a volunteer run or staff supported organization, volunteers need support. This tool reflects on this and identifies opportunities for you to advance and strengthen these programs.  Question Your Answer Opportunities for improvement How many active volunteer groups/teams do you have?     What is the primary basis of these groups/teams (geographic, issue or program, function)?     How do you recruit for these teams/groups?     What is the average number of people in each group/team?   ...

In this topic, we explored deepening the understanding of who your priority people are for your engagement activities. This can often be answered by asking the question: who do we most need to engage to help us realize the change we wish to see? Once you know the answer to this question (and NO, the answer is not "everyone") then you can tailor recruitment strategies to reach these people. 1. Who are your people? 2. Where do you find your people? 3. What recruitment strategies would best identify and reach these people?

Defining your organization, groups or programs engagement-based Theory of Change helps you (and your team members) understand why engagement is important to your work and specifically, how strengthening your people power will achieve those outcomes.   By identifying your "If....then....because" statement you can put this rationale into a succinct and clear phrase that keeps focus on the purpose, and outcomes you are driving for in all your engagement activities.   IF WE  _____________________________________________________________________________________, THEN WE WILL ACHIEVE _____________________________________________________________________, BECAUSE __________________________________________________________________________________.

An Essential Tool     Your engagement pyramid is one of your most important tools for understanding how supporters flow through your organization.   Your goal, as an engagement organization, is to increase the number of supporters that engage with your organization, and move a portion of those supporters up the pyramid so that they become increasingly engaged and active with your organization.   Once you understand this flow, you are in a much better position to tailor your communications directly to each level in your pyramid thus creating easy steps for people to get more involved.   Find Your Super Volunteers - Moving Supporters Up the Pyramid Most new supporters start off as observers.   They have found your website, signed up for email notices, they’ve “liked” you on Facebook or started following you on Twitter. Something has peaked their interest.   A large number of people may stay at this base level in your pyramid but it’s import...