2. How to build a network from the ground
up.
How maintain your network through re-
engagement and leadership development.
Achieving Sustainability: Building an
organization “away from you”.
Avoiding Stagnation: Think like an
organizer.
3. Community organizing is a process where people who
live in proximity to each other come together [to form] an
organization that acts in their shared self-interest.
Source: Wikipedia
“The most common way people give up their power
is by thinking they don’t have any”
– Alice Walker
A successful organizing drive will turn a group of
unengaged individuals with a common interest into an
engaged assembly working together.
4. Core Goal #1:
Empowering individuals within a community by connecting
them, one to each other, to act in their shared self-interest.
5. Leadership Development is the Key to
Sustainability.
Core Goal #2:
To identify, develop and work with new leaders, facilitating
coalitions with existing 3rd party leaders, by facilitating the
development of campaigns (read: events, activities,
initiatives) on which they take the lead.
6. It was the Leadership Development that was part of the
continuous engagement and organizing of the black
community in Montgomery that saw an empowered Rosa
Parks board the bus that day, and that made the
subsequent bus strike possible.
7.
8.
9. • Your organization doesn’t have any French speaking representatives.
• Your network includes two teachers at a French High School who have won
awards for their work with Queer Youth. You know them because you
presented last year for the Pride club at their school. They are your
contacts for when you want to present again this year.
• They are very busy and don’t always respond.
10.
11. • Your organization doesn’t have any French speaking representatives.
• Your network includes two teachers at a French High School who have won
awards for their work with Queer Youth. You know them because you
presented last year for the Pride club at their school. They are your
contacts for when you want to present again this year.
• They are very busy and don’t always respond.
12. Email the teachers asking if they are willing to
speak with the student.
If yes: Respond to the initial email, CCing your
teachers (existing members being re-engaged).
Follow with a separate email to those teachers.
Use the opportunity to book your next
presentation.
Wait (1-2 wks). Then follow with a separate email
to the student who sent the first email.
13. Connect with allies who work with your target
constituency directly.
Enlist their help & secure their endorsement.
Speak on your own behalf whenever possible; not
through an intermediary.
Listen to your people, and follow their lead.
Let them know that they are needed.
15. Practical Uses
Provides you with a realistic estimate of how many people you
can expect at your event
An RSVP initiates a conversation that can be carried on
throughout the month before the event.
Check-in Ideas
Invite youth to send requests for the DJ
Offer a prize for “the biggest entourage” (they must RSVP
separately!)
Check-in close to the event (we’re almost at capacity! Tell
your friends to RSVP so that they aren’t turned away!)
Post these same announcements on the Facebook event
page, but make it clear that to qualify they must RSVP by
sending an email.
18. Don’t rely on social media.
Make youth RSVP for everything.
Your members should speak on your
behalf. Leadership should do so only when
a member isn’t willing/available.
All events, activities, etc. should be
spearheaded and arranged by members,
whenever possible.
19. You are the Director in name only.
Delegate everything possible to a member
of your committee.
Recognize hard work and commitment.
Give promotions.
Make everyone responsible for something.
20. Draft policies and procedures for
contingencies.
Build a parent/teacher committee for
consultation.
Connect youth with other youth.
21. Develop your own
name and logo.
Respect Privacy.
Remember to
acknowledge and
value allies.
Editor's Notes
Introduction
My name is Jodie McNamara
Organizing Experience
My relevant educational background is in Political Science and Sociology.
I have ten years of community organizing and action planning experience.
In 2006, I was the member of a team of organizers behind a union drive at our call center that saw the requisite number of workers signed on in less than two weeks. Most union drives fail entirely. After the successful certification of our own shop, the United Steelworkers of Montreal brought us with them to affiliated call centers around Quebec in an effort to spark new drives throughout the province.
I’ve been a community organizer for ACORN Ottawa, organizing low-income communities to fight local-based social justice campaigns. (explain)
For the 2011 election, I worked for Citizen’s Services campaigning in support of progressive candidates in ridings held by less progressive candidates, but with the potential for political transition. My job for two ridings for the month leading up to the election was to flip those ridings, which I did.
I worked with Amnesty International in Montreal for four years, recruiting volunteers (especially young volunteers) and engaging the general public to participate in Amnesty initiatives – letter writing campaigns, petition signing and circulation, and fundraising event planning.
My current professional designation is…*various*
Etcetera
Early in 2011 I joined Capital Pride as Youth Coordinator. Since the establishment of Capital Pride Youth, the initiative had suffered from a lack of engagement. The previous year’s Queer Youth Prom had not been well attended.
Over the following year and a half, the organization grew to include a network of three hundred LGBTQ Youth from across the city. Etcetera has a monthly open mic, a quarterly dance/party, an expanded program of events during Pride week (including an opening party and a DIY Pride supply making day), and a show choir that meets weekly. At the end of March we are launching a new Queer Youth Café.
1.) One of the keys to the success of this model it is driven by the group you are trying to engage. What you do and how you get there, your content, the character of your events and activities, the pace of them, how many or few there are, and your priorities, are all up to the group. If they aren’t doing the work, there is no “product”.
The examples provided are specific to organizing a particular group (LGBTQ youth in Ottawa) under the umbrella of a particular organization (Etc. Youth – Ottawa). Strategies employed in this process can and should be tailored to suit the particular group/mandate you are working towards. There are important considerations that aren’t covered by this seminar, though I am happy to answer questions.
2.) By building continuous leadership development into how your organization operates, gaps that open up when leaders move on will fill themselves with replacements that are prepared for the challenge. When you are able to walk away leaving a functioning organization behind you, you have done your job.
3.) The natural course over time for any assembly of people, however well organized, is that it will shrink as individuals’ circumstances. The commitment of some may grow, but most will eventually retreat and move on. Therefore, an organization that isn’t regularly recruiting new participation is dying. Maintaining a people’s organization means continuously engaging new people while simultaneously re-engaging your existing network. This process is especially important within a youth-run organization.
We are Event Planners…
What is an “Organizer”?
Organizing is about introducing individuals to the power they have, to what they are capable of accomplishing, when they work together with others who share their interests.
Before we are engaged, we have the power to make things happen, but don’t know it. For example: an LGBTQ youth in a small town is likely to think they are alone, though they are not in fact.
(See unengaged fish vs. engaged fish – next slide)
Work to make people within a group aware that they are members of a team, introducing them to the other players, get them working together towards a common goal.
Then within this work…(next core goal: Leadership Development)
Traditional Community Organizing is about political campaigns, but the principles apply to various platforms for collective actions - events, activities, and initiative. The business of how leadership development is built into the everyday busy work of your organization is the same, and serves the same purpose.
If an organization can’t function without you, if you are irreplaceable, your organization isn’t sustainable.
***
Now. A couple of examples of how community organizing works. One is an example of traditional community organizing where organized work towards a common goal and leadership development brought us important role models and significant social change. The second is an example of the model at work that will bring us back to a conversation about youth.
In December 1955, Rosa Parks made history by refusing to give up her seat so that a white passenger could sit. Her arrest led to a bus boycott by the black residents of Montgomery. They demanded, amongst other things, an end to the law requiring segregation on public busses. After 381 days, the law was repealed when the Supreme Court ruled that the law was unconstitutional.
Leadership Development:
Rosa had been an active member and occasional officer of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Chapter for the twelve years prior, since 1943.
At the time of the incident, she had just recently returned from an inter-racial conference that it had been arranged for her to attend.
Community Organizing/Continuous Engagement
When she was arrested, the fact was immediately disseminated through those organized and engaged through the NAACP. Leaders that had already been established called in an already organized, already engaged community to respond. They understood the political context because they were already educated and familiar with it. They had know-how and resources they needed to respond effectively in a timely fashion.
Group: Black Community in Montgomery = LGBTQ Youth
Shared Interest/Concern: Segregated Busses = Isolation and Bullying in Schools
Work Towards Shared Interest/Concern: Bus Strike = Queer Youth Prom
Goal: End to Segregated Busses = End to Isolation/Delegitimize Bullying
Fun Fact: Because leadership development and engagement is continuous, new leaders and new members are continuously emerging from the work. It is self-reinforcing. Leader who newly emerged from the bus boycott – Martin Luther King Jr.
“The group agreed that a new organization was needed to lead the boycott effort if it were to continue. Rev. Ralph Abernathy suggested the name "Montgomery Improvement Association" (MIA).[31] The name was adopted, and the MIA was formed. Its members elected as their president Martin Luther King, Jr., a relative newcomer to Montgomery, who was a young and mostly unknown minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.[32]”
Bringing it back to youth…
Story:
Perhaps a facile example, but bare with me.
Harry always knew that he was different. He was able to do things that he wasn’t supposed to be able to do. He was isolated from his peers, because they didn’t understand. They considered him “strange”. He considered himself “strange”. Because he didn’t know anyone else that was different in the same way he was, and because he didn’t understand what it was about himself that was different, what it meant or why, he agreed with his peers.
When his family treated him like a dirty secret, reserving their familial love for their biological son but not for him, he didn’t stand up for himself. He accepted his fate, miserable and alone.
Until a leader with an organization for people that are “different” in the same way that he is showed up at his door, inviting him to join them. The organization…
At Hogwarts he…
Came to understand what made him different and what it meant.
Learned that what is “strange” or “bad” is an open question, not a statement of fact.
Came to understand not only what set him apart in the context of a shared identity, but what made him unique within the broader umbrella.
In short: he found an environment where he could achieve his full potential in terms that acknowledged and worked with – not against – his uniqueness.
Not only did he become a confident unique individual, capable of standing up for himself and for others, but he became an important role model for others coming after him.
Thinking like an Event Planner:
Case Study – Managing Everyday Correspondence What do you do with this email?
1.) Read the above email, along with the important context information found below it.
2.) Review your job description (on this slide: “Event Planner”).
An Event Planner’s job description:
Plan events
Secure necessary resources (money/in-kind services) to run events
Book entertainers, as required
Secure equipment
Employ volunteers
Mandate: To organize and run events for LGBTQ youth.
Questions an event planner would ask:
Does helping this person benefit us?
No. You do not offer programming in French. She is asking for a favor, offering nothing in return.
Does this email relate to my mandate? To what extent is attention paid to this request an appropriate use of my time/resources?
Your organization runs recreational activities for youth. Education and activism is not currently part of your mandate.
An Event Planner’s Response:
Next slide…
You’ve done the person a favor without spending too much on your part. You haven’t lost anything.
Or have you?
Thinking like a Community Organizer
An organizer’s job description:
Empowering individuals within a community by connecting them, one to each other, to act in their shared self-interest.
Recruit new members and leaders (if you are not actively growing, you are actively dying)
To identify, develop and work with new leaders, facilitating coalitions and assisting the development of campaigns (read: events, activities, initiatives).
Continuous re-engagement.
Questions an organizer would ask:
Does helping this person benefit us?
She is asking for a connection to a third party, based on your shared interest (i.e. “gay rights”). Connecting people based on a shared interest is the core of what we do.
Does this email relate to my mandate? To what extent is attention paid to this request an appropriate use of my time/resources?
This email holds substantial potential for all three tenets of your job description.
Recruiting new members:
The students in the group making the video: 4
Students in the Pride Club at the high school with whom you already have a connection: 20-30
Pool of potential recruits connected to this email: 24-34
Identify Potential Leaders, engaging as appropriate:
Laura has taken the initiative to reach out to you. The group of four has chosen to do a video project on LGBTQ rights.
Someone reaching out to you is a key sign from them that they are potential leaders.
Continuous Engagement of New Recruits:
The two busy award-winning teachers are existing members of the organization. This is leverage you can use for the purpose of engaging the above noted potential new recruits – including these four potential leaders.
Continuous Re-Engagement of Existing Participants:
This email offers an opportunity to re-engage those two teachers, with a view to continued access to the regular pool of new recruits they represent. If your relationships with them is managed well, they will function as a “tap” that can be turned repeatedly over time.
How does an organizer respond?
Next slide…
Get permission for the connection
Standard good manners
This is an easy ask, they are likely to respond to this as teaching is at the core of their mandate. Once they respond, you have successfully re-established contact with them – in a manner that has demonstrated your legitimacy as an organization (direct contact with youth, and an established reputation that brings youth to you).
Initial Response (CCing Teachers):
“Hi there Laura. I would like you to meet Dave Lacroix and Michel Laframboise (both are CCd on this message). They are both teachers at *Blank* High School. They are members of our parent/teacher network through the Pride Club they run at their school. They also happen to be award-winning activists for the rights of LGBTQ youth.
I spoke to them, and they would be happy to answer any questions you may have. They are looking forward to hearing from you.
Regards,”
Follow-up Email to Teachers:
“I just wanted to thank you for agreeing to speak with Laura Palmer. We plan to invite the group to show their video to our Planning Committee. It would be cool for the group to see members of our teacher’s network involved.
I was also wondering if we could book a time to come in and speak to your new group of students, now that we’re in a new year…”
Follow-up Email to Student:
“I just wanted to follow-up to make sure that you were able to get what you needed from *blank*. We would also like to invite your group to show your video to our Planning Committee. Our committee includes LGBTQ youth from high schools across the city, and we would love to see it.”
Steer away from multi-regional organizations with limited face-to-face contact with the constituencies they represent. Email, telephone, social media - none of these count as “face to face”.
Endorsement in this sense means a flexible verbal agreement to assist you if/when they can. The importance of this (especially in the beginning) lies in that you can “name drop”, as an aid to establishing the legitimacy of your organization when recruiting new members.
Recruitment is hard, and must be handled with skill. It is also crucial that your messaging remain consistent, and that no one is made offers or promises that the organization can’t follow-through on. If given the choice, always choose to deal directly with sponsors/recruits/allies.
If your priorities conflict with the will of your membership, always defer to them.
Keep your members as busy as they have offered to be. Leaders and/or keen volunteers will move on if they feel that their commitment and talent is going to waste, or not appreciated.
Tip: If you don’t have something pressing for which you need a leader or volunteer, ask them how they think they could best contribute. Encourage them to come up with ideas until they come up with one you agree would be helpful, then tell them to turn their idea into a project. Put them in charge of making it happen.
Meetings (Getting new recruits to attend, and to keep attending)
When you book a meeting, let them know as a group via the email addresses they provided and insist that they RSVP. When they don’t, send them an individualized follow-up email. Make sure they know that they will be/have been missed.
When they RSVP, write back with your cell number: Tell them to text you if they can’t make it. If they don’t show when they said that they would, follow-up – “I just wanted to check-in, make sure that everything’s alright”.
If they do show, get their cell phone numbers. From then on, do this same process for each meeting, but along with your final reminder about the meeting, send them a text as well, reminding them to let you know if you plan on not making it.
Event RSVPs
Make youth RSVP by email if they want to go to your event. Emphasize the importance of securing a spot, offer door prizes, run a contest tied to the RSVP list, etc.
Conversation: “Check-ins” have to be relevant, otherwise your emails will be ignored.
Important Because…
You walk away from the event with a list from which you can…
1.) Build Your Committee!
Etcetera’s first committee members were the friends and fellow cast members of a play that one girl brought to a meeting. Food for thought
2.) Increase Your Pool of Leaders
If you have a member in particular who comes to all the meetings and works hard – Promote them!
Governance
1. Map Your Organizational Structure
A blueprint for the organization you are building
Build towards sustainability (away from yourself)
Etcetera’s Map
Legitimacy and Relevance: ‘Direction from below’
Renewable Leadership: Mentoring & Training
Accountability: Everything the organization does can be traced back to a directive from, or approval by, either the Parent/Teacher Committee or the Youth Planning Committee. Minutes kept reflect this.
What’s Important:
Accountability: The arrows on the map show who the various roles are accountable to. Yellow arrows indicate key accountabilities. A yellow arrow pointing from one person/group to another person/group means the first person group is accountable to the other group. Blue arrows are secondary accountabilities. Notice: Accountability is weighted towards the bottom, not the top, and favors groups over individuals.
Committees: Power is concentrated at the committee level. A vote against that which concerns either committee within those committees, takes it off the agenda.
Youth Coordinator: the only individual privileged with the authority to make unilateral decisions (and here only after consulting one or both committees, as appropriate). The Director holds a veto, as a member of the broader BOD (within an umbrella Pride organization), but it is considered an abuse of this authority to exercise this right unless it is absolutely necessary and/or required by the BOD.
Leadership Development
Next slide…
Leadership Development: Structure provides for mentorship with a view to advancement. Arrows begin where promotion comes from, and point to the roles that individuals are promoted into. The path goes in this order:
The Youth Planning Committee is open to everyone.
Assistant Coordinators are identified and promoted by the Youth Coordinator (in consultation with the Chair) from the Youth Planning Committee.
An assistant coordinator becomes the Youth Coordinator if/when the existing coordinator moves on (ideally onto the BOD). An assistant is promoted on the recommendation of the departing Coordinator, in consultation with the Chair.
The only participant on this ladder that is no longer a target for further development within the organization’s mandate is the Chair. With love, they are encouraged to move beyond the organization within 6 mths to a year of their promotion into the role.
Blue Circles: Where Leadership Development strategies are focused.
Successful Leadership Development = Long-term Sustainability
Social media enhances the experience of being part of a network, and is a convenient tool for communication, but it’s uses are limited. They…
Help with re-engagement and solidarity building amongst existing, active members.
Allow you to predict with a degree of accuracy how well-attended your event/activity/initiative will be (attendance at your event will generally be about 30% of those who indicate on a Facebook event that they will definitely be there, and about 15% of those who say “maybe”.
Do not use social media as your primary organizing tool. In order of preference, your efforts should give preference as follows:
Speaking face-to-face (at events, activities, etc.)
Telephone (speaking or text)
Email
Social media
Exception: If you’ve spoken to someone face to face, it is most appropriate to follow-up with an email.
You are a facilitator, a resource and a mentor. If your youth say that they think a day at a petting zoo would make a great Pride event for youth, resist the temptation to argue. Think of yourself as chair of the youth committee. You don’t vote or express your opinion, you offer guidance. They are the experts
Delegate, delegate, delegate.
This includes requests for sponsorship, coordinating events with community partners (youth reps of those partners – see next slide), shopping for supplies, etc.
Consider a formal token of recognition (pin or something else) reserved for exceptional service to the organization. These are a way to recognize leadership potential and/or commitment when a promotion is ill advised or not possible.
Delegate tasks to your new recruits a.s.a.p., beginning with tasks that can easily be taken over in case they prove to be unreliable.
Whether you have these for the wider organization or not, working with youth requires that you set the standard when it comes to professionalism and accountability. Everything can and will happen (talk about first Prom – booze, missing kids, conflict outside venue...)
Youth organizations are always under more scrutiny, but as a Queer organization we are under even more.
Safety and Security – Never rely on a venue or community partner to cover your bases here. Arrange for your own security and do your own assessment of hazards. Have your own first aid kit and someone who is first aid certified. Respect fire codes, etc.
Content – Coarse language, violence, nudity and explicit sexuality (in film, or live performance) should be treated the way a parent would expect they be treated at a high school. When in doubt, put the question to your parent/teacher committee as well as to your youth committee. Goal is Consensus.
Parent Teacher Committee
Supportive parents and teachers are your most valuable resource when you are growing as an organization. Any major changes you want to make, run them past your committee. They will let you know what you have overlooked, they will suggest solutions to challenges, and their involvement will ease the concern of parents who are “on the fence” about letting their kids participate in your events.
Respect the concerns of parents and teachers and take them seriously. When we antagonize those responsible for the health and well-being of youth in our network, we are making the problem worse, not better.
Any adult your youth works with under the umbrella of your organization should only do so with another individual present. This adult should be police checked and known well to you. Preference should always be given to collaboration with other youth representatives of any given organization. (explain example).
Whether a particular youth identifies as GLBTQ or not (an awful lot of being young involves not being sure exactly what’s going on), a bully that has pegged you as ‘Gay’ or ‘Queer’ is often responding to cues that aren’t directly about sexuality – how they dress, the music they like, etc.
In the mainstream, ‘queerness’ is a much broader concept than the question of gender and sexual orientation.
It is a political question whether a Queer organization brings the wider movement backwards when they de-emphasize gender and sexual orientation. Regardless - Asking youth to be ‘out and proud’, making them feel like their commitment to your organization is less valuable for not doing so, is unethical when for many doing so means risking the loss of primary resources and valued alternative community involvement. These include Food, shelter, family, church affiliation, status at school with peers and faculty...
It’s worth noting that when we surveyed youth in our network from across the city who’d attended at least one of our events in the year previous, 30 percent of them identified themselves as “allies”. This does not include those who identified with the LGBTQ spectrum, but were not out to their friends and/or families.
