The document summarizes lessons learned from building a custom community organizing platform called Climate Networks. It aimed to provide local climate groups tools to recruit, post events and support offline work. However, the project faced challenges including lack of internal alignment, not consulting external users, and launching before the technology was ready with missing features. Key lessons were to listen to audiences, have a realistic vision with buy-in, partner with good technologists, develop essential features first, test thoroughly, and budget for marketing and future development.

1. #FAIL Offline-to-Online-to-Offline: Lessons Learned in Building a Custom Community Platform

3. CLIMATE NETWORKS Started as part of 1Sky’s ambitious Climate Precinct Captain program with the goal of putting a grassroots activist in every voting precinct (aka election districts) in the nation (300,000) Think MYBO on steroids Evolved into working four allied grassroots campaigns on a multi-group platform to share groups, users and events.

4. GOALS Provide local groups and organizers with the tools to recruit new people, post events, host discussions, and support their offline work and do their climate movement building. Create political pressure on legislators by mapping and documenting the climate movement. Give climate campaign partners a custom-branded platform for community organizing via their own websites.

6. WHERE IT WENT WRONG Internal – Not everyone was on the same page. Project leaders came and went, quickly changed from “ let ’ s get started ” to “ what ’ s going on here? ” External – The project started with a focus on internal goals; external audiences and intended users were not consulted. Big question we didn’t ask, “What do organizers/audiences want and need to succeed?”

7. WHERE IT WENT WRONG Technology – Not ready for prime time. Partners also began changing feature requests towards launch—always a bad way to watch a project spin out of control. Development – Many of the features key to the original Climate Network vision weren’t there at launch. Played catch-up trying to integrate post-launch. Deployment – It was typical problem of, “Build it and they will come.” No marketing/promotion.

9. DO-OVER! Listen to your audience Be visionary, but be realistic Get internal buy-in Partner with good technologists Develop most essential features first Make it look good Test everything Budget for outreach and marketing Budget for future development

10. For the full white paper or questions: Email: [email_address] Twitter: @garthmoore Online on Frogloop: http://www.frogloop.com/care2blog/author/garthteam