For BIPOC staff involved in campaigns
Are you a BIPOC social justice campaigner or staffer looking to deepen your leadership and responsibility in campaigns?
Do you lead an organization that seeks to fill more senior campaign roles with BIPOC campaigners and want to lay the groundwork for existing staff members to fill these roles?
This fellowship is designed to support BIPOC staffers to take on greater responsibility in strategy development, management, and implementation of integrated online/offline campaigns. Ideal candidates for this fellowship can fill a range of roles in movement work: communications, field, organizing, fundraising, volunteer leadership, and more. The fellowship supports participants to become next-level online/offline campaign staff combining time-tested organizing with the latest tools, tactics, and skills, including managerial skills.
Duration: 3 months, April 2 – July 2
Location: Entirely online
Cost: $3500 per person (Scholarship assistance is available based on funds raised. We will work hard with each accepted candidate and their organization to make it possible for them to attend. Apply as early as possible if you think you will need scholarship aid.)
Program outline
- Achieve Advanced Certification in SMT’s Digital Campaigning Certificate Program.
- Time commitment: 3-hour class once a week, plus 2-3 hours per week to complete assignments over this 13-week period (April 2- July 2 2024). Topics cover:
- Organizing strategy and tactics connecting online and offline power, including direct action tactics, and building an effective activist pipeline
- Social media, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, live streaming, building online communities, and online ads
- Outreach tools, including email, WhatsApp, and mobile messaging
- Making content that drives action via personal & public narrative, graphic design, and video
- Systems and infrastructure to run an effective campaign, including metrics, website, email, and CRM/member database/action tools
- Periodic support meetings with your peer buddy, and with your mentor
- Special fellowship sessions and assignments held in April and late June/July will include 3-4 of the following (and other possible topics) based on interest:
- Online/Offline Campaign strategy, including in coalitions
- Ad campaign strategy and practice
- Effective hiring and supervision practices, with special emphasis on hiring and supervising digital staff
- Campaign and team management, with special emphasis on tool options and team implementation best practices, as well as managing up and laterally
- Building cohesiveness among departments such as comms, field/organizing, digital, development and executive leadership
- Managing contractors to get their best work
- Reading and discussion of important recent books on organizing
- Each Fellow will:
- develop and lead a training on a core topic, and lead a coaching session to share a specific skill, with other participants as trainees
- practice giving and getting feedback in these sessions
- make a self-development plan with next steps
Mentors
I
sel Cuapio is an experienced radio and video journalist, communications expert, and community organizer skilled in storytelling, radio broadcasting, and organizing digital Campaigns. Isel joined the California Native Vote Project (CNVP) in 2020 to support and advance the electoral justice work to increase Native political power in California. She led campaign efforts to ensure a complete and fair count in American Indian and Alaska Native communities across the country when The U.S. Census Bureau shortened the count deadline. She also served as a digital expert across multiple social justice organizations in Indian Country. Isel has led and organized paid and volunteer phone and text bank programs to build digital capacity in Native communities in California. When the Native Power Political Action Committee (PAC) launched in 2020, Isel ran an Independent Expenditure (IE) program in partnership with the Working Families Party for the progressive candidate, Jackie Fielder, who ran for State Senate.
For the past 2 years, Isel has led CNVP’s integrated voter engagement (IVE) strategy to ensure Native and Indigenous communities in California are exercising and strengthening their Native political power. More recently, she is working with CA Native Vote Project to sharpen their narrative strategy now that the organization has doubled up on staff and campaign efforts around education, decarceration efforts, housing, digital equity, and more. In addition, she works as a communications organizer with Keep LA Housed Coalition, a coalition of tenants, tenant rights advocates, public interest lawyers, and community based organizations with the goal of eliminating rent debt, evictions, and other harmful consequences of rent debt accrued during the COVID-19 pandemic in the city and county of Los Angeles. She earned the DCCP certificate with SMT in 2021. During her spare time, Isel enjoys writing poetry, crafting, and organizes mutual aid spaces in their community.
Micky Jordan is a Black Southern, transmasculine, and queer graphic designer born in Florida but currently lives in Durham, NC. Micky believes that art can open the door to make liberation in our lifetime a reality. Good identity design & storytelling should showcase the values of the organization, give the audience a chance to see themselves, shift culture, and move the base into action. He has spent over ten years developing and growing his graphic design and communications skills with organizations and campaigns that are intersectional and justice-oriented: through his current role as a Graphic Designer at National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), his 7-year relationship with Southerners on New Ground (SONG) from member to Organizing Fellow to Communications Director; as the graphic designer for Nicole Townsend’s Asheville City Council run; and as a Staff Partner and instructor for Social Movement Technologies (SMT)’s Graphic Design Apprenticeship for Organizers 2019 – 2023. In his free time, he hosts a podcast called Taking TV Too Seriously with his cohost Michelle, board games, and hanging out with his friends and dog, Jolene.
LaNoral Thomas, President of SEIU Virginia 512, is the daughter of a retired labor leader who along with her mom taught her the importance of hardwork, integrity, and leading with love. By experiencing the union difference throughout her childhood, she developed a respect for labor unions and the need for working people to have a seat at the table. Ensuring all families have the the opportunity to live with dignity and the ability to build generational wealth continues to drive her.
LaNoral has worked for SEIU for 21 years, joining the union as an Organizer in Training (OIT) in 2003. She has worked on campaigns in all three divisions, from coast to coast, but her passion is fighting in the South where she was born and raised. She has developed her skills through several roles from OIT to Deputy Director. From organizing worksite actions, to bargaining contracts, and marching with workers through the nation’s capital, LaNoral has led numerous mobilizations while organizing thousands of members and using every opportunity to elevate members and develop staff.
She served as the first Organizing Director of SEIU Virginia 512 helping them become a political powerhouse and a key component of the shift of Virginia to a battleground state in the last fifteen years. While working as the Deputy Director of the Healthcare Division of SEIU she galvanized long term care workers during the pandemic and launched a national action team of home care and nursing home union and not yet union workers across the country. These workers successfully lobbied and won personal protective equipment (PPE), hazard pay, and led the fight to save lives daily while risking their safety to protect others. She was elected as President of SEIU Virginia 512 in September 2023. Virginia 512 is a union of city and county employees in Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince William, Richmond, and home care providers across the Commonwealth.
She served as a board member for the Virginia Civic Engagement Table and The Center for Advancing Racial Equity and Job Quality in Long-Term Care. She is a member of Bunton CME Church, where she is the Chair of the Christian Education Department. Her passion for social, economic, and racial justice is fueled by her desire to create an environment for her children to thrive safely and equitably. She received her BA from Albany State University, a HBCU in Southwest Georgia.
Deivid Rojas is an organizer, storyteller, communicator, and visual artist with 10+ years of experience supporting and building organizing campaigns that tightly intertwined field organizing, communications, and digital, including over six years as the Communications Director at Fight For 15 Chicago, where he led the communications work for hundreds of actions, strikes, and protests. He developed and coached dozens of workers to become effective campaign spokespeople and landed national stories with national and international press, created content shared thousands of times online, and produced iconic protest visuals. Deivid has also led communications and digital organizing with SEIU National Fast Food Workers Unions, SEIU Local 73, and UFCW 881. As a queer man from Colombia, he is fluent in Spanish and has deep experience working with groups focusing on labor, Latine, racial justice, Black/Brown solidarity, and LGBTQIA+ issues. At SMT, Deivid is a senior coach.
Daniel Carrillo is the Forest Campaigns Director at Rainforest Action Network where they lead a global team in campaigns against multinational corporations responsible for deforestation and human rights violations. They grew up in Los Angeles in a large mixed-status Mexican family. He got their start as a youth organizing against anti-immigrant Prop 187 and successfully defeating a proposed power plant in their neighborhood in Southeast Los Angeles. Daniel has over 20 years of experience organizing and campaigning in the social justice movement. They won corporate campaigns and successfully negotiated contracts at SEIU, AFSCME, and CWA in the US and the independent unions in Mexico. Daniel also co-founded the Prison Divestment Campaign which successfully pressured union pensions, universities, and cities to divest over $6 billion from the prison industry. Daniel co-founded Stop LAPD Spying, the New York Worker Center Federation, and Freedom Cities. Recently, Daniel was a Fellow at the Cornell University Worker Institute.
Irene Rojas-Carroll has over a decade of experience in policy advocacy, grassroots campaigning, and multi-issue electoral organizing. As Bay Rising’s communications director, she runs communications and digital organizing skill-building and mentorship programs as well as narrative work for the regional alliance.
Irene has led communications for multiple successful candidate campaigns, including campaigns facing over half a million dollars in opposition spending. She helped the Oakland Fair Elections Initiative win with over 70% of the vote and establish the second democracy dollars program in the country. Irene has also run ad campaigns with over 1 million impressions in Spanish, Cantonese, and English, earned story placements at outlets including the Guardian and the SF Chronicle, and served as Bay Rising’s interim ED. Irene is a graduate of SMT’s Digital Campaigning Certificate Program, and has guided cohorts of coalition member staffers through the program. Bay Rising is an ongoing coaching partner with SMT.
Kenyatta Muzzanni Robles lives at the intersection of organizing and the arts, having been a participant in social movements and a writer since they were young. While working at the Katal Center for Equity, Health and Justice, they waged campaigns in New York and Connecticut against mass incarceration and for justice in the legal system, developing and implementing campaign strategy and training organizers. Kenyatta had an instrumental role in the #LessIsMoreNY campaign, which resulted in the most transformative parole reform legislation in the country to date. Kenyatta has a longstanding history with SMT, and is a graduate of the intensive Digital Campaigning Certificate Program.
Nancy Treviño is a community organizer, trainer, and campaigner from Miami, FL. She is the Director of Power at Presente.org. Prior to her role at Presente.org, Nancy worked alongside hundreds of grassroots community organizations across the U.S., collaborated and campaigned with national and international human rights organizations, and continues providing strategic organizing, digital, and communications support to advance social justice movements. She has trained hundreds of activists across the country, won multiple local and national human rights campaigns, and is a contributor to the book, “Turnout! Mobilizing Voters in an Emergency.”
Yaissy Solis García is a campaigner, organizer and graphic artist based in rural Southwest Florida. She is the Digital Organizer for Economic Justice campaigns at the Center for Popular Democracy. Her organizing roots began in the farmworker justice movement, where she spent a decade co-directing the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Campaign for Fair Food. At CIW, she played a key role in the organizing and communications strategy of the national Wendy’s Boycott, including successfully organizing students to sever campus licensing agreements with Wendy’s. She has led grassroots organizing for mass direct actions of up to 3,000 people, and fundraising efforts raising up to $170,000 per campaign and expanding recurring donor bases. At SMT, Yaissy coordinates the BIPOC Organizers Fellowship.
Staffing
Coordinator: Yaissy Solis García, [email protected]
Instructors:
SMT’s regular team members, supplemented by additional experienced BIPOC online/offline campaigners
Eligibility
- Identify as a BIPOC campaigner (involved in campaigns regardless of your title)
- Be able to commit to an average of 5-6 hours/week to sessions and assignment completion over the three months
- You should have a significant role in a campaign that involves some sort of offline action (direct actions, electoral work, events, etc.) It does not have to be your full-time work. You do need to be able to implement what you’re learning and share from your experience in real campaigns.
- You may be based anywhere in the world. However, you must be available for live sessions, which will be held within this time block: 11 am – 2 pm (EST).
- This program is not for consultancies or agencies. It is for staff of NGOs/non-profits. You may also be an unpaid officer of an organization, who works on campaigns extensively.
Application Process
- We are no longer accepting applications.
Testimonials
Super helpful process with our staff and leaders to ID new tools we can use to reach our target folks.
Taking this course really transformed my organizing skills to be more effective. SMT supported our coalition so we could play a more powerful role in advocating for our work and priorities with funders and elected officials. They facilitated a process to take a loose group of collaborators across a large geography and worked with us to build a cohesive understanding of shared values and how we could present ourselves.This was a fantastic training experience and I learned a lot about emerging technology with lots of support!
The Design Apprenticeship course helped me become bolder in my design choices. I became confident enough to push for a more systemic approach to design in the team, developing templates and guiding other creative colleagues. This program was pivotal in my development as a designer!The digital training was expertly executed and helped me develop new ideas and best practice to implement in our campaign.SMT’s knowledge of the organizational use of different CRMs and migration between them was very helpful.Love it!” (mobile optimization of TheStand.org)We have had a fantastic experience with SMT…they have been highly responsive to the needs of our grantees.The coaching has been fantastic. Staff has extensive understanding of the online landscape and strategy…jumped right into working with our members too, personable and supportive…great to work with someone who felt like a comrade and not just another non-profit consultant. I was amazed at SMT’s ability to connect us with experts or representatives of different online tools.Our strategy sessions with SMT have really energized our vision for what we need to do…In 90 minutes, we were excited and encouraged about how we could better our media and communications work.This program greatly helped integrate our thinking on organizing and digital campaigning. I wish all our organizers and digital staff could undergo this training.
Working with SMT was easy and collaborative. The training helped our Greenpeace Southeast Asia team get new insights into campaign best practices across the globe.I strongly recommend SMT. Their strong organizing background, preparation and thoughtfulness made our strategy assessment with them enjoyable and really helpful.For anyone who wants to dive into the world of digital communications, this is the training for you!I was able to immediately use the tools I learned and apply them to our organization. The program was intense, but I loved every minute of it and learned more than expected.I found a lot of value in this Certificate Program that I use in my everyday work: from using social media effectively; significantly growing accounts and activating people online, pressuring targets in campaigns, and running Twitterstorms. Even when using other tools, I still apply the principles I learned!I would recommend SMT to anyone looking to be more effective online. We are definitely going to experiment with the directions SMT gave us in our strategy session. Very valuable to have consulting from organizers who are keeping up with all the latest.I had an amazing time. I am already applying the valuable content in my organization.The DCCP program enhanced my skills and provided valuable support. I've applied these skills in my job and community work. Well-designed and presented program!This is great for C3's to understand what they SHOULD be doing during elections. I think there is much more space for C3s to take the GOTV initiative.The program offered interesting case studies, expanded my digital campaigning knowledge, introduced new organizing tools and strategies, and enabled connections with professionals in the progressive space.The webinars were very thorough, and the SMT team seems very responsive, broadly knowledgeable, and intuitive. The “WhichCRM?” questionnaire was helpful when I filled it out with my team. It helped us think about the aspects of a CRM we were looking for.I felt supported by a community of hundreds throughout my learning journey.SMT was like a breath of fresh air in its approach to empowering small nonprofit organizing efforts. With not much funding, we were able to connect SMT to a few organizations in our network to provide analysis, coaching and hands on technical support. Here at Universal Health Care Foundation of CT, SMT gave us strategic help to up our game with our online organizing and engagement…particularly helpful in guiding us to a more savvy, productive use of social media.Great coach for executing our group's livestream plan! Often we have little time to do comprehensive analysis or comparison of newer technologies, so it's important to consult with those with their hands on the tools, and have seasoned coaches in your corner who can help you execute plans.
Super useful and practical strategy session. Great to learn what we can do to our website and Facebook page to make them better tools, described in a way I can explain to my board.
This program has been a great experience for me personally and for my work. With the few campaigns going under way I’m excited to show my colleagues what I have learned from SMT!
Last year, we worked with SMT on a census campaign with Native Voice Network, and we got so much direct campaign support, one-on-one coaching. I spent a lot of time doing just one-on-one coaching support with ads. after that I felt super empowered and fearless to just navigate all these different tools in the universe. So it was a really great and helpful experience for us.
El DCCP es un programa súper completo que cubre casi todos los aspectos de las campañas digitales y el activismo digital. Durante el año que pasé en el programa, aprendí a usar muchas herramientas y tácticas nuevas así como también mejorar en las que ya estaba usando. Y he estado aplicando felizmente lo que aprendí en mi trabajo de campaña con Amnistía.
Learned invaluable skills, gained practical knowledge, and connected with inspiring professionals.SMT helped us build an integrated, strategic approach to a union contract campaign. SMT’s work is sophisticated and flexible–their support was invaluable.SMT's coaching was incredibly supportive, encouraging and accessible. SMT had a huge impact on evolving La Semilla's storytelling program. Through SMT coaching, we diversified our digital communications. Having SMT as a source of resources and as a thought partner has been incredibly impactful to our work.SMT is an amazing resource for starting digital organizing and communications and maintaining a program that engages members and moves them to action. There are a bunch of free and super reasonably priced webinars available so you can jump right in and focus on what you need to improve.The webinars have just been stellar. I've learned so much, especially from the Top Tools and Tactics to bump up your organizing game. I used the templates and resources to set up an editorial calendar and to track stats for our new social media channels. It was very easy to take what was presented in the training and apply it to my union immediately.This program is very comprehensive and provides tons of tools and resources that have strengthened my skillset in digital organizing. This is a great program that I highly recommend.Highly recommend it for individuals in civic organizations looking to enhance their technological campaigning skills!Great ability to eloquently name a few top communications gaps that we could easily fix and increase our impact. The summary document is highly valuable; we will refer to it in our future planning!I appreciated connecting with passionate changemakers across the U.S. to discuss effective digital campaigning strategies.SMT was really responsive to my questions and needs, and to customizing a training that met those needs. We had a collaborative relationship of understanding each other's needs and expertise, agreeing on outcomes and approach, and developing content.
I really liked the A.I. custom training session, especially the parts tailored to our workstream and with examples pulled from our staff. It really helped to situate the tools in our work and open our team's minds to the possibilities.SMT has worked with us to develop and implement a broad and integrated social media strategy. They helped our leadership understand the importance of such a strategy and taught our activists the basic skills to execute it. From website maintenance to targeted twitter campaigns, they are there when you need them and they understand that it is all about movement building.Incredibly knowledgeable…Weekly coaching has been a great experience. Keeps us on track. Staff is flexible, creative."I learned so much about different labour movement actions. The digital part was huge, along with actually just understanding the range of tools that are available to organizers. I knew about petitions, about actions in the street, but seeing how differently they could be appleid in so many unique contexts was really exciting. I feel like I got an entire history of the labour movement.
SMT helped GAIA use LinkedIn to reach a key constituency we were having trouble reaching - thousands of people who play a specific role in the waste management industry. We got responses from key players.SMT’s training on using WhatsApp to activate our bases helped us activate more leaders by creating conversational WhatsApp groups for members and assigning different leadership roles to volunteers.SMT taught our staff and leaders to use Twitter strategically, understand the intricacies of Facebook for organizing…They respond quickly, have real world organizing experience, do really solid webinars that leaders and staff can engage with.I learnt a lot on grassroots movements, digital campaigns and communications in times of state intrusion or threats.The program allowed me to deep dive into specific campaign strategies, learning from diverse examples of what worked and what could be improved.SMT is the only training I know of that speaks our language of activism and uses the tools we use everyday in the field. They are a go-to resource to help raise the bar for communications in the labor movement.We hired SMT to lead a discussion about online strategy with some of our union’s staff. It re-kindled my desire and commitment to using emerging technologies in my organizing!Two things I valued most about the program were lifelong access to the course materials and case study walkthroughs from some of the most compelling organizers and organizing collectives we have in the field right now. Our coach was an everyday reminder of what we needed to do. He checked in and followed up on us. It really helped us activate Twitter in our campaigns and tighten up digital security. We moved from just having a Twitter handle to building on a hashtag that saw a jailed human rights activist released from prison.SMT developed a custom training for our youth climate fellows from around the world. It was a holistic training on creating campaigns from strategy to implementation and building our activist base. We appreciated SMT’s attention to detail around language and inclusion and always thinking about power building.The course provided invaluable tools and strategies, real-world case studies from different cultural contexts, and a supportive learning environment that encouraged interaction and peer learning.
Our staff took a lot of SMT courses – including the intensive Digital Campaigning Certificate Program. It helped us take our digital campaigning and collectivizing actions to the next level! We used various tools to increase our follower base and successfully target authorities to take action at the village and municipal levels in India.
SMT coaching enabled us to expand our presence within human rights spaces in Kenya beyond an LGBTIQ audience. It helped us use Twitter to connect with allies in the environmental justice and land rights movements. It was amazing to have someone to work with who knows our work and give us templates just when we needed them.
I implemented lessons on personal narrative, public narrative and emails directly into my campaign, so this was an instant gratification. I loved learning from the other Digital Campaigning Certificate Program participants who came from around the world, working on different topics.This program helped us harness effective tools and tactics that are aligned with our movement's needs and organizational values.SMT is a great resource if you’re looking to improve your organization’s social media presence and strategy.The SMT trainings I’ve taken have helped us mobilize and deepen engagement in our communities. Through Twitterstorms, phone banking, and other tactics that I learned through SMT’s trainings, we succeeded in our call to #ExtendtheReg for a million young people who would otherwise be disenfranchised by anti-poor COVID policies.
Recomendamos totalmente a las organizaciones de América Latina que se sumen a los cursos de SMT para mejorar y desarrollar su activismo digital. Las herramientas y conocimientos que adquirimos a travez de SMT fueron utiles para lanzar Fondo Defensores. Todo lo que hemos aprendido lo hemos podido implementar para el surgimiento de nuestra organización y para comunicar nuestro mensaje.
The coaching sessions provide practical tools for making our social media move from passive clicktivism to actually doing something.The program was an eye-opener and better positioned me as a Communications Officer. I learned about digital mobilizing, online community building, and more.This program was pivotal in my early organizing career, providing a strong foundation for recognizing technology's power in social movements. It equipped me with tools to create effective systems for our organization and broader membership base.The assignments provided a better understanding of how the nuts and bolts of digital organizing fit together.Design firms told us our current site couldn’t be mobile optimized, but SMT did it cleanly and affordably. The site looks great and SMT was easy to work with and addressed any concerns we had.This training provided invaluable clarity and direction for my digital organizing work, empowering my team to work more effectively.The program was an incredible journey of meaningful learning and connections with amazing advocates nationwide.The program made me think holistically about offline and online impacts.I view organizing in a whole new light. Everybody should have the opportunity to go through this experience, and get these tools, and start organizing.I received input on how to align field and digital work which is directly connected to the advocacy research that we are doing.
SMT's training helped me use my journalistic skills effectively to highlight people's struggles and create change. Using Twitter more effectively, we supported Syria's refugee camp hospital to get more media attention and raise funds to respond to the hospital's needs as well as build visibility on the issues affecting refugees.SMT helped us craft an effective public narrative for our campaign to get a mine closed. SMT helped us finalize a campaign strategy and come up with an effective plan to raise visibility and engage the public. Our campaign led to a pause in the mining. We will keep fighting!I found this course inspiring, especially the strategies part. Learning from diverse students with different backgrounds was enriching."=Our staff have taken SMT’s excellent trainings over the past five years. Mastering the strategic use of digital tools is essential to advance social change online. SMT’s offerings are a much-needed and unique resource. And they are responsive and committed to meeting the needs of participants. We’re thrilled to partner on the new Global South track of their Digital Campaigning Certificate program, which is a need that we expressed and they acted on promptly. Thank you SMT!
The program offers excellent support, knowledge, and peer collaboration for learning about organizing and campaigning.SMT helped us create a social media presence to expand our cannabis worker organizing campaign. Our organizers have enhanced their social media capabilities. We have succeeded beyond our expectations. Working with SMT has been a great experience. They really understand organizing and communications."Skye's growth in confidence and strategic acumen through the SMT program has been a huge boost for our organization. She's also been able to bring tools, trainings, and ideas back to our entire staff team, making us more effective and responsive.""I have found the webinars and trainings by SMT to be timely, relevant and incredibly useful in my work.
I work often at the intersection of climate and labour and have been thrilled to see the trainings you organize have met my needs in advancing my work."
I found the email coaching course to be extremely helpful. I thoroughly enjoyed that this exercise involved everyone working from the same assignment. It made the feedback that much more helpful. I think this has been one of the best SMT sessions that I've taken.This program was very useful for understanding the digital aspects of organizing workers and incorporating them into a comprehensive campaign toolkit.SMT has been a great partner to co-design and launch a set of offerings that meet the growing digital and remote needs of the organizations we support, including bilingual access for our Spanish-speaking partners. The team is relatable, attentive and knowledgeable and their use of case studies helps to make complex information accessible!We’re starting our third straight year providing grantee partners with Social Movement Technologies training and coaching…our grantees are in good hands.This program has boosted my confidence in organizing and sustaining digital campaigns.The benefits to us of regular coaching sessions were immediate.The Digital Campaigning Certificate Program was immensely helpful, and I continue to apply its learnings in my daily communications and strategizing.
The program gave my team the tools and time to strategise how our grassroots migrant organising translates to a digital context. I picked up tools like source codes, which then enabled us to see that more people were registering from Instagram than through any other platform and caused us to adapt our strategy. We also became SMT an Outreach Partner to enable our network to benefit from trainings at lower pricesWe hired SMT to help with some ad campaigns. Folks are professional, experienced, and communicative. Knowing what was happening at different stages helped me understand what was going on in our programs. I was never embarrassed to ask questions. The SMT staffer explained everything that would happen, why he was doing something, how he'd accomplish it, which was great. It made me feel like we were working collaboratively. SMT also provides a lot of great trainings to the progressive community to equip people and organizations to do this work on their own.
I took the workers organizing in the digital age training. We really need this kind of training in Finland, which people in the US have had access to for some years. The training was effective to start organizing for instance on Twitter.[The Digital Campaigning Certificate Program] is a wonderful course with a great amount of information to get you started on understanding how digital can work for your own organization.The online coaching sessions have been really good for helping us make decisions about what makes the most sense for us to incorporate…and what we can let go.Our experience to date has been wonderful, helping us make the migration from one CRM to another as painless as possible…a life saver, terrific. Quick to respond, SMT staff provide clear explanations that avoid all the techno-garble.For change-makers looking to harness people power for good. Expert presenters and experience sharing with classmates enhanced my knowledge and provided valuable, immediately applicable skills.I'm still digesting the valuable information from this training and applying it to my work. Meeting activists worldwide and learning about important campaigns was inspiring.SMT's expertise in social media, ads training, and particularly their personalized coaching, has been invaluable for navigating the unique challenges of the non-profit sector. SMT's guidance has empowered us to adopt new technologies and strategies, leading to our most successful social media ads campaign to date. Their support is a game-changer for organizations stepping into unfamiliar digital territories.It was powerful hearing directly from groups across the country using these powerful tools to win campaigns and create real change.The one-on-one sessions have been invaluable given the expertise of everyone on the SMT team.
Great information on how to make emails more impactful and spur action. Great to get direct feedback on a sample email.Each session was well-facilitated, skillfully blended presentation, discussion, and practical exercises, allowing me to immediately apply techniques to my work.SMT helped us launch our first petition campaign…great experience, ended up with vastly higher profile for our work.
The Social Movement Technologies Digital Campaigner Certificate is an excellent opportunity for me to meet digital organizers from across the country who are doing important work fighting for social justice on digital platforms. Often times, we are isolated in our work whether it be regionally or by issue, but through this program I've learned so much about all the cool ways other organizers are engaging and building movements. I've also been able to refresh my own knowledge about digital campaigning and have learned about a ton of new technology, software, and platforms that can be used for positive social change. Thank you SMT team!Trainings run by SMT are solid, accessible and worth checking out.
Having access to experts through the certificate program was amazing. The course is so practical. I set up google ads for the first time and created our digital security policy and implementation plan. Our whole team uses the campaign strategy template now. Now we know how to improve our email deliverability and started a texting program.The Digital Campaigning Certificate Program is a great course to get to know all the different aspects of digital campaigning. What I like most about it is the consistent focus on building power.SMT helped us choose an appropriate database for our organization. Its focused training sessions are valuable tools that have helped us further a conversation with our grassroots leaders about strategically building a more powerful, goal-oriented organization. It helped me better understand, through the experience of like-minded organizers, how to use accessible digital organizing tools to support the efforts on the ground.I initially thought this program was centered around communications, but it offered so much more. It provided an inside perspective on organizing work and how communications integrates with it.The trainings are terrific–geared for every level of experience. And being rooted in social change movement, especially helpful to organizers.I got a LOT out of it...the idea that comms can be used not just to “raise the visibility” of my organization, but to build power -- to move people, engage them, get them to do something concrete to push our social justice work forward. The strategies and tools shared were super helpful, and have already had measurable impact. Staff is fantastic - knowledgeable, responsive, thoughtful, collaborative.SMT’s staff is friendly, flexible, competent, creative…Efficiently implemented cutting-edge strategies and designed great-looking materials to communicate our message to our members. I’ll come back to SMT in a heartbeat.All of SMT training is packed and powerful![Story-Based Strategy] was awesome. It was sort of a refresher and a reset for me as an organizer and a social worker. I took a great deal of notes.
I wish SMT had existed when I started organizing in 2010! I learned many of these skills on the fly, often through trial and error. Overall it is really helpful to learn about all of the new tools which exist, especially ones that non-profits can use for low or no cost. The presentation did a great job of outlining best practices for many different scenarios.
SMT helped us think through what type of CRM we need and choose a texting platform to reach our base. SMT’s coaching has been instrumental in helping us develop a social media strategy that communicates our message through the voice of the young people involved in our organization. I'm grateful for the opportunity to expand my organizing knowledge with SMT. It's sparked creativity, and I'm excited to put new ideas into action.I want to express my continuing and deep appreciation for SMT’s staff. We’ve made great strides and SMT has been catalytic…Among other things–fast, smart, patient, thorough, skillful handling of the website makeover. You guys pulled it off quickly and affordably.[SMT's WhichCRM tool] helped me make a side by side comparison without having to spend hours sifting through demos and websites on my own. Invaluable!We worked with SMT to get tech support on our virtual townhall event. It was helpful getting advice from an expert on how to prepare for the livestream, and how to best make it smooth. It was a big lift off our shoulders being able to rely on someone who has experience doing it.
The program offered interesting case studies, expanded my digital campaigning knowledge, introduced new organizing tools and strategies, and enabled connections with professionals in the progressive space.Without SMT we would not have been able to move our organizing from the field to the digital arena during COVID. They helped us set up systems, coached and trained our folks, helped us troubleshoot and launch digital outreach efforts all in crucial campaign moments. Can’t speak highly enough about what their help meant!We’ve heard really good things from our grantee partners. SMT has a strong, grantee-focused way of working.
