For BIPOC staff involved in campaigns
Are you a BIPOC social justice campaigner or staffer looking to deepen your leadership and responsibility in campaigns?

Photo credit: Gerry Lauzon, Flickr
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: 3.5 months, March – June 2024
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 10-week period (April – June 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 March and June 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
Staffing
Coordinator: Kenyatta Muzzanni
Kenyatta Muzzanni (she/they) lives at the intersection of organizing and the arts, having been a participant in social movements and a writer since they were young. As Director of Organizing for 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 played an instrumental role in the #LessIsMoreNY campaign, which resulted in the most transformative parole reform legislation in the country to date. A graduate of SMT’s intensive Digital Campaigning Certificate Program, Kenyatta is responsible for the BIPOC Organizers Fellowship and fundraising for SMT’s Africa movement activist training and coaching.
Instructors and mentors:
SMT’s regular team members, supplemented by additional experienced BIPOC online/offline campaigners
Eligibility
- Be 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 six 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
- Scholarship application: Oct 16, 2023 deadline for the best chance of a partial scholarship, sooner is better
- Application deadline: Dec 15, 2023
- Notifications of acceptance January 5, 2023
- Payment is required by January 15, 2023