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Social Movement Technologies
Sign up for SMT’s Funder Newsletter which goes out quarterly.
Join us for the annual Funder Briefing on February 8, 2024.
We’re glad to talk with you about your foundation or grantee partners’ needs. For more information, or to set up a time to discuss, email us at info at socialmovementtechnologies.org. The best starting point is to watch the info session recording below which details a range of ways SMT is partnering with funders.
In the present moment, organizing groups urgently need to expand their online/offline organizing capacity. Some have already incorporated digital tools and tactics into their work, while others must now work quickly to catch up. Groups are either going to adapt or be sidelined. More than an adaptation to a temporary change, this is part of an ongoing shift demanding new ways of organizing, and new ways of managing teams.
In response, many funders are finding it cost-effective to sponsor a cohort of grantee partners to ramp up their campaigning. SMT has a deep library of resources, training, and coaching available to groups and a proven model for bringing it to funder-supported cohorts. Funders are sponsoring grantees with support for:
SMT is working or has worked under contract with the following foundations:
Many more have sponsored groups of grantees to attend SMT trainings.
SMT has become a major source of online/offline campaign training for progressive movements. Founded 10 years ago, SMT has trained over seven thousand staff members from 4,900+ groups. During the week of March 23, 2020, SMT held a series of two webinars on the transition to remote teams and organizing in this moment – attended by the capacity limit of 1000 attendees.
SMT’s intensive digital campaign training has become a key go-to for digital training for staff, with over 1000 alums. Over 70 organizing networks are “Outreach Partners,” helping spread the word about SMT trainings. Major groups have sent 15-80 staffers to SMT intensive training including for example Amnesty International, Greenpeace, 350.or, and ActionAid, and in the U.S.: Center for Popular Democracy, People’s Action, Jobs with Justice, State Voices, Color of Change, SEIU, UNITE HERE, and many others.
The latest funder briefings were held in January 2023. They included an overview and testimonials from SMT funder partners, groups that have received coaching and campaign implementation support from SMT, and participants in SMT trainings. Watch the overview for funders of the Americas (23 min). Watch the overview for funders of social change work in Africa, Asia, Europe and MENA (18 min).
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!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 strongly recommend SMT. Their strong organizing background, preparation and thoughtfulness made our strategy assessment with them enjoyable and really helpful.
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.
- Iggi Ibarrola, Regional Learning and Development Manager, Greenpeace Southeast Asia
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!
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 pricesSMT'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 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.
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.We’ve heard really good things from our grantee partners. SMT has a strong, grantee-focused way of working.
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 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.
- Justine Balane, Chairperson, Akbayan Youth, Philippines
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.
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.
- Ruchi Kashyuap, Executive Trustee, Atmashakti Trust, India
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.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!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.
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.We’re starting our third straight year providing grantee partners with Social Movement Technologies training and coaching…our grantees are in good hands.The trainings are terrific–geared for every level of experience. And being rooted in social change movement, especially helpful to organizers.We have had a fantastic experience with SMT…they have been highly responsive to the needs of our grantees.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!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.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.
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.
- Louise Ward, State Director, Animal Justice Party, Australia
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.
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