Protest against racism in European refugee policy, 2022 London. Photo: Alisdare Hickson
Create ads that move people and help win campaigns. Earn SMT’s Certificate in Facebook & Instagram Ads for Organizing.
12 Sessions May 17, 2022 through June 30, 2022
Around the world, movement organizations are using digital ads to find, engage, and activate their people – from unions finding organizing leads, to Indigenous organizers finding and engaging Native voters where voter file data was lacking, to local racial justice groups generating thousands of letters to pressure local elected officials while building their base.
This 12-session Certificate in Facebook & Instagram Ads for Organizing will advance your ability to use Facebook & Instagram ads to build power, or to more effectively manage a team member or vendor running ads. From selecting the right channel, to targeting the right audience, to landing pages and building an effective pipeline, you will learn how to move people, money, and narrative with ads.
This work is especially essential given the changes in recent months and years with Facebook and Instagram ads. Changes to targeting, conversion tracking, and political ads by Facebook, Apple, and others mean that most groups need to take a more sophisticated approach than simple “boosts” to avoid wasting money. Groups working with vendors who focus on private sector digital work, television, or mail need to re-evaluate their strategies given the changes and the latest research on what works in organizing.
The curriculum will focus on Facebook & Instagram ads, which are the most time- and cost-effective tool for most organizations. One of the twelve sessions will provide a brief overview of other online ad platforms and when to consider them.
This program is for you if:
- You are part of an issue organizing, electoral group, or union that is building power to win change
- You are in a communication, organizing, or fundraising role where online ads could support your work
- You want to grow your base, attract donors, pressure targets, or shape narrative via online ads
- You want to more effectively manage vendors or team members who run ads or bring the work in-house
- You have the organizational buy-in to design and launch a real ad campaign during the course of the certificate program; with at least $200 USD in spending
In-depth Training: What we’ll cover
The 12 sessions will cover ad campaigns from scratch for beginners, but also provide intermediate practitioners with strong examples of how to refine campaigns and integrate them better into organizing. Participants will have the opportunity to break out into small groups appropriate to their level during each of the 12 sessions.
This hands-on program will require a time commitment of 3 hours/week in-session and 1-3 hours/week outside of the sessions. You will engage with existing ad campaigns and case studies from movement groups. You’ll complete four assignments that will step-by-step build an ad campaign, getting real instructor feedback. This will include refining the ad, ad targeting, and call-to-action. Then, after launching the ad, you’ll work closely with an instructor to interpret the results and further refine the campaign.
Program requirements
- Attendance: Sessions will be recorded, but you must attend 9 of the 12 required sessions (including 3 of the 4 small group sessions) to receive credit. (Exceptions can be made for people in time zones which make it impossible to attend live.)
- 1-3 hours per week to complete assignments and prep work: to process the learning, to complete assignments for each session, and to prepare your organization’s accounts to run ad campaigns (if necessary).
- Access to run campaigns: you will create multiple ad campaigns, and run at least one in order to be able to edit and improve based on the results
- Budget for ad campaigns: budget of at least $200 (not included in session cost, paid directly to the ads platform). Then, you will refine the campaign based on initial results.
Earn a Certificate in Facebook & Instagram Ads for Organizing Requirements: Attend nine out of twelve sessions; complete three out of four assignments
Participate from around the globe
Sessions will be held Tuesdays and Thursdays at this time:
9-10:30 am PST (Mexico)
12-1:30 pm EST (New York)
5-6:30 pm UTC (London)
7-8:30 pm EET (Palestine)
8-9:30pm EAT (Kenya)
10-11:30 pm IST (Mumbai)
Presentation content will be recorded.
Social Movement Technologies is committed to supporting people power around the world. The core schedule will be on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the above time, but with 10 confirmed signups from another time zone, we will launch small group critiques at times that work better for other global regions such as Oceania or Asia.
Language and Hearing Accessibility
Instruction will be in English. Simultaneous interpretation in all 18 sessions can be provided at no additional cost if at least 10 registrants prefer that language. Slides will also be provided in the translated language.
All live sessions will be live captioned and all recordings will be captioned in English and any languages with a group of 10 or more users, at no additional cost. Additional languages must be arranged ahead of time.
Instructors
Scotty Brown. Scotty (they/them) is an artist, organizer, and community builder with roots in Philadelphia, living in Washington, DC. They have worked on the Digital Team at Color Of Change since 2018, building out digital ads and grassroots video content to amplify campaigns for Black liberation. They organize with Occupation Free DC for international abolition and an end to U.S. complicity in Palestinian oppression, and they build community solidarity through Ward 1 Mutual Aid Network and their artist/activist collective. They also are a founding member of DC’s only queer Yiddish burlesque troupe, The Shmutzik Shmates.
Kevin Pujanauski, SMT North America Movement Support Lead. Kevin (he/him) focuses on using digital tools to reach and organize with community members and voters, including texting, tech-enabled relational outreach, and online ads. Kevin has supported unions, issue organizing groups, and electoral groups on dozens of ad campaigns, connecting the organizations with tens of thousands of new supporters. Kevin’s background includes issue and electoral organizing at the local and state level, from leading digital on a successful City Council campaign and supporting digital efforts for multiple campaigns in Chicago and throughout Illinois fighting mass incarceration.
Additional instructors will be announced as the start date of the training approaches.
Cost
North America or Western Europe-based organizations and activists:
$900 Pricing for groups with budgets above $1M USD, anytime
$700 Early bird pricing for payment received by April 29, 2022, when the price goes up to $800, for groups with budgets under $1M USD
$600 Additional person from the same organization (same email domain)
$5000 Group Rate (up to 10 seats) – designed to help networks and funders make this program accessible to their communities.
If based outside of North America or Western Europe:
50% discount on regular price
$400 Outside of North America and Western Europe AND group has a budget of less than $1M/year USD
$2500 Group Rate (up to 10 seats) – designed to help networks and funders make this program accessible to their communities.
Note: Organizations paying for a mix of staff based in North America/Europe and other regions can pay based on where each staffer is based.
Payment is by credit card at the below form, which includes a 4% fee. Please reach out to [email protected] if you’d like an invoice for payment by bank transfer (no fee).
Note for all: separate from the registration fee, organizations must also budget for the participant to spend $200 in ads over the course of the program, paid directly to the ads platform.
If you are paying for someone else, please indicate their name and title in the form, not yours.
Testimonials
We’ve heard really good things from our grantee partners. SMT has a strong, grantee-focused way of working.We’re starting our third straight year providing grantee partners with Social Movement Technologies training and coaching…our grantees are in good hands.
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.
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 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.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.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.We have had a fantastic experience with SMT…they have been highly responsive to the needs of our grantees.
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 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 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!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 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 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 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!I strongly recommend SMT. Their strong organizing background, preparation and thoughtfulness made our strategy assessment with them enjoyable and really helpful.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!
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.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.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.The trainings are terrific–geared for every level of experience. And being rooted in social change movement, especially helpful to organizers.
