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Social Movement Technologies
Digital Campaigning Certificate Program – 10-week training for the Americas: April 10 – June 12, 2024

See program for Asia, Africa, Europe, MENA

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Do you want to ramp up your use of online & offline tools on ambitious campaigns given limited time and resources? Want to make sure you’re not missing out on new developments in digital tools & tactics to support your work? Looking for a community of peers working through the same challenges and opportunities?

Program Overview

This digital organizing training is for you if you:

  • are part of an issue organizing or electoral group, or a union, that is building power to win change
  • are in a communications, organizing, fundraising, or leadership role 
  • want to grow your base, attract donors, run your organization more effectively, pressure targets, activate your supporters, and shape narratives
  • have an organizational commitment to set aside needed time blocks for this program 

In-depth training: What we’ll cover

This program covers all of the digital campaigning essentials. It includes 20 sessions over 10 weeks, plus additional time for office hours and assignments. Topics include:

  • Organizing strategy and tactics connecting online and offline power, including direct action tactics, and building an effective activist pipeline
  • Social media, including Facebook, Twitter (X), Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok, live streaming, building online communities, staying safe, and online ads
  • Outreach tools, including email, WhatsApp, and mobile messaging
  • Making content that drives action via personal & public narrative, combatting disinformation, graphic design, and video
  • Systems and infrastructure to run an effective campaign, including A.I., metrics, website, email, and CRM/member database/action tools/team tools

Participants will get individual instructor feedback on how to apply the topic to their organizing through assignment review. Instructors are deeply experienced online/offline campaigners with real-world experience applying the tools to organizing. They span a range of backgrounds and organizing experiences. 

During and after this intensive, participants and their organizations will have unlimited access to SMT’s library of 150+ hours of training, which would cost over $3,000 if purchased individually. This enables interested participants and organizations to go deeper into the above topics and cover additional topics. Additional courses in the library include in-depth treatments of texting, CRM/member database tools, Twitter, online ads including Google Ad Grants, digital security, and much more.

Participation and time zones

This program will run from April 10th to June 12th on Wednesdays (10 weeks) 1:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. ET. Find the session times in your timezone here. Instruction days will consist of two 90-minute sessions with a 30 minute break in between.

Certificate requirements

  • Certificate levels: Earn a Certificate in Digital Campaigning, Level I or Level II
  • Attendance: Sessions will be recorded, but participants should plan to attend all of the sessions for a certificate at either level.  For participants with special family, campaign, or other situations that arise during the program, they may make up no more than three sessions by watching the recording.
  • Assignments: Complete five assignments to apply your knowledge for a level I certificate and ten for a level II certificate. In addition to the three and a half hours of live instruction per day, during which we would anticipate participants can complete all assignments required for a level I certificate. Participants seeking to earn a level II certificate should set aside an additional 8 hours in the month following the program to complete assignments.

Curriculum Overview

Organizing Strategy and Tactics

  • Digital organizing overview – get grounded in how online and offline tools can connect to build power. Reflect on your organizing and chart a path through the program.
  • Organizing strategy & digital planning – Guidance for building a simple or complex digital campaigning plan for your organizing group or union that connects to winning campaigns
  • Creating an effective activist pipeline – How to absorb new members and bring them into your organizing, including the online organizing
  • Choosing the right direct action tactic – Select and build out a range of direct action tactics and escalations spanning the online and offline worlds to pressure targets. We will also discuss effective strategy and tactics being used by groups organizing under authoritarian regimes.

Content that Drives Action

  • Public narrative overview – crafting an effective frame and narrative for both our immediate campaigns and longer-term organizing to activate people, build broader support, and win.
  • Personal narrative overview – Build out a skill of sharing one’s own personal story, as well as engaging with members and leaders to share theirs.
  • Combatting disinformation and dealing with trolls – Spot disinformation targeting our communities and train members to combat it, learn about effective ways to engage online.
  • Graphic design – Tools and design principles to create beautiful, inspiring images that will drive action
  • Video – Producing and using video powerfully on a shoestring budget

Outreach Tools

  • Mobile messaging overview – tool demos, use cases, and campaign examples for using peer-to-peer, broadcast, and relational texting tools.
  • Email – writing, segmenting, and sending campaign tips and tricks to help make this a powerful tool in your organizing
  • Online ads – Facebook, Instagram, and other ads for finding organizing leads and persuading around issues and campaigns

Social Media

  • Twitter (X), Instagram & TikTok – how to use Twitter (X), Instagram & TikTok to build power online and see results offline
  • LinkedIn – how to use LinkedIn to pressure on targets, broaden and engage their network.
  • Livestreaming and other Online Meetings – how to expand engagement and your audience during live streams and meetings, and get people activated for next steps
  • Building Online Communities – use existing communities and build new ones to find new organizing leads and to engage and build leadership among your members and leaders across WhatsApp Groups, Facebook Groups, Discord, etc.

Systems & Infrastructure

  • A.I. – how specific A.I. tools can help us improve internal workflows and processes, and how to create effective prompts.
  • Metrics – focus your limited time and resources where they can get the biggest bang
  • Website – design and campaign tricks, tips, tools, and best practices to get to a website that serves your organizing by capturing organizing leads.
  • CRM/Member Database/Action tools – approaches to get the most out of your CRM for building new members/supporters and activating current ones, regardless of the tool.
  • Project Management and Team tools – how to use campaign and project management tools like Trello, ClickUp, Asana and Airtable to improve workflows.

Language and Hearing Accessibility

Instruction will be in English. SMT is actively seeking funder and network partners to ensure support for additional language interpretation and captioning in Spanish & Portuguese for this program. With the commitment of 20+ registrants committed by March 25th, interpretation in Spanish or Portuguese will be available at no additional cost. Please email us at [email protected] if you’re interested in additional language support. All recordings in the SMT library are captioned in English and Spanish and up to 5 other languages. In addition, course recordings include courses instructed in French, Spanish and Arabic.

Testimonials

See testimonials of alumni (community organizing | union) from across the world who’ve joined the program to become more effective and strategic campaigners, organizers, communicators and/or fundraisers.

Cost

Direct action by ArtivistNetwork to put pressure on delegates to take immediate action to end fossil fuels at COP28 (Credit: @Artivistnet)

Prices for the intensive range from $600-$1,750 per registrant based on the organization’s budget, location, registration time, referrals, and whether it’s a group or individual rate. This range helps us provide every registrant tailored support, including individual review of assignments and a one-hour 1:1 coaching session following the session while making the program accessible to groups across the world.

In order to support a movement organization learning space, SMT trainings are for staff of non-profits – NGOs, unions and electoral campaigns. Trainings are not for consultants or agencies. Consultants & agency staff who register will have their registrations refunded. Alternatively, on demand trainings are available to all on SMT’s course platform.

Outreach Partner Referral Discount

Groups referred by outreach partners can save up to $350 off the registration cost. Please name the outreach partner in your registration and forward the email you received to . The outreach partner discount does not apply to group rates or 2nd person rates, which are already steeply discounted to represent an organization’s investment in SMT training. Outreach partners pass along opportunities for training and coaching to lists of organizing groups. This helps SMT as a non-profit reach more groups that could organize more powerfully with SMT support. Interested in being an outreach partner? Contact and describe the size and type of groups you’d reach out to. Typically, this is a list of chapters of a network; allied organizations across a country, state, region; or some other cohort or grouping of many organizations.

 

Cost Early Bird
(Ends Feb 15)
Outreach Partner Referral (must forward mass communication received from one of SMT’s Outreach Partners)
(Ends Feb 15)
Regular
Groups with budgets
over $1M
Globally $1,575 $1,400 $1,750
Groups with budgets
under $1M
North America &
Western Europe
$1,260 $1,120 $1,400
Outside of North America &
Western Europe
$675 $600 $750
Additional
people from the same organization
North America & Western Europe $800 $800 $800
Outside of North America &
Western Europe
$600 $600 $600
Group Rate up to 10 seats
(payment by invoice)
North America & Western Europe $9,000 $9,000 $9,000
Outside of North America &
Western Europe
$6,500 $6,500 $7,000

 

Note: during and after this intensive, participants and their organizations will have unlimited access to the recordings of the program’s sessions as well as SMT’s library of 150+ hours of training, which would cost over $4,600 if purchased individually.

Register here or use the form below

If the time in this form is different from what is on this page, it’s an Action Network glitch. Please ignore. Find the session times in your timezone here.

See program for Asia, Africa, Europe, MENA

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Staff and activists of 4,900+ groups
have engaged with SMT trainings

Testimonials

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.
Learned invaluable skills, gained practical knowledge, and connected with inspiring professionals.
We’re starting our third straight year providing grantee partners with Social Movement Technologies training and coaching…our grantees are in good hands.
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.
The program was an eye-opener and better positioned me as a Communications Officer. I learned about digital mobilizing, online community building, and more.
For anyone who wants to dive into the world of digital communications, this is the training for you!
This training provided invaluable clarity and direction for my digital organizing work, empowering my team to work more effectively.
I felt supported by a community of hundreds throughout my learning journey.
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.
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 offered interesting case studies, expanded my digital campaigning knowledge, introduced new organizing tools and strategies, and enabled connections with professionals in the progressive space.
Highly recommend it for individuals in civic organizations looking to enhance their technological campaigning skills!
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.

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'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.
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 prices
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!
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!
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.
I received input on how to align field and digital work which is directly connected to the advocacy research that we are doing.
This program greatly helped integrate our thinking on organizing and digital campaigning. I wish all our organizers and digital staff could undergo this training.
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.
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.
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. 
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.
This program helped us harness effective tools and tactics that are aligned with our movement's needs and organizational values.
I found this course inspiring, especially the strategies part. Learning from diverse students with different backgrounds was enriching."=
I had an amazing time. I am already applying the valuable content in my organization.
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'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.
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!
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.
This program was very useful for understanding the digital aspects of organizing workers and incorporating them into a comprehensive campaign toolkit.
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.
I appreciated connecting with passionate changemakers across the U.S. to discuss effective digital campaigning strategies.
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.
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 program allowed me to deep dive into specific campaign strategies, learning from diverse examples of what worked and what could be improved.
It was powerful hearing directly from groups across the country using these powerful tools to win campaigns and create real change.
The assignments provided a better understanding of how the nuts and bolts of digital organizing fit together.
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.
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.
Taking this course really transformed my organizing skills to be more effective.
The program made me think holistically about offline and online impacts.
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!
The program offers excellent support, knowledge, and peer collaboration for learning about organizing and campaigning.
Each session was well-facilitated, skillfully blended presentation, discussion, and practical exercises, allowing me to immediately apply techniques to my work.
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.
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!
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 Digital Campaigning Certificate Program was immensely helpful, and I continue to apply its learnings in my daily communications and strategizing.
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!
The trainings are terrific–geared for every level of experience. And being rooted in social change movement, especially helpful to organizers.
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.
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 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.
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.
I strongly recommend SMT. Their strong organizing background, preparation and thoughtfulness made our strategy assessment with them enjoyable and really helpful.
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.
The digital training was expertly executed and helped me develop new ideas and best practice to implement in our campaign.
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.
I learnt a lot on grassroots movements, digital campaigns and communications in times of state intrusion or threats.
We have had a fantastic experience with SMT…they have been highly responsive to the needs of our grantees.
This program has boosted my confidence in organizing and sustaining digital campaigns.
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.
We’ve heard really good things from our grantee partners. SMT has a strong, grantee-focused way of working.
The program was an incredible journey of meaningful learning and connections with amazing advocates nationwide.
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