
Credit: @josh.michael.windsor
Essential online training for every staffer to build people power & justice in the digital age
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? Join an SMT Digital Campaigning Certificate Intensive.
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 win systemic change, 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 18 sessions over 3 weeks, plus additional time for office hours and assignments. Topics include:
- Organizing strategy and tactics connecting online and offline power, including direct action tactics (including under authoritarian regimes), and building an effective activist pipeline
- Social media, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, live streaming, building online communities, staying safe, and online ads (any topics not covered in a full session will be covered in a recording and can be discussed during office hours)
- 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
- Digital security to reduce risks to you, your organization, and activists
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 70+ 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.
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.
Participation and time zones
This program will run for 10 weeks with one 3-hour session per week.
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.
- 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 – Ramp up your Twitter power in campaigns to boost pressure on targets, broaden and engage your base and get media coverage.
- Instagram & TikTok – how online organizers are using Instagram & TikTok to build power online and see results offline
- 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
- 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.
- Digital Security – the set of practices activists and organizations should implement to reduce risk – including starter practices and more advanced practices, as well as tips and templates for effective implementation across the organization.
Language and Hearing Accessibility
Instruction will be in English. Interpretation to additional languages will depend on funding. 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
Outreach Partner Referral Discount
Groups referred by outreach partners can get $150 off of full-price early bird or full-price regular registration in North America or Western Europe. Please name the outreach partner in your registration and forward the email you received to [email protected]. 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 [email protected] 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 |
Outreach Partner Referral (must forward mass communication received from Outreach Partner) |
Regular |
Groups with budgets over $1M |
Globally |
$1,600 |
$1,750 |
Groups with budgets
under $1M
|
North America & Western Europe |
$1,250 |
$1,400 |
Outside of North America & Western Europe
|
$625 |
$725 |
Additional people from the
same organization
|
North America & Western Europe |
$800 |
$800 |
Outside of North America & Western Europe |
$600 |
$600 |
Group Rate
up to 10 seats payment by invoice
|
North America & Western Europe |
$9,000 |
$9,000 |
Outside of North America & Western Europe |
$6,000 |
$6,000 |
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.
We consider this training an investment for any organization that participates! Only one person from your organization has to pay the full rate. If a member from your organization has participated in this training in the past and paid the full rate, everyone else in your organization will pay the second person rate in the future. If you’re not sure if an individual from your organization has paid the full rate in the past, check this list.
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.
See program for the Americas