A practical, effective and affordable way to ramp up your organization’s security
One of many actions Lebanese feminists took to successfully repeal Article 522, the law that let rapists go free if they married their victim. Photo credit: ABAAD
Do you know you need to increase digital security but are having a tough time getting it done across your team?
Finding it a bit overwhelming to track who has done what, or to give clear assignments that people can implement across their devices? Discovering that “security culture” hasn’t taken hold and wondering what to do? Looking for clear, easy guidance on priorities and next steps and a partner you can come back to with questions? Finding digital security support expensive? If any of these are true, this is for you!
This training and support process is for organizations that are looking for a structured, supported and proven way to implement greater digital security across their team.
Program Process and Content
- We’ll start with four 90-minute sessions in month 1 to enable you to assess threats, identify needs, and set up your tracking and accountability system using our templates. These sessions will be:
- Threat assessment
- Individual policies and practices
- Organizational policies and practises
- Tracking and managing change & website security
- Your core team will then have a planning session with an instructor to make sure you’re set up for success, and to finalize if there are any assignments that you won’t be implementing based on your own threat assessment and needs.
- The following 5 months will include short assignments shared every two weeks – that’s what we’ve found works best. You’ll be able to share these assignments directly with your team and track their progress completing them. And you’ll have access to a class office hour for support on each of these assignments so you’re sure you understand them in full before you share them with your team. Assignments will even include short video how-tos if we’ve found that people need them to complete the assignment.
Assignments and 13 office hours for implementation of these policies and practices:
- Two-factor authentication
- Encrypted devices
- Password manager and zero saved passwords
- VPN download and activation
- Remote wiping in case of threat
- Phishing – understanding phishing; phishing test
- Up-to-date operating system and firewall defender
- Google Drive or other shared file storage – compartmentalization system and privacy settings review
- (Optional/potential: Google Drive or other shared file storage good management practices – shared folders, folder ownership)
- Blocking 3rd party trackers, pop-ups, and data breach scanning
- WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal security
- Malware scanning and protection
- Quiz for staff members
Principal Instructor
Joscar Amondi is SMT’s Africa Movement Support Coordinator. She is a lesbian feminist who is interested in being safe while advocating for the rights of LGBTQ persons in East Africa. She has several years’ experience training activists and organizations on digital and physical security. She also coordinates the ongoing development of SMT’s digital security protocol and its implementation across a global team of staff and contractors with varying levels of risk.
Certificate requirements
Participants can earn two certificate levels:
- Certificate in Digital Security Practices: This requires completion of all assignments and participation in the four initial sessions and at least 70% of office hours.
- Certificate in Digital Security Implementation Across a Team: In addition to what is required in the first certificate, you must provide evidence that at least 10 of the team assignments have been completed by at least 3 team members
Language
All sessions will be held in English. Simultaneous interpretation in other languages may be available with sufficient demand per language. Contact us at [email protected].
Session times set up for global access
Sessions will be on Wednesdays on January 10, 17, 24, & 31, and every other Wednesday from February to June 2024.
Best time for Americas – See this time automatically converted for your timezone
Best time for Africa, Asia, Europe, MENA, Oceania – See this time automatically converted for your timezone
Cost
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.
| Region | Organizational Budget (USD) | Early (ends December 1st, 2023) | Outreach Partner Referral (ends December 1st, 2023) |
Regular |
|
North America & Western Europe
|
$2M+ | $1,200 | $1,050 | $1,400 |
| $500K-2M | $1,050 | $950 | $1,200 | |
| Under $500K | $900 | $800 | $1,000 | |
|
Global**
|
$2M+ | $800 | $750 | $900 |
| $500K-2M | $700 | $650 | $800 | |
| Under $500K | $500 | $450 | $600 | |
| Additional person from the same organization (same email domain) |
$500 | $450 | $600 | |
| Group Rate – North America & Western Europe (up to 10 seats) – designed to help networks and funders make this program accessible to their communities. |
$7,000 | $7,000 | $8,000 | |
| Group Rate – Global** (up to 10 seats)– designed to help networks and funders make this program accessible to their communities. |
$5,000 | $5,000 | $6,000 | |
Groups with subscription memberships for coaching and support get a significant discount. Contact your coach about this.
We recommend sending at least two people to this training so that your main implementation coordinator has support. To encourage this we’ve reduced the cost for the second person to the lowest rate possible.
Outreach Partner Referral Discount
Groups referred by outreach partners can get $50 to $150 off specific levels (see table above). 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.
Testimonials
We have had a fantastic experience with SMT…they have been highly responsive to the needs of our grantees.
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 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 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 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 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 pricesI strongly recommend SMT. Their strong organizing background, preparation and thoughtfulness made our strategy assessment with them enjoyable and really helpful.
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!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.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. 
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 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 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.We’re starting our third straight year providing grantee partners with Social Movement Technologies training and coaching…our grantees are in good hands.
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.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.
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 trainings are terrific–geared for every level of experience. And being rooted in social change movement, especially helpful to organizers.We’ve heard really good things from our grantee partners. SMT has a strong, grantee-focused way of working.
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 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.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.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.
