Building Movement Tech Infrastructure for the Win

Instruction and subtitles in English

Under-resourced groups can significantly expand their movement-building impact if they have access to specific tech tools and a platform that’s easy to use. Often frontline groups are the least resourced: local campaigns, grassroots activists and underrepresented groups in the climate and other movements are fighting with little support.

Using Tipping Point UK to illustrate and other examples such as implemented by Friends of the Earth and a U.S. movement tech hub, we’ll show how tech infrastructure is being set up to enable small groups to engage activists, build their list, launch petitions and other actions, and build leadership at no cost to the groups. This infrastructure is now supporting a whole range of climate and other campaigns.

This course covers:

• Parent/child structure and uploading shape files to Action Network
• Using automation to activate thousands with limited paid staff
• The organizing workflow and tech stack (combination of tools and processes) that makes this model so powerful
• How existing tech hubs are funded, and an example budget
• Training provision needed, with examples from existing networks
• Using ladders within a network and geographic filtering
• External tools to automate tasks to make managing your network easier, including monitoring, syncing and identifying user needs
• The sessions will also cover systems and regular tasks that cannot be automated, and have to be managed by a person
• Lessons learned and experimentation currently underway

Registration for this on-demand course includes a 1-hour strategy session with a senior SMT staffer. After registering, contact [email protected] to get this session set up.

Instructor: Joe Irving, Tipping Point UK

Joe is a self-taught developer involved in direct action for climate justice and Palestinian liberation. For the past 2 years, he has been providing tech support to grassroots groups, mainly in the UK. He leads the free grassroots tech hub project with Tipping Point UK and is a team member at SMT.

Photo: COP27 climate action mobilizations, London, 2022. Credit: Guy Bell/Coal Action Network