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Social Movement Technologies
For Campaigners and Activists Organizing People Power for Justice

Campaigners and activists recognize they must use digital tools and tactics like never before – alongside direct action – to build people power and pressure targets to take action. Here are some upcoming trainings and resources designed to meet this need. To learn about additional upcoming trainings, join the email list. SMT also works with funders to provide support to grantees; organizing networks to support larger campaigns and networks; and directly with groups to provide tailored coaching and help implement campaigns. Feel free to reach out to discuss how SMT can support.

Work with SMTExperienced Digital Campaigner? Work with SMT  

With team members on 5 continents, SMT’s small but highly effective team has trained staff from over 4900 groups and unions over its first 10 years, and worked with 200+ groups on campaigns more in-depth. Part-time and full-time roles are available, with coaching and training roles starting as low as a few hours a month. See open positions.

Free Recorded Trainings & Online Communities

Trainings on TikTok, remote team recommendations, X (Twitter), Mastodon, Telegram, Snapchat and more. Available anytime and captioned in 7 languages. Also join SMT’s Digital Campaigner’s Facebook Group for campaigners, with 3300+ campaigners from around the world, or SMT’s Slack group of campaigners, or one of SMT’s WhatsApp groups or Telegram channels. Access the trainings and online communities.

 

SMT Coaching rates and subscription packages


Training Schedule:

BIPOC Campaign Leadership Fellowship

March – June 2024 | Sessions for all time zones globally | Instruction in English. 

Are you a BIPOC social justice campaigner or staffer looking to deepen your leadership and responsibility in campaigns? This training is for organizers, campaigners, communications staff, fundraisers, and other staff involved in campaign work. This 3.5 month fellowship will enable participants to become next-level online/offline campaign staff combining time-tested organizing with the latest tools, tactics, and skills, including managerial skills. Learn more and apply here.

Digital Campaigning Fellowship for People Power in Asia

April – July 2024 | Sessions for all time zones globally | Instruction in English. 

This 4-month fellowship starting April 1, 2024 provides intensive training in online and offline campaigning to build people-power in movements for justice across Asia. SMT’s goal is to build a strong Asia-based team of campaigners and coaches. The fellowship is designed as a pipeline to fill these positions. It is open to up to 10 experienced activists, campaigners, and organizers in Asia – particularly but not exclusively based in Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. Learn more and apply here.

2024 Digital Campaigning Certificate Program

April – June, 2024 | 10 weeks; 3h sessions per week | Sessions for all time zones globally | Instruction in English. Interpretation based on demand 

Over 1,100 staff and activists of movement groups have taken SMT’s Digital Campaigning Certificate Program. This ten-week intensive, with 3 hours of training per week, enables participants to quickly build competency in the key 18 skill areas essential to win campaigns in the digital age. This program is ideal for beginner to intermediate staff and activists of social justice groups, including unionists, to rapidly ramp up familiarity and skill with digital organizing strategy, tools and tactics. Register now:

Campaign & Project Management Tools to Make Our Teams Hum

May 16, May 21, May 23, May 28 | 12:00 pm ET | 90-120 minute sessions

For those of us juggling mighty organizing demands with never enough time and resources, this could be one of the most valuable courses ever. We’ll cover how to use campaign and project management tools like Trello, ClickUp, Asana and Airtable to improve workflows and enhance campaigns. Learn more and register here.

A.I. for Organizing

June 25 – Africa, Europe, MENA, Asia | June 26 – North and South America | 2-hour session

How to use A.I. for the messaging, framing and segmentation we need to build people power and win electoral, issue and union campaigns. You’ll learn how to use prompt engineering to generate messages with the right tone, refine your framing techniques and more accurately target your audience. We’ll cover how specific A.I. tools can help us improve internal workflows and processes as campaigners and unionists, and how to use image generation tools and create effective prompts.

Although A.I. tools are already proving useful in campaigning, we can’t ignore the significant ethical questions that come with using them, or the alarming ways A.I is already being used to manipulate public opinion on a mass scale. This session will predominantly focus on the practical use of these tools. We will briefly discuss the organizing underway to address these issues and to hold A.I. companies accountable for how this technology develops. Learn more and register here.

SMT is rapidly ramping up support and training for movement organizations around the world. Additional training is planned. If there’s anything that you don’t see below that you’d be interested in, contact us.

Recording: Upcoming support for building people power in the digital age

Are you part of a non-profit/NGO/union or a funder committed to redistributing power for justice? Recognize the importance of digital along with direct action organizing? Watch the recording to learn more.

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

Testimonials

Each session was well-facilitated, skillfully blended presentation, discussion, and practical exercises, allowing me to immediately apply techniques to my work.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
This program was very useful for understanding the digital aspects of organizing workers and incorporating them into a comprehensive campaign toolkit.
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.
For anyone who wants to dive into the world of digital communications, this is the training for you!
We’ve heard really good things from our grantee partners. SMT has a strong, grantee-focused way of working.
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!
Highly recommend it for individuals in civic organizations looking to enhance their technological campaigning skills!
The program offers excellent support, knowledge, and peer collaboration for learning about organizing and campaigning.
I appreciated connecting with passionate changemakers across the U.S. to discuss effective digital campaigning strategies.
The program was an eye-opener and better positioned me as a Communications Officer. I learned about digital mobilizing, online community building, and more.
I had an amazing time. I am already applying the valuable content in my organization.
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.
The Digital Campaigning Certificate Program was immensely helpful, and I continue to apply its learnings in my daily communications and strategizing.
The digital training was expertly executed and helped me develop new ideas and best practice to implement in our campaign.
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.
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 found this course inspiring, especially the strategies part. Learning from diverse students with different backgrounds was enriching."=
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 learnt a lot on grassroots movements, digital campaigns and communications in times of state intrusion or threats.
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.
SMT developed a custom training for our youth climate fellows from around the world. It was a holistic training on creating campaigns from strategy to implementation and building our activist base. We appreciated SMT’s attention to detail around language and inclusion and always thinking about power building.
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.
The trainings are terrific–geared for every level of experience. And being rooted in social change movement, especially helpful to organizers.
The program made me think holistically about offline and online impacts.
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.
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. 
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.
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.
We’re starting our third straight year providing grantee partners with Social Movement Technologies training and coaching…our grantees are in good hands.
It was powerful hearing directly from groups across the country using these powerful tools to win campaigns and create real change.
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.
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.

This program helped us harness effective tools and tactics that are aligned with our movement's needs and organizational values.
Learned invaluable skills, gained practical knowledge, and connected with inspiring professionals.
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!
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.
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.
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.

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.
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.
This program has boosted my confidence in organizing and sustaining digital campaigns.
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.
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.
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 was an incredible journey of meaningful learning and connections with amazing advocates nationwide.
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.
I received input on how to align field and digital work which is directly connected to the advocacy research that we are doing.
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
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.
The assignments provided a better understanding of how the nuts and bolts of digital organizing fit together.
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!
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.
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!
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.
Taking this course really transformed my organizing skills to be more effective.
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!
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 training provided invaluable clarity and direction for my digital organizing work, empowering my team to work more effectively.
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