Header

Social Movement Technologies
Mini Grants for Coaching to Build People Power in the Digital Age

Credit: Alisdare Hickson, Flickr/CC 2022

For African and Middle Eastern organizations waging justice against big adversaries

Do you wish you had more experienced guidance and support to ramp up strategically in your campaigns – combining online and offline tactics more powerfully to build pressure on targets, amplify your actions, and build your base? Are you posting and tweeting but want to do more to really engage members, get media attention, and build pressure on targets to win?

Missed the Q&A session on February 17th?  Check out the recordings!

Africa MENA Coaching Overview (15 mins)
Group and Funder Testimonials (13 mins)

SMT has raised funds to provide 3-4 months of online coaching support to up to 15 groups across Africa and the Middle East. This is about $1500 per group in SMT staff time. This program is open to groups that are prepared to match this contribution with $1500 of their own funds to extend the support to a total of 6-9 months, which is what we find is needed for groups to significantly ramp up in specific areas of their campaign work.
This program builds on similar support that SMT has provided now to over 200 groups across North America, with 30 groups currently in coaching from the North America team. Coaching in Africa and MENA will be provided by SMT’s growing Africa and MENA-based team of 5 experienced online/offline campaigners as well as SMT’s director.

Participating groups can expect

  • full and unlimited access to SMT’s extensive trainings video library for all staff and members
  • 40+ hours of expert staff time to work with your team
    • Campaign strategy and tactics development, particularly under high risk conditions
    • Ramping up on Twitter for media, pressure on officials and to activate global and regional allies and influencers
    • Growing your base of active members and building a pipeline of increasing activism
    • Developing combinations of tools to reach both high internet and low-internet access audiences, including messaging apps
    • Digital security for your team and movement members and their data, particularly under high threat conditions
    • Running petitions strategically and effectively so you keep the data and use it to activate signers
    • Preparation to side-step partial and whole internet shutdowns
    • Integrating texting and missed call campaigns into your work to activate and broaden your base
    • Fundraising, combining online and offline tactics
    • Narrative development to be able to activate a broader audience
    • Using Facebook ads effectively at key moments to pressure targets and build your base
    • Combining online and offline tactics to make the most of each
    • and lots more!
  • an initial assessment of your online/offline campaigns to identify areas of opportunity. We make recommendations; you decide the focus of the coaching.
  • regular meetings with your assigned staff every other week
  • quick response to drafts and problem-solving via screen shares
  • group coaching sessions with other cohort members that have the same needs as you, to make the coaching hours go farther and to build peer support
  • transparent time tracking so you know how SMT’s time has been spent, and how much time is left in your time bank

To qualify your organization must

  • be an NGO or movement organization (non-profit), although no specific legal status is required
  • be actively involved in campaigns for systemic change that involve in-person action to get decision-makers to take action
  • have at least one full-time staff person and no more than 20
  • have leadership and at least one staff person who are highly committed to ramping up campaigns and eager to learn and try new things, with time to do it
  • have assigned staff who are comfortable speaking and learning in English. In this cohort the coaching will be provided in English only while SMT builds up its Francophone and Lusophone coaching capacity.  Some coaching in Arabic is possible, but not all.

Application deadline and process

February 28             Application deadline
March 4                    Accepted groups notified
March 5                    Matching payment due
March 15                  Program start

Online Application Form

After clicking the submit button at the bottom of the application, you will get a link. You can continue to edit the application as many times as you wish until the deadline.

How funders can support

Numerous social change funders contract with SMT to provide coaching to their grantee partners. Organizations can reach out to their funders to explore the possibility of funding for the organization’s portion. SMT is always glad to work with funders to meet the needs of their grantee partners.

If you missed the February 17th Q&A check out the recordings!

Groups Banner

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

Testimonials

I felt supported by a community of hundreds throughout my learning journey.
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!
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 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.
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.
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!
The digital training was expertly executed and helped me develop new ideas and best practice to implement in our campaign.
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.
The assignments provided a better understanding of how the nuts and bolts of digital organizing fit together.
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.
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.
I found this course inspiring, especially the strategies part. Learning from diverse students with different backgrounds was enriching."=
For anyone who wants to dive into the world of digital communications, this is the training for you!
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.
The trainings are terrific–geared for every level of experience. And being rooted in social change movement, especially helpful to organizers.
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.
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 program offers excellent support, knowledge, and peer collaboration for learning about organizing and campaigning.
This program was very useful for understanding the digital aspects of organizing workers and incorporating them into a comprehensive campaign toolkit.
The program allowed me to deep dive into specific campaign strategies, learning from diverse examples of what worked and what could be improved.
The program made me think holistically about offline and online impacts.
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 training provided invaluable clarity and direction for my digital organizing work, empowering my team to work more effectively.
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 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!
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.
Taking this course really transformed my organizing skills to be more effective.
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 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.
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!
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.
I learnt a lot on grassroots movements, digital campaigns and communications in times of state intrusion or threats.
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.
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 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.

Highly recommend it for individuals in civic organizations looking to enhance their technological campaigning skills!
The program was an eye-opener and better positioned me as a Communications Officer. I learned about digital mobilizing, online community building, and more.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We’ve heard really good things from our grantee partners. SMT has a strong, grantee-focused way of working.
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
I had an amazing time. I am already applying the valuable content in my organization.
I received input on how to align field and digital work which is directly connected to the advocacy research that we are doing.
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 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 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.
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!
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.
We have had a fantastic experience with SMT…they have been highly responsive to the needs of our grantees.
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.
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 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.
Learned invaluable skills, gained practical knowledge, and connected with inspiring professionals.
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 boosted my confidence in organizing and sustaining digital campaigns.
It was powerful hearing directly from groups across the country using these powerful tools to win campaigns and create real change.
Each session was well-facilitated, skillfully blended presentation, discussion, and practical exercises, allowing me to immediately apply techniques to my work.
The program was an incredible journey of meaningful learning and connections with amazing advocates nationwide.
I appreciated connecting with passionate changemakers across the U.S. to discuss effective digital campaigning strategies.
This program helped us harness effective tools and tactics that are aligned with our movement's needs and organizational values.
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!
We’re starting our third straight year providing grantee partners with Social Movement Technologies training and coaching…our grantees are in good hands.
Share

Choose a Language

This will close in 0 seconds