Liveblogging the #10ntc – Local Community Organizers

My first session here was a great Affinity Group session led by Charles Lenchner of the New Organizing Institute on Local Community Organizing and Technology.

Things we need as technologists to do our work as community organizers

• making people more comfortable
• not seeing everything as a technology problem. People with hammers often see nails everywhere.

Change management is important because technology is a sore spot for lots of organizations because it changes quickly. Within organizing groups you have strong awareness of organizing theory, the Alinsky method, and the tradition of American community organizing. Outside that context you have people in communities who think of themselves as organizers.

There is a rise of a new kind of person who isn’t active face-to-face in their community, but has a strong social and online identity. Traditional community organizing doesn’t know how to address these people and they are being overlooked. In gentrifying communities, for example, often the new people are young and transient, but they would identify with and support your organizing goals.

Q. What technology and training works and how can the online-offline connection be made?

Q. What would you ask of 1000 organizers whose attention you have 5 mins/every week?

Lots of organizations have no idea how to answer this and yet, all of us are slacktivists some of the time.

From Sarah Moran who sat in front of me: “Traditional organisations are threatened by empowered soft support, turning the community org model to focus on power of the network #10ntc”

There are so many great idea that can enhance your work, membership, the experience of your volunteers, fundraising yields, but things only get done generally when it’s someone’s responsibility. In Charles’ words,  ”if you don’t make a particular task the number one priority for someone, it won’t be anyone’s priority.”

Some examples:

• A thank you template for small donations with a system for personalization. Lots of CRMs make that easy, but you can also just give the Executive’s password to a junior staffer.
• A dedicated Google Voice mailbox so for the Executive to get transcribed feedback from the community.
• Spirit captains on rally buses

Asking for enough small acts, changes the identity of the participant. Slacktivists and the communities using things like the DoGood app community, The Extraordinaries, Catch a Fire, Jumo, are transformed by the mid-level actions they take part in.

This discussion of mid-level actions for engagement and transforming supporter expectations made me think of the way the New Israel Fund has begun offering action steps to turn their supporters in to activists. The response has been great and their social media presence (and follower numbers) have exploded as they provided non-donation ways to be involved.