Resources for Strategy

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Meeting Facilitators Organisers Trainers

Meeting Facilitators

High-Moment Team Reflection: Growing our Individual and Team’s Strengths

350 staffer Sarah from Egypt has been using a method called appreciative inquiry. That approach centers around the belief that groups make their best progress when they they focus on the skills they do well. When a group says they aren’t good at communication, for example, this approach asks of the group: “Okay, but when you’re the best at communication—what does that look like?” The idea is that seeing what you’re lacking doesn’t help you know what to do more of. Instead focus on what resources you have and how to expand and grow those.

Topics: Organising, Strategy, Team-building

For: Meeting Facilitators, Organisers, Trainers

Group Size: 5-25 people

Time: 45 minutes

Learning Styles: Auditory, Reading/Writing, Visual

How to Create a Campaign Plan: the Paper Plate Challenge

Campaigns aren’t won all at once; instead, they are won through a series of actions. Yet, too often, we design only one action ahead of time. That can be a problem – when that action is over, people want to know what comes next. Right after the action they are energized and ready to do the next thing, and we lose that energy if we don’t have the next step. This tool is about helping us plan ahead and keep momentum. It’s a great tool to use after people have been thinking about possible tactics, or near the end of a campaign workshop to finalise a plan.

Topics: Organising, Strategy

For: Meeting Facilitators, Organisers, Trainers

Group Size: 10-50+ people

Time: 20-45 minutes

Learning Styles: Auditory, Reading/Writing, Visual

Power-Mapping Activity

Power-mapping can help you to identify targets and focus your strategy. The idea is to map out your potential targets, and the institutions and individuals who influence your target, so you can begin to understand possible ways to impact them. A power map can be a useful visual tool to help your team understand power, and see possibilities for campaigning.

Topics: Organising, Strategy

For: Meeting Facilitators, Organisers, Trainers

Group Size: 5-30 people

Time: 20-30 minutes

Review of Activities Timeline

The goal of this activity is straightforward: getting people to create a timeline of what they have been up to in the last, say, six months. We encourage reflection in small groups so that you get a wide range of input and more chances for participation. Plus, small groups are another way of getting participants to work with each other, especially if you encourage people to get into groups with people they don’t as well or don’t work with as often.

Topics: Organising, Strategy, Team-building

For: Meeting Facilitators, Organisers, Trainers

Group Size: 5-40 people

Time: 35 minutes

Learning Styles: Auditory, Reading/Writing, Visual

Spectrum of Allies

A strategy tool to examine the range of social forces and groups, spread across a spectrum, from those who are the most dedicated opponents to those who are the most active supporters. This tool can uncover how tactics need to be planned in relation to whether or not they attract key allies; encourage more optimistic mobilisation efforts through a realization that it is not necessary to win over everyone to our point of view; and assess where a group needs to do more research related to allies.

Topics: Organising, Strategy

For: Meeting Facilitators, Organisers, Trainers

Group Size: 5-50+ people

Time: 15-30 minutes

Learning Styles: Reading/Writing, Visual

Understanding People Power: the Upside-Down Triangle

By themselves, rulers cannot collect taxes, enforce repressive laws and regulations, keep trains running on time, prepare national budgets, direct traffic, manage ports, print money, repair roads, keep markets supplied with food, make steel, build rockets, train the police and army, issue postage stamps or even milk a cow. People provide these services to the ruler though a variety of organizations and institutions. If people would stop providing these skills, the ruler could not rule. - Gene Sharp • The Politics of Nonviolent Action

Topics: Organising, Strategy

For: Meeting Facilitators, Organisers, Trainers

Group Size: 5-50+ people

Time: 15-30 minutes

Organisers

How Campaigns are Really Created

Creating a campaign to confront climate change is hard work. Every group and context is different, so there is no standard process. But there are often some common steps.

Topics: Strategy

For: Organisers

How to Create Momentum

Building a movement can sometimes feel like pushing a boulder up a hill. We’re pushing against major forces that take great effort to budge. Other times it can feel like racing downhill — we start something and it quickly takes-off. Sometimes we are running to keep up with what is happening, spending energy to help events roll on course and in the right direction. Whatever our work feels like, it needs the same thing: momentum.

Topics: Organising, Strategy

For: Organisers

Recruiting Outside your Social Circle

Activist groups can reach a point where they stop growing. Such groups often mistakenly believe they’ve tapped all the people who care about their issue. They think, for instance, that nobody else cares about the expansion of coal plants or is willing to take a stand against rising sea levels. The problem is often not that we have run out of people in our city or town: it’s how we are organizing and the way we think about growing our group.

Topics: Organising, Strategy

For: Organisers

What is a Campaign?

Groups often waste precious energy on an endless series of educational events or actions that don’t seem to add up to anything. In contrast, campaigns channel group power by focusing on a concrete goal.

Topics: Organising, Strategy

For: Organisers

Creating Powerful Actions with Strong “Action Logic”

There are many aspects to carrying out a good action. They may be fun and creative, or well-planned, or poorly executed. They could have lots of people or few. Many groups spend the bulk of their time on these elements of actions, and they are important. Yet perhaps the most key area of action-planning is the action itself, what it is, what it stands for—action logic.

Topics: Actions, Organising, Strategy

For: Organisers

High-Moment Team Reflection: Growing our Individual and Team’s Strengths

350 staffer Sarah from Egypt has been using a method called appreciative inquiry. That approach centers around the belief that groups make their best progress when they they focus on the skills they do well. When a group says they aren’t good at communication, for example, this approach asks of the group: “Okay, but when you’re the best at communication—what does that look like?” The idea is that seeing what you’re lacking doesn’t help you know what to do more of. Instead focus on what resources you have and how to expand and grow those.

Topics: Organising, Strategy, Team-building

For: Meeting Facilitators, Organisers, Trainers

Group Size: 5-25 people

Time: 45 minutes

Learning Styles: Auditory, Reading/Writing, Visual

How to Create a Campaign Plan: the Paper Plate Challenge

Campaigns aren’t won all at once; instead, they are won through a series of actions. Yet, too often, we design only one action ahead of time. That can be a problem – when that action is over, people want to know what comes next. Right after the action they are energized and ready to do the next thing, and we lose that energy if we don’t have the next step. This tool is about helping us plan ahead and keep momentum. It’s a great tool to use after people have been thinking about possible tactics, or near the end of a campaign workshop to finalise a plan.

Topics: Organising, Strategy

For: Meeting Facilitators, Organisers, Trainers

Group Size: 10-50+ people

Time: 20-45 minutes

Learning Styles: Auditory, Reading/Writing, Visual

Power-Mapping Activity

Power-mapping can help you to identify targets and focus your strategy. The idea is to map out your potential targets, and the institutions and individuals who influence your target, so you can begin to understand possible ways to impact them. A power map can be a useful visual tool to help your team understand power, and see possibilities for campaigning.

Topics: Organising, Strategy

For: Meeting Facilitators, Organisers, Trainers

Group Size: 5-30 people

Time: 20-30 minutes

Review of Activities Timeline

The goal of this activity is straightforward: getting people to create a timeline of what they have been up to in the last, say, six months. We encourage reflection in small groups so that you get a wide range of input and more chances for participation. Plus, small groups are another way of getting participants to work with each other, especially if you encourage people to get into groups with people they don’t as well or don’t work with as often.

Topics: Organising, Strategy, Team-building

For: Meeting Facilitators, Organisers, Trainers

Group Size: 5-40 people

Time: 35 minutes

Learning Styles: Auditory, Reading/Writing, Visual

Spectrum of Allies

A strategy tool to examine the range of social forces and groups, spread across a spectrum, from those who are the most dedicated opponents to those who are the most active supporters. This tool can uncover how tactics need to be planned in relation to whether or not they attract key allies; encourage more optimistic mobilisation efforts through a realization that it is not necessary to win over everyone to our point of view; and assess where a group needs to do more research related to allies.

Topics: Organising, Strategy

For: Meeting Facilitators, Organisers, Trainers

Group Size: 5-50+ people

Time: 15-30 minutes

Learning Styles: Reading/Writing, Visual

Understanding People Power: the Upside-Down Triangle

By themselves, rulers cannot collect taxes, enforce repressive laws and regulations, keep trains running on time, prepare national budgets, direct traffic, manage ports, print money, repair roads, keep markets supplied with food, make steel, build rockets, train the police and army, issue postage stamps or even milk a cow. People provide these services to the ruler though a variety of organizations and institutions. If people would stop providing these skills, the ruler could not rule. - Gene Sharp • The Politics of Nonviolent Action

Topics: Organising, Strategy

For: Meeting Facilitators, Organisers, Trainers

Group Size: 5-50+ people

Time: 15-30 minutes

Trainers

What is Strategy: Blanket Tool

This is a physical way of learning about strategy and campaigning that is easy, simple, and effective.

Topics: Organising, Strategy, Team-building

Group Size: 10-30 people

Time: 20-40 minutes

Learning Styles: Auditory, Kinesthetic, Reading/Writing, Visual

High-Moment Team Reflection: Growing our Individual and Team’s Strengths

350 staffer Sarah from Egypt has been using a method called appreciative inquiry. That approach centers around the belief that groups make their best progress when they they focus on the skills they do well. When a group says they aren’t good at communication, for example, this approach asks of the group: “Okay, but when you’re the best at communication—what does that look like?” The idea is that seeing what you’re lacking doesn’t help you know what to do more of. Instead focus on what resources you have and how to expand and grow those.

Topics: Organising, Strategy, Team-building

For: Meeting Facilitators, Organisers, Trainers

Group Size: 5-25 people

Time: 45 minutes

Learning Styles: Auditory, Reading/Writing, Visual

How to Create a Campaign Plan: the Paper Plate Challenge

Campaigns aren’t won all at once; instead, they are won through a series of actions. Yet, too often, we design only one action ahead of time. That can be a problem – when that action is over, people want to know what comes next. Right after the action they are energized and ready to do the next thing, and we lose that energy if we don’t have the next step. This tool is about helping us plan ahead and keep momentum. It’s a great tool to use after people have been thinking about possible tactics, or near the end of a campaign workshop to finalise a plan.

Topics: Organising, Strategy

For: Meeting Facilitators, Organisers, Trainers

Group Size: 10-50+ people

Time: 20-45 minutes

Learning Styles: Auditory, Reading/Writing, Visual

Power-Mapping Activity

Power-mapping can help you to identify targets and focus your strategy. The idea is to map out your potential targets, and the institutions and individuals who influence your target, so you can begin to understand possible ways to impact them. A power map can be a useful visual tool to help your team understand power, and see possibilities for campaigning.

Topics: Organising, Strategy

For: Meeting Facilitators, Organisers, Trainers

Group Size: 5-30 people

Time: 20-30 minutes

Review of Activities Timeline

The goal of this activity is straightforward: getting people to create a timeline of what they have been up to in the last, say, six months. We encourage reflection in small groups so that you get a wide range of input and more chances for participation. Plus, small groups are another way of getting participants to work with each other, especially if you encourage people to get into groups with people they don’t as well or don’t work with as often.

Topics: Organising, Strategy, Team-building

For: Meeting Facilitators, Organisers, Trainers

Group Size: 5-40 people

Time: 35 minutes

Learning Styles: Auditory, Reading/Writing, Visual

Spectrum of Allies

A strategy tool to examine the range of social forces and groups, spread across a spectrum, from those who are the most dedicated opponents to those who are the most active supporters. This tool can uncover how tactics need to be planned in relation to whether or not they attract key allies; encourage more optimistic mobilisation efforts through a realization that it is not necessary to win over everyone to our point of view; and assess where a group needs to do more research related to allies.

Topics: Organising, Strategy

For: Meeting Facilitators, Organisers, Trainers

Group Size: 5-50+ people

Time: 15-30 minutes

Learning Styles: Reading/Writing, Visual

Understanding People Power: the Upside-Down Triangle

By themselves, rulers cannot collect taxes, enforce repressive laws and regulations, keep trains running on time, prepare national budgets, direct traffic, manage ports, print money, repair roads, keep markets supplied with food, make steel, build rockets, train the police and army, issue postage stamps or even milk a cow. People provide these services to the ruler though a variety of organizations and institutions. If people would stop providing these skills, the ruler could not rule. - Gene Sharp • The Politics of Nonviolent Action

Topics: Organising, Strategy

For: Meeting Facilitators, Organisers, Trainers

Group Size: 5-50+ people

Time: 15-30 minutes

Village Exercise

This interactive, physical activity gives participants an experience of nonviolent action and can unite groups through shared experiences. It’s a great group challenge, fun, and always provides a lot to reflect on about strategy, direct action, and social change.

Topics: Organising, Strategy

Group Size: 15-50+ people

Time: 30-60 minutes

Learning Styles: Auditory, Kinesthetic, Reading/Writing, Visual