Grassroots Organizing, Peacemaking, and Faith Perspectives

The scarecest resource in nonprofits is leadership.

What’s the scarcest resource for a nonprofit?

Time?

Money?

The scarcest resource is leadership.

Good leadership can make the most out of scarce time and can raise money, but no amount of money or time can create good leadership (the travails of the Red Cross show that).

Seth Godin explains part of the reason why, “Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead.”

Seth’s post points out that leadership takes courage. It also takes skill.

Some people who  have the skill to lead lack the courage. Some people who have the courage don’t have the skill.

As a community organizer, part of your job is to show leadership, to find the courage and develop the skills to be a good leader.

It’s also your job to find, recruit, and support other leaders. Bolster their courage. Refine their skills.

We need more leaders. Help create them.

Just because you know everything about a topic doesn't mean the person your talking to wants to hear it.

Do you know your issue inside-and-out?

Can you talk about all the intricacies of your campaign plan and all the political tradeoffs it will take to win?

Have you felt the need to explain the whole history, significance, and vision of your organization to people who don’t know about it?

You may have expert-itis.

Definition: Expert-itis is a condition in which someone has deep knowledge of their topic area but does not have a filter to regulate how much of that information their audience needs.

Expert-itis can impede social interactions and can inhibit effective community organizing and fundraising efforts.

Treatment: Since expert knowledge is a good thing, treatment of expert-itis focuses on developing the filters necessary to know when to stop talking. Treatments include:

• Asking: Since a sufferer of expert-itis has difficulty understanding what is too much information for a non-expert, it is important that patients develop the skill to ask, “should I keep going,” or “what do you need to know about this?”
• Seeking Help: You may not be able to overcome expert-itis on your own. Don’t be afraid to ask for help! Ask a trusted friend or co-worker to let you know when you’ve said too much. Please not, this person must not also have expert-itis in the same field as you, though expert-itis in a different field is acceptable. For example, a climate change expert and a craft brew expert could support each other in knowing when to stop talking about carbon emissions targets or carbonation levels in stouts versus pale ales.

You don’t have to let expert-itis ruin your social life or your organizing efforts.

I may not be able to see how fast my grass grows, but I know how often I need to water it.

I once heart Tanja Markus of SIPAZ say, “Working for peace is like watching grass grow.”

Yes, working for peace is often slow, and like watching grass grow, you might not see immediate results.

But if I can’t tell how fast my grass is growing it by watching, I can tell how fast it’s growing by how often I have to mow it.

Be patient, but also be determined to create real change.

What should you be doing as you count down the days to a big event?

In Tools for Radical Democracy, Minieri and Getsos have an excellent timeline for how to get the word out and mobilize people for an action. I’m not going to re-type the whole thing because, a) I want them to be able to sell their book, it’s a good one, and b) I’m too lazy.

But, here’s a quick summary of the key points in it:

• Four weeks out: Send a mail or email to everyone on your contact list who could potentially come to the action.
• Three to four weeks out: Call everyone on your list who would potentially come to the action and ask them to commit to coming.
• Two weeks out: Call everyone who said “yes” on the first round of calls and everyone you left a message for to confirm that they will come.
• One week out: Send a confirmation post card to everyone who said they are coming after the second round of phone calls.
• Two or three days out, up until the day of the action: Call everyone who said they are coming to remind them.

Here’s what I like about the system:

• It contacts people multiple times. It doesn’t expect that just one “touch” will be enough.
• It uses multiple methods to reach people (PR folks would say it’s “multichannel”). Some people barely read their email, some only scan their mail, others don’t answer their phone. You don’t have to worry about that with this method because it uses multiple channels.
• It tells people that their attendance is important. If you’ve made all this effort to get them there, it must be a big event!
• It involves volunteers. Phone banking is a volunteer-intensive effort and a great way to get people involved.
• It cuts through the email chatter.
• It reaches people who don’t do email (or don’t do it well).

If your audience is tech-savvy, I would add a few other things in here:

• Facebook events with reminders at 4 weeks, 2 weeks, and 3 days;
• Email reminders at 2 days out;
• Twitter posts regularly for all 4 weeks whenever there is another facet of the event to update about.

Is empathy always best for organizing?

I’ve written before that “empathy is the core of organizing.”

Empathy has its limits, though.

Here’s an example. Recently the organization I worked for wanted to hang an anti-torture banner over Main Street in our city. The city permit process requires that such actions get approval from the area merchant association. When they received our request, the Main Street group decided to put all banner permits on hold while they reviewed if they could deny banners that are political in nature.

I was angry at their decision, but I also had empathy for their perspective. I want downtown merchants to do well, and I didn’t think that pictures of aborted fetuses, for example, would be good for business. I saw their side of the story.

Not everyone in the organization was inclined to be understanding. Some said we should march down Main Street with the banner they wouldn’t let us hang up (as a publicity stunt, this was a beautiful idea). Some had no patience for the merchant association’s concerns, and therefore they were willing to take a much more assertive approach.

Which disposition is the correct one? They both have merits. I have begun to re-think my advocacy of empathy over all things as I see that my respect for the business association’s concerns limited my ability to respond forcefully.

Still, I cannot bring myself to give up my general approach to see and understand my the perspectives of those I disagree with.

Demagoguery, de-humanization, and denial of other perspectives can be a powerful ways to mobilize people, but that is a road that I fear to travel. Instead, I remain committed to seeking empathy and understanding.

How it ended. We had so much else to do with torture awareness month, we never chose a path of action to deal with the merchant association’s rejection of our banner.

We did get to put the banner up, but not on Main Street

We did get permission to hang the banner on another street by a different merchant association. I am deeply uncomfortable with handing over decisions about what speech is permissible to a business group, especially if there are no clear standards for their decisions and no means for appeal. We have had some contact with local civil liberties attorneys and we have not ruled out trying to change the approval mechanism working either through our elected officials or through the courts.

technology can help, but organizing is all about people.

“Technology is a tool that supports mobilization, not a replacement for live personal contact and relationships” (Tools for Radical Democracy, Minieri and Getsos).

I’m on Facebook. I blog. I tweet. I’m doing the whole technology thing.

But it’s also important to recognize the limits of technology.

Organizing is primarily about relationships, and those relationships are mostly about people.

Technology helps organizing when it works within those relationships and strengthens them. Technology impedes organizing when the organizers starts worrying more about the technology than the people.

When I orient volunteers to use our database I tell them, “Our greatest resource are people: our volunteers, members, donors, and contacts. The database is a tool to help us keep track of this most valuable resource.”

What does this mean for organizing?

• Connect with people personally. Face-to-face is best, phone is second, even in an online world;
• Give personal follow-up to personal communication. Reply to those random emails you get. Reply to comments on your web site. People still want to hear from people.
• On the other hand, don’t shun technology. Technology can be a great way to mobilize people you have a relationship with. Who wants to phone bank thousands of people for each event?
• Above all, remember it’s about the people, not the technology. It’s about the people you serve and the people you organize.

The HarvardBusiness.org blog has a great post titled Empathy: Not Such a Soft Skill. The post argues that “empathy is a critical skill. If you can imagine a person’s point of view — no matter what you think of it — you can more effectively influence him. Empathizing with your team, your boss, your coworkers, and your colleagues won’t make you a pushover — it’ll give you more power.”

I agree. In fact, I believe that empathy is the most imporant skill in organizing.

Do you want to recruit a volunteer? It makes all the difference if you can understand what motivates her.

Do you want to pitch a story to a reporter? Emapathy helps you understand what the reporter looks for in a story.

Do you want to lobby your mayor? Empathy helps you understand the political pressures she’s under and her own hopes and fear, and thereby better influence her.

But here’s the thing, empathy is not projecting yourself, your insecurities, or your passions onto another person.

I see this most with fundraising. People get hung up worrying that “they don’t want to hear from me,” or “they will be angry if I ask them for money.” I confess, I get caught up in this kind of thinking sometimes.

Projecting your own fear of asking is not empathy.

Empathy is really trying to understand that people like to help where they can, where they have a connection to an organization and a belief in a cause.

I also see this with people who are passionate about an issue. For example, I’m a homebrewer and a bit of a beer geek. I love to talk about yeast varietyies, fermentation temperature, and when hops are added to a beer. But this kind of talk bores most people.

Empathy isn’t about geeking out on my interests, it’s about understanding and connecting with yours.

That’s true about homebrewing. It’s also true about how many parts-per-milling of CO2 we should admit, the electoral intricicies of the FMLN election in El Salvador, or how zoning changes impact the level of affordable housing.

Empathy is the most imporant skill an organizer can have, and true empathy depends on putting aside your biases, your fears, and your agenda to really understand the other person. When you can do that, you can meet them on their terms and move them forward to be an agent for change.

Good leaders are as important for a healthy organization as good food is for a healthy body. Would you trust the Twinkie King to be a leader for your group?

I’ve been writing about the need to be careful in choosing who to develop as a leader.

Grassroots leaders are what nourish your organization. Just like you need to eat food that will keep you healthy, you need to recruit and develop leaders that will keep your organization healthy.

This can be tough. It’s often easier to eat a Twinkie than to eat a carrot. Choose the leaders that will nourish your organization. You’ll be healthier for it.

I recently blogged on the topic that not everyone is cut out to be a leader.

Just to be clear, just because someone isn’t a leader does not mean they are not valuable.

That volunteer who comes in every week for data entry, she may not be a leader, but she sure is valuable.

That reliable phone banker who will come in and call through a list of names for an action alert? He may not be a leader, but he sure is valuable.

In fact, some of your leaders may be train wrecks when it comes to data entry. You might not want to let them come close to your computers.

Building a movement or an organization takes a variety of skills and people. Value them all.

Not everyone can be a leader. If you choose the wrong people to be grassroots leaders, you may find they have no followers.

This post might get me in a bit of trouble.

You see, the progressive movement puts a lot of stock on the idea of grassroots leadership. To quote a line from Wobbly history as told by Utah Phillips, “We’re all leaders here.”

Except it just isn’t true.

Not everyone wants to be a leader, and not everyone who wants to be leader is cut out to be a leader.

Your job as an organizer is to build up leaders. It is to recruit, train, and nurture people who will be able to inspire and lead others in the community.

And not everyone is up for the job.

Just so you know I’m not just saying this to vent, in Tools for Radical Democracy, Minieri and Getsos write:

Although people might be doing important work, thye may or may not be leaders. For example, if a member who comes to every meeting is great at motivational speaking but cannot effectively engage with other members to make decisions, it may not be appropriate to develop her as a leader or place her in leadership situations. [Emphasis added.]

Leaders are important. Grassroots leadership is important. It is important enough to be thoughtful and intentional about. Carefully recruit leaders. Actively develop leaders. And yes, sometimes you will have to, very sensitively, deal with someone who is not cut out to be a leader.