Principles & Processes

DIY Narrative Research Methods in Narrative Organizing

Building narrative power helps to achieve three important things: building a future where frontline narratives are dominant narratives; shifting who owns and run the narrative ‘means of production’; and making community-led policy change and culture change durable. To design narrative research, begin by understanding the narrative landscape within which an issue or dynamic is operating and assessing the collective capacity to drive narrative change; then test narrative interventions, like mini-campaigns. Employ advisors on our research projects is helpful to understand the nuance and complexity of a policy agenda or a lived-experience. Choosing research participants who are typically engaged in the issue area being explored is helpful (for example, organizers with a local organization managing volunteers, a policy advocate for a specific community or issue area, a lawyer who utilizes the legal system to highlight solutions for the challenges workers and migrants face, an artist who uses their craft to raise up voices and awareness). Moreover, interviews are key to understanding what is needed to build and hold a shared understanding of the narrative landscape in which these communities exist.

Signals in the Noise: Election Edition

The narratives swirling around us right now are potent, messy, and constantly shifting—and that’s exactly why we need to make sense of them, together. This resource analyzed the narratives leading up to the 2024 election, focusing on economic issues, immigration, voting rights, race and gender justice. The mood and tone in election conversations were agitational, authoritative, urgent, concerned, informative, hopeful and empowering. Core values included equity, accountability, compassion, justice, empowerment, autonomy, integrity, community, safety and security. It is clear movement strategists, organizers and allied formations must: pool resources, invest the time and capacity together, expand reach, and tell better stories.

Anyone Can Become a Climate Advocate. Here’s How.

People need help both becoming effective advocates and staying engaged, and that’s where groups and communities come in. To make change, find a group. There are a lot of great climate groups out there. Some are geared more towards young people; others are geared towards older demographics. Some are faith-based. Some are more or less disruptive. Some focus narrowly on a singular priority, while others advocate for a range of priorities. There are groups advocating through a lens of partisan identity from different points along the ideological spectrum. Second, carve out the time because effective advocacy takes longer than a few clicks. Third, make it a habit as sustained engagement is critical. Fourth, be bold and ready to level up quickly. Fifth, make sure your climate advocacy casts a long shadow.

Clarifying Responsibilities with MOCHA

MOCHA is a tool for establishing clear roles on projects. In most settings, projects involve contributions from multiple people. The MOCHA model clarifies who’s responsible for what and reduces the chance of hidden labor by spelling out each person’s contributions. MOCHA stands for the following 5 roles. Manager: Supports and holds owner accountable through delegation; serves as a resource, shares feedback, asks probing questions, reviews progress, and intervenes if the work is off-track; this person may or may not be the owner’s supervisor. Owner: Has overall responsibility for driving the project forward and coordinating steps to accomplish the goal; ensures all the work gets done (directly or with helpers) and involves others (consults) in a meaningful way; there should only be one owner. Consulted: Provides input and perspective; may share resources or referrals. Helper: Implements aspects of the work and actively contributes to project success; the helper may own a significant area of work with its own MOCHA (we call this a cascading MOCHA). Approver: Signs off on the final product or key decisions; may be the owner or manager, though it can also be a person or group with a clear decision-making role on the project.

Building and Sustaining Relationships

Relationships are the building blocks for all community organizing activities. Community building occurs one-to-one: you need to build relationships with people one-to-one if you want them to become involved in your group or organization. Often building relationships is the groundwork that must be laid before anything else gets done on a project. The bigger the project, the more relationships you will usually need as a foundation. When you plan a project, you need to include the time it takes to build relationships into your plan. People need time to build trust. Whenever people work together, they need to have trusting relationships. When trust is missing, people usually have a difficult time functioning cooperatively. Here’s an 11-step program to building trusting relationships: build relationships one at a time; be friendly and make a connection; ask people questions; ask people questions; go places and do things; accept people the way they are; assume other people want to form relationships, too; overcome your fear of rejection; be persistent; invite people to get involved; enjoy people.

What Is Relational Organizing, and Why Is It Important?

Campaigns, nonprofits, and advocacy groups have leveraged relational organizing with great success. Relational organizing is the act of mobilizing personal contacts within a volunteer’s network. It can be as simple as a call, text, or even a friendly chat at work or a community event — with a single conversation, volunteers can jumpstart action within their community. More importantly, relational organizing is an authentic way to get people to take action. When a volunteer advocates for a cause, they aren’t only sending a checklist of actions that their contact should take. They’re inviting potential supporters to join an ongoing conversation and movement. Relational organizing is especially important for historically neglected communities because volunteers can help empower change from the ground up within their own networks.

Beyond Randomized Controlled Trials

Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and the Evidence to Policy (E2P) community are integrating innovation and evidence into social policy and practice at scale. Last year’s Nobel Prize in Economics, awarded to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer for “their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty,” is a testament to the innovations they spurred in development economics over the past two decades. But the laureates have repeatedly emphasized that the use of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in development economics was part of a broader movement of integrating innovation and evidence into social policy and practice. Equally important to the research was seeding an evidence-to-policy (E2P) community, in parallel, that helped and will help the laureates’ research, as the awarding committee put it, “dramatically improve our ability to fight poverty in practice.”

Learning from Opponents with Munira Lokhandwala of LittleSis.org

Underdogs can use the same strategies as more powerful actors do against their powerful opponents. In this podcast episode, Deepak and Stephanie discuss some great examples of how to counter corporate power, use PSYOPS against white supremacists, and drive wedges in elite coalitions. They also explore other lessons progressives can take from the “overdogs’” (i.e., more powerful actors) playbook: crafting long-term plans, recruiting based on belonging rather than belief, and using data-driven evaluation paired with the lean startup model for organizing. And overdogs today invest in strategic education at a scale that dwarfs anything on the left. Their commitment is captured in the slogan of the right-wing Leadership Institute, which has trained over 200,000 people: “You owe it to your philosophy to learn how to win.”