Resource Center

Clean energy and climate mitigation policies are very popular. 60% of registered voters say developing sources of clean energy should be a high or very high priority for the president and Congress. 78% support providing tax rebates to people who purchase energy-efficient vehicles or solar panels. 76% support funding more research into renewable energy sources. 72% support regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant. 67% support transitioning the U.S. economy (including electric utilities, transportation, buildings, and industry) from fossil fuels to 100% clean energy by 2050. 82% support re-establishing the Civilian Conservation Corps, which would employ workers to protect natural ecosystems, plant trees in rural and urban areas, and restore the soil on farmlands. 56% of registered voters support a U.S. president declaring global warming a national emergency if Congress does not act. Many more related survey questions were asked.

Every year M+R Strategies, a digital services firm for progressive non-profits, releases its Benchmarks Study. The 2021 version analyzes the nonprofit digital advocacy and fundraising field using data from over 220 participating organizations. The Study covers these areas:

Digital advertising
Email messaging
Mobile/SMS messaging
Social media
Fundraising
Membership
Website traffic and useage

In this blog post from January 2021, Brittany Bennett, the Data Director for Sunrise Movement, argues that in order to become a data-driven organization, the people in charge of the data and data management need to be oriented towards serving the organizers as their first priority. “[W]when you cannot deliver accurate results quick to organizers, you lose their buy in to your system. And when your organizers do not use your systems, your organizations becomes less data driven.”

In this blog post from May 2021, Brittany Bennett, the Data Director for Sunrise Movement, breaks down her five metrics for measuring people power in a movement. Using a table of all a supporter’s actions over the course of their engagement with Sunrise in chronological order – the “one table to rule them all – Ms. Bennett identifies five metrics that offer insight into the efficacy of an organization’s organizing and campaign work. She delineates each of them links them back to the table, and show how they can be used to align an organization’s programs in order to maximize its organizing.    

Many corporations and governments are advancing “net zero” climate plans that fail to provide real solutions to addressing climate change and cutting emissions. These plans allow polluting industries to escape responsibility to address climate change and shift the burden of climate action to frontline communities.

Movement organizations can make various decisions to find the right balance between breadth versus depth and unity versus autonomy. This report synthesizes hard fought lessons that organizers have learned in the face of complex challenges related to organizational structure. Movement organizations need to have the breadth—the capacity to organize the masses at scale. At the same time, movements need “cadres” with deep leadership capacity in order to be able to organize strategically in the face of constant uncertainty and local complexity. Organizing also requires unity—coordination to unify our power and resources such that the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. On the other hand, people need autonomy in order to be able to take initiative, unleash their creativity, adapt to the particularities of their context and feel agency in the movement. Movements need to develop structures of leadership and clear authority that can manage the competing demands to create unity and enable autonomy. This report provides general lessons and some specific tips to find the right balance of breadth versus depth and unity versus autonomy.