Partnership Program

Organizing Capacity supports organizations to build independent, flexible, and committed constituencies through improved recruitment and retention practices, robust leadership development, and stronger relational infrastructure. This track is designed to deepen participants’ understanding of power, uncover informal leadership structures, and strengthen foundational engagement skills like one-on-one conversations and base-building strategy.

Strategic capacity improves your ability to navigate uncertainty, sustain collective action, and effectively allocate time and resources. Improve participant capacity, campaign partners, organizing team, etc. by streamlining processes, shifting priorities, and making sure members are skilled up to take on more responsibilities.

Relational organizing is at the core of maintaining a strong coalition structure. This track focuses on the ability to build independent, flexible, committed constituencies, and work well in coalitions. The goal is to improve coalition structure to expand coalition members’ capacity for coalition members and increase overall buy-in.

Strategic culture is the development of shared beliefs, goals, assumptions, and behaviors that shape the collective identity and group relationships. Having a strong culture helps your movement reach its goals and protects the campaign on internal and external threats that could jeopardize the collective work.

This track is designed to strengthen a group’s processes to develop individuals skills and ability to take on leadership roles within an organization. It will focus on improving facilitation and coaching skills, understanding how to navigate conflict, and assessing your organization’s culture.

Participants will assess their organization’s current strengths and gaps across recruitment, retention, leadership development, and communication. This includes facilitated reflection on staffing, volunteer engagement, relational trust, and alignment across teams or coalition members.

Participants will learn about power mapping both internal organizational power dynamics (e.g., who holds influence, how decisions get made) and external landscapes (e.g., targets, allies, opponents). Participants will leave with visual tools and strategy insights to inform their campaigns or coalition planning.

Participants will evaluate where their base currently falls along the spectrum from active opposition to active support and how to move people toward deeper alignment.

Participants will learn and practice core principles of relational organizing through 1:1 conversations on how to build trust, surface values,identify leadership potential and learn to make the hard ask. Includes real-time practice and feedback.

Participants will identify areas to increase/decrease efforts and take stock of their campaign. Strategic capacity brings flexibility and reflection into your campaign and allows groups to be able to react to campaign shifts.

Participants will improve or implement security protocols, evaluate retention practices, and learn how to be proactive with security and safety.

Participants will be able to identify signs of burnout and create practices to combat burnout within the organization/campaign.

Participants will improve digital and online communications to create online paths for members to deepen their knowledge and engagement.

Participants will reflect on their coalition space to uncover informal power dynamics, get clarity on shared goals among members, and develop practices to promote equitable decision making. Using the Blueprint for Multiracial, Cross-Class Climate Movement, participants will understand how to build a collective identity, strengthen buy-in, and create a resilient culture.

Participants will be trained on how to facilitate discussions, manage conflict in organized spaces, understand how to build strong communication networks, and foster spaces for open discussions through culture self-assessments and brainstorming tools.

Participants will understand how to use the ladder of engagement to develop strategies to skill up their base. They’ll create practices to keep their case engaged and explore creative community engagement activities.

Participants will understand the differences between facilitation, training, and coaching and when/how to use each skill set to meet campaign needs. They will also gain experience in scenario planning and facilitating through campaign shifts.