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The world is crazy. That said, thank you for reading this! If you received this from a friend, that's a good friend. Subscribe here. If you want to forward this to a friend I won't stop you. In fact, click reply, let me know, and I'll send huge thanks your way.
Here's what we're looking at this week. (FYI, check out jobs down below!)
1. Let's define membership. A clear and shared sense of why an organization has members (and what members get from the relationship) is necessary to success.
Here are three basic elements of a membership framework:
- People investing in an organization.
- An organization investing in people.
- A framework that binds together the interests of people and an organization.
What do you think? Read on.
2. Is social media bad for politics? It could be worse. Actually, it's getting worse now. And activists, campaigns, and digital people need to think about this.
Political organizing, persuasion and messaging are moving to closed apps and platforms owned by the parties, campaigns, the NRA and so on. Fun. Right?
Reminder: Much of the world, including the parts with internet access, isn't actually accessing or able to access the internet very well. That and lack (or high cost) of broadband contributes to a reliance on social media/messaging platforms for news and information sharing. Even in US (see this Internet/Broadband Fact Sheet from Pew). This has profound implications for how advocacy groups, political campaigns and community leaders reach people. And for how/why misinformation spreads as easily as it does.
3. Looking for a solid brief explaining a campaign's use of readily available digital tools to scale person to person engagement and organizing? Boom. Here’s one from Randall Smith at PowerLabs: How undocumented immigrants are using Facebook Messenger to build a movement.
4. Climate scientists playing Fortnite is, like, so cool. "For a topic like climate change that is steeped in misinformation, direct access to experts is crucial," Henri Drake, a climate science grad student at MIT tells Angela Watercutter of Wired. Drake is also a Fortnite player who answers questions about climate while playing Fortnite on Twitch’s ClimateFortnite channel.
5. I'm currently crushing on The Colorado Sun (and think you could, too). The Sun is a journalist-owned independent news startup covering Colorado. They’re helping fill the local news void. The more quality local journalism, the better. They’re aiming for transparency, in part due to being part of the Civil network and incorporating “credibility indicators.”
The takeaway seems to be that well-reported local politics and people-focused features presented in a clear, digital/mobile-first way can work (let's hope so, at least). Also, their email newsletter is really well done. Props to the team there.
6. Lots of people talk about how orgs and campaigns can scale up volunteer power. Here, campaigners are actually doing it for themselves. Blueprints for Change is a volunteer-driven, as yet unfunded project to crowdsource "how-to" guides to common and current organizing and campaigning dilemmas and tactics (e.g. A/B testing, digital security, peer-to-peer texting, phone banking and more). Love this story examining how Blueprints is put together and what they've learned about running a collaborative global knowledge-sharing project.
7. There's this election happening in the US. Go vote. Better yet, call someone you know and make sure they have a plan to vote. Next level: make some calls, send some texts or knock on some doors. Bet you’ve received a text or two about volunteering.
On that note, I'm headed to Houston tomorrow to knock on doors for Beto O'Rourke's Senate campaign. It's an important campaign – and a fascinating experiment in transparency that I hope to saying more about soon. Here are a few examples of how the campaign is putting it all out there:
Oh, there's also the 1,300 (yes, we counted) or so videos on Facebook. Most done with Facebook Live.
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