Search Sessions

To view individual panels, trainings and other sessions and to see who’s speaking, check out our searchable agenda below.

Wondering what a typical day at Netroots Nation is like? Check out our overview schedule.

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Organic Social: How to Build an Engaged Online Community for Your Campaign

Changes in online users’ search patterns, privacy updates, and the evolving social media landscape are making current marketing solutions like ads, search engine optimization, and influencer marketing increasingly expensive and inefficient. This workshop is focused on providing orgs with a cost-efficient alternative: organic social, or the practice of building an engaged online community whose members use their social media voices to help spread your organization’s message organically with their networks. We’ll discuss how to create a community of social sharers; build social copy using AI; use social share toolkits to generate impressions, donations, and sign-ups; and generate authentic engagement on different social networks.

Led by: Lori Coleman, Tudor Mihailescu

Email Masterclass: It's Still the Killer App

Whether your community of supporters is five thousand or five million strong, email remains by far the most cost-effective and powerful digital channel at your disposal to inform and engage your base. The basics of how to run a good email program haven’t changed a lot over the years, but new developments—such as Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection, malware screening software, and the rise of unethical actors in the fundraising and activism space—are forcing us to develop new strategies. I’ll share lessons learned—about list growth, deliverability, messaging, testing, fundraising and more—from more than 18 years experience managing email programs for CREDO Mobile, Bernie 2016, NextGen, Vote.org, Mozilla Foundation and People for the American Way.

Led by: Will Easton

Burnt: Avoiding and Recovering From Burnout in Yourself and Among Your Team

Burnout is epidemic in activists, organizers and change-agents after the last seven years of battling rising fascism in America and the pandemic. Many of us do not know how to create lives of balance, or lead teams with policies and culture that prioritizes mental health. This session will offer strategies for avoiding and coping with burnout in individuals and organizations. We’ll take a people centered approach, discussing policies like sabbaticals, mental health days and other benefits, as well as building healthy culture and personal development strategies in the day in/day out to sustain us and build resilience in trying times. We’ll also touch on boundaries, finding balance, and the importance of joy. This training is ideal for those leading teams or organizations, but will offer something for everyone who has faced the challenge of giving so much that they felt they had nothing left to give.

Led by: Elizabeth McLaughlin

Using Pop Culture Authentically in Your Campaigns

From Superheroes to Soccer to K-Pop, people build community around pop culture they love. With or without movement organizations, fandoms are taking action for social change. Nonprofits and campaigns need to engage people where they are, with the stories they already love and share. But not every campaign experiences success and buy-in with fans. In this session, we’ll explore how to find and engage key fan partners, build pop culture campaigns, and turn fans into engaged and impactful activists!

Led by: Elana Levin

What the Right Does Right—and How We Can Do it Better

January 6th was a terrifying display of effective digital organizing by the Right. Members of different white supremacist groups built their collective capacity online, traveled to Washington D.C. from all over the country, and stormed the capital of the United States of America. Numerous outlets began asking, “How did this happen?” But the more important question for organizers is, “Why can’t we pull off a huge display of people power like that?” This training will analyze the digital organizing efforts of the January 6th coordinators, highlighting key strategies that should be integrated into our own organizing, as well as where we can be even better than our adversaries.

Led by: Grace Guber

Inclusive & Accessible Campaigns

This workshop will help you and your team bring disability justice best practices into the nuts and bolts of your campaign work. From ensuring your campaign’s culture is welcoming and safe for disabled staff & volunteers, to ensuring your voter outreach is accessible and resonant with disabled voters, we’ll discuss common missteps, as well as recommendations for designing an inclusive campaign from start to finish. More accessible campaigns mean higher voter turnout and a better chance of winning! Learn more about our Inclusive Campaign Guide at https://www.inclusivecampaigns.org/

Led by: Dessa Cosma

Vote Run Lead's 90 Days of Action

If you’re seeking an accessible way to prepare to run for office (and win!), 90 Days of Action offers a proven curriculum that has empowered thousands of women to earn seats in their state legislatures or other roles in government. Vote Run Lead’s signature training outlines 30 specific political actions you can accomplish within just 90 days to: improve your general knowledge of the political ecosystem; reach a better understanding of your specific political community; accelerate growing your political networks; and gain the confidence you need to commit to campaigning (and winning!). This course is a perfect starting point for women just beginning their political journey or already taking their first steps toward a seat in the statehouse.

Led by: Erin Vilardi, Lea Webb

Taming Trolls on Social Media

These days, every campaign needs an online presence. However, the more time and energy candidates invest in social media, the more likely it is that they will have to contend with trolls. The conventional wisdom is that the best response is no response (AKA “Don’t Feed the Trolls”). This training provides a more sophisticated and effective alternative—Troll Taming—that will turn your interactions with those pesky trolls into a campaign asset.

Led by: Karin Tamerius

How to Fight for Our Communities While Caring for Ourselves

Movement building is hard work. It often requires extended sprinting, context-switching and heavy lifting. Being effective in our work requires us to dig deeply into issues that take an emotional toll. So how do we care for ourselves without lessening our commitment and our impact? How do we accomplish our goals without perpetuating grind culture? How do we do what it takes to build a more equitable society in the future without compromising on our commitment to equitable practices in the present? In this training, we’ll debunk the false choice between effective organizing and sustainability, confront common scenarios where this tension is present and cover practical tips for setting boundaries and caring for yourself as you organize.

Trainers: Kate Catherall, Gabby Seay

What to Do When Your Email Program Hits a Plateau

Does this sound like you? Your email program has been running for years and it’s a key source of revenue for your organization. You’re tasked with meeting prior records set during the Trump administration and even building on them, but you’ve exhausted your current audience and toolset. The only ideas you have left involve glitchy GIFs from 2011. This training will provide actionable strategies to help your organization break through the email plateau and elevate your email marketing efforts.

Trainers: Catherine Algeri, Janani Sreenivasan

Great Speakers Use Body Language To Be Heard—You Can Too!

We all want to be taken seriously. We want the public, the media, funders, and stakeholders to know how passionate, knowledgeable, and confident we are in our work. But why is it so hard to pull off when speaking in public? Even when you’ve finely crafted your message, those words on paper just aren’t cutting it. The secret is you. Specifically, your body, and what your body is saying—whether you realize it or not. Your eyes, your hands, how you hold yourself—all these communicate something. We all inhabit different bodies, and we’re here to say *any* body can master speaking, media hits, pitches and other public appearances by using specific tools, techniques and training. We will show you how.

Trainers: Arshad Hasan, Vicki Roush

Brains! How Social Psychology Makes Us Better Communicators

Did you know that the right narrative frame has more impact on people’s policy preferences than their political affiliation? Or that visual language makes it more likely that your audience will understand, retain and repeat information? We’ll talk through ways to up your communication game using key concepts from social psychology and neuroscience. Along the way, you’ll learn about framing, effective narratives, building a foundational “message” house, prebunking, social norms, and more—all in service of comms work that is both strategic and authentic to your cause.

Trainers: Zainab Chaudary

2023 Social Media News You Can Use

Since we gathered in Pittsburgh for NN22, the social media universe has undergone more significant changes than ever before. From the sale of Twitter and its further descent into chaos to the rise of recommendation engines and AI, the social media of 2023 remains an ever-evolving space that is critical to the work we do trying to make the world a better place for all. This training will take you through all of the changes to social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok and more in the past year and will share strategies and tactics to help you adjust to these changes.

Trainers: Beth Becker

Disinformation Station: How to Stop Racist and Misogynist Disinformation

Join us to learn how to define and identify mis-, dis-, and malinformation. In this training, we’ll cover how disinformation works to spread misogyny, racism, white supremacy and more. Participants will have an opportunity to engage in meaningful group conversations, breakout sessions and games to identify disinformation and practice tools to address and stop the spread. With a mind toward elections, this training will provide space for participants to think through potential disinformation scenarios and how to use their skills as organizers of any level to counter dangerous narratives at home, in community and online.

Trainers: Jaya Savita Aiyer, Jena Griswold

Cybersecurity in the Age of Remote Work: How to Protect Yourself and Your Org

The transition to remote work happened in a flash. Have your cybersecurity practices kept up? Join us for a discussion of how to secure yourself and your organization from the constantly-evolving threat landscape targeting remote organizations. We’ll cover the current threats targeting progressive organizations, how to protect against them and some other actionable tech tips to make your digital life easier and more secure.

Trainers: Mike Marotti

Run to Win at EMILYs List: Online Organizing a State and Local Candidate Pipeline

Run to Win at EMILYs List is a national recruitment and training campaign focused on helping Democratic pro-choice women around the country run for office—and win. Since 2017, more than 68,000 women have come to us ready to run, win, and change the world. Learn how EMILYs List supports those candidates with an online community, a free online Training Center, and an SMS program just for candidates through Hustle. This session will highlight how to increase engagement in your community with easily accessible tools and an effective messaging strategy.

Led by: Samantha Bauman

GOTVax: Lessons Learned from Doing Public Health "Campaign-Style"

GOTVax applied common electoral strategies and tools such as phones, canvassing, P2P text and storytelling to get Black & Brown folks vaccinated—and ended up coming up with new approaches that increased engagement levels and expanded our audiences. Join us as we share how we altered traditional grassroots strategies to empower and mobilize in spaces that usually only engage in one-way.

Trainers: Jodie Easley, José Macias, Claire Whitman

Level Up Your Data: Making Dashboards Everyone Wants to Use

The key to building dashboards isn’t data—it’s digital strategy, teamwork and a bit of coding patience. In this training, we’ll cover what it takes to create a data and analytics program, including how to identify KPIs and metrics from your digital goals, code dashboards from your KPI and metrics and create accessible dashboards everyone can use. Knowing how to create dashboards is especially useful for teams that don’t have a lot of capacity to consistently navigate spreadsheets and pivot tables but remain steadfast in making data-driven decisions and seeing how a program is doing in real-time. We’ll cover the basics of creating an efficient data infrastructure, as well as demo tools like Cluvio, Figma and Action Network.

Trainers: Vanessa Butterworth, Harold Moore

Relational Organizing: Base-Building and Off-Year Organizing

Relational organizing is grounded in organizing with the people you know and with whom you have an existing relationship. In this training, we will create a frame of organizing for your base-building period and times when elections are not your focus. You’ll learn how to define the elements and conditions necessary to build a successful volunteer relational program and when incentivized programs may be appropriate. You’ll also have a chance to workshop challenges and roadblocks as a group.

Trainers: Mayte Aldrett, Dima Alhesan

Ready for Take-Off: Growing Your Mobile List

If you’re looking to build your mobile list, then this is the training for you! We’ll cover various strategies to add new subscribers to your texting program in and how to keep them engaged. Adding new subscribers to email programs for many feels like second nature. How can we work towards making mobile second nature as well? We’ll go through adding the ask for mobile to various digital channels many orgs already operate in, testing your messaging and how to incorporate your learnings going forward all while keeping new subscribers engaged.

This session is sponsored by Upland Mobile Commons.

Trainers: Michelle Fredrickson, Brittany Riley

Is This True? How to Debunk Abortion Disinformation

As the abortion legal landscape shifts, anti-abortion actors are increasingly seizing the opportunity to spread disinformation to confuse and scare patients away from seeking abortions. This training will first help to define misinformation and disinformation, talk about what makes a piece of disinformation particularly convincing, and train attendees on identification, prevention and best practices to intervene both on and offline.

Trainers: Taryn Abbassian, Sawyeh Maghsoodloo

Epic Fail: What We Can Learn from Things that Truly Did Not Work

We spend a lot of time talking about experiments that worked, but what about everything that failed epically? We spend almost no time sharing what we learned from the things that did not work. We can learn so much from our failures. Let’s gather as many organizers as possible, break off into groups by topic (SMS, email, field, fundraising, etc) and talk about what failed, epically. This will ensure that your fellow organizers do not spend their time and money on tactics you already know won’t produce results. Awards will be provided to those with the most epic failures.

Trainers: Debra Cleaver

How the Design and Practice of Simulations Can Guide Your Strategy

This training will explore the design and practice of complex simulations, a tool for progressive movement organizations in campaigns and crises. The principle of simulations is simple: participants are asked to play a role within a specific imagined context and under defined rules. This same basic principle applies to kids playing Dungeons & Dragons in the basement or four-star generals playing war games at the Pentagon. In this training, we will play out a simulation of a climate-focused legislative advocacy campaign, and then analyze how design and facilitation choices in simulations can generate useful strategic guidance, deeper relationships among partners and pathways to challenge assumptions.

Trainers: Gabe Tobias

Punchlines with a Point: How to Use Humor to Make Your Message Heard

Generation after generation, reactionaries have declared the death of comedy and pegged progressive activism as the culprit (albeit disguised as “political correctness”). As progressive speechwriters, published humorists and veterans of the political comedy world, Chandler Dean and Sarah Gruen have it on good authority: comedy is alive and well. If anything, as activists and leaders seek to cut through the noise and move people to action, it’s crucial to understand why humor matters, and how to use it. In this training, we’ll break down the basic principles of humor writing, and discuss go-to tips for penning jokes that resonate. We’ll tie it together with a joke-writing exercise that recreates the free-wheeling fun of a writer’s room.

Trainers: Chandler Dean, Sarah Gruen

Nothing About Us Without Us: Building Inclusive Power in the Midwest

Everyone wants to build power for the issues nearest and dearest to their heart, but is the journey and process to building that power typically inclusive? Traditionally, no. Time and time again, the best intentions to build power and fight for what’s right miss the mark. Voices are continually left out of key conversations, which in turn results in wasted efforts and slows momentum for change. Join us to discuss ways to build true power in a way that includes and is led by the right voices. You’ll learn how to build authentic, non-transactional relationships for stronger coalitions and better outcomes.

Trainers: Joane Booth, Londell Thomas

Solidarity Across Differences: Organizing When We Disagree

In 2022, Maurice Mitchell of Working Families Party wrote a piece entitled “Building Resilient Organizations.” It highlighted several challenges in progressive movements, including “a righteous refusal to engage with people who do not already share our views and values.” Many progressives agree that this is a problem—we need broader movements to win, after all—but how to engage with people outside of our core base while still fighting for the future we want can feel elusive. In this training, participants will gain practical skills for having tough conversations and broadening progressive movements. We will explore the strategic importance of this issue and create space for participants to practice new skills in real-time.

Trainers: Elyssa Feder, Harita Iswara

Engaging High Potential Audiences Online: A Latino Gamer Case Study

Whether deploying targeted ads, or running distributed organizing campaigns, we need a deep understanding of our audience in order to engage with them in authentic ways for mobilization. In this training, participants will learn about creating campaigns that use well-informed audience analysis to define and better target high potential audiences by learning about research into gamers. Through a case study about innovative research seeking to understand how gamers perceive and make judgements around belonging and community, participants will learn how the findings were deployed for a GOTV ad campaign ahead of the 2022 elections aimed at engaging young Latino men, a population at risk for right-wing radicalization.

Trainers: José Muñoz

Join Forces, Build Power! Compliance Rules Nonprofit Coalitions Need to Know

Working in coalition is one of the best ways to build power and engage effectively in the public policy process. However, nonprofits need to be aware of the rules governing organizations with different tax-exempt statuses and how they impact coalition efforts. This workshop will explain how different types of nonprofits can work together to maximize their advocacy through lobbying, voter education, outreach and more—all while staying in compliance with the law. Participants will walk away with a solid understanding of how 501(c)(3)s, 501(c)(4)s, unions and political organizations can work together.

Trainers: Susan Finkle Sourlis, Quyen Tu

Breaking through the Noise: How to Write the Best Fundraising Emails

The training covers email fundraising best practices and the fundamentals of writing a really good fundraising email—including the hook, the ask and tactics to strengthen the ask. We’ll examine rhetorical devices and how to use ethos, pathos and logos to write a salient fundraising ask. We will also cover how to analyze the success of a fundraising email using basic CRM and ActBlue data. After a presentation with case studies, participants will break into small groups to undergo an email-writing simulation, wherein they will practice writing an email and analyzing email data.

Trainers: Sophie Ota

Birddog Nation: Re-Ignited

Birddogging is one of the most effective activist tactics in the toolbox! Birddogging is the activist tactic of putting a policymaker on the spot—in person, in public, and hopefully on camera—with inescapable, bullet-proof questions that win the room. This training will provide you with skills on how to ask the right questions, how to build a crew of birddoggers, and birddogging an event from start to finish. Join us to learn all about how to use this activist tool as we approach 2024.

Trainers: Brianni Davillier

Dialing for Success: Unleashing Proven Strategies for Improved Contact Rates

Is your campaign looking to significantly increase its contact rates through proven techniques? Then this training session is for you. With over 10 years in the political communications industry, we cover THE BEST ways you can leverage your outreach technology. Amplify your contact rates, captivate supporters, and maximize results with the power of phonebanking, texting, and relational organizing.

This session is sponsored by Callhub.

Led by: Sam Briggs

Don’t Be Spam: Building Broadcast Text Programs that Last

Each election cycle our phones are bombarded with texts. Too often, SMS campaigns lead to subscriber burnout, high opt-out rates and low levels of engagement. But with the proper strategy, you can use your broadcast text program to build deep relationships with your subscribers, gaining their trust and securing long-term engagement with your audience. This training will focus on ways to create an authentic voice for your SMS campaigns, examples of creative and effective tactics, and questions to consider when developing your text program. These strategies can be helpful whether you are a texting beginner or looking to revamp your existing program.

Trainers: Lloyd Cotler, Annie Rosenthal

Manager Confessions: Challenges and Lessons Learned from the Frontlines

“If you’re comfortable while you’re doin’ it, you’re probably doin’ it wrong.” If you scoured every Ted Lasso episode for lessons on management, this session is for you. Experienced managers will talk about their biggest challenges from the last year, what they learned, and the importance of management as a skill set—not just a job title. Then we’ll have space to discuss challenges and concerns in your own management jobs. Whether you’re new to management or have been in a role for years, this session will provide a safe space to discuss your questions and challenges with other managers.

Trainers: Malinda Frevert, Nicole Lewis, Alejandra Montoya-Boyer, Yumhee Park

Are You Prepared? A Simulation on Crisis Communication

Even for an experienced communications staffer, responding to a major crisis can be trying. How do you ensure you can not only respond to the crisis, but shape the media narrative productively? Progressive advocates and community leaders should prepare to encounter unexpected situations that necessitate engaging in public conversation and change how people approach their issues. This is an experiential workshop: we’ll guide participants through a step-by-step simulation of a crisis. Participants will walk away with a practical understanding of how they can plan their own responses to crises and answer their ED’s question “what do we say?”

Trainers: Firdaus Arastu, Lenai Johnson

The Dos and Don’ts of Rebuilding Your Org's Website

Rebuilding your organization’s website is a timely and costly affair, but it’s a crucial step in maintaining legitimacy and telling the story of your evolving organization. We’ll take you through the steps of building buy-in from leadership, creating an RFP, choosing a vendor and ultimately building a site that makes a compelling case for your organizing efforts.

Trainers: Ralph Medley

Equitable Hiring Strategies for Progressive Groups

Building on Progressive Pipeline’s work to recruit and support underrepresented political staffers, we’ll share actionable best practices to build equitable and effective hiring processes. You’ll learn how to write great job descriptions, get them in front of the right candidates and screen applications equitably. Whether you’re an HR professional, an organizational leader or an operations staffer, you’ll leave with tools you can implement to build a team that reflects the diversity of the progressive movement. If you’re looking for practical strategies to drive DEIJ at your organization, this training is for you!

Trainers: Michael Michaelson, Shripal Shah

Illusions of Ubiquity: Creative Digital Advertising for Campaigns and Advocacy

This training will explore a range of creative ways political and advocacy campaigns use digital advertising in the real world today. We’ll examine how ads can help with testing, fundraising, persuasion, recruiting, mobilization, GOTV and more. We’ll dig into questions including: What is addressable advertising and what are its limits? How can digital ads help a fundraising email perform better? How can they help you build a messaging strategy, or turn out the right voters? What options lie beyond Facebook and Google? How can careful targeting help stretch a thin budget? And, how do you create an “illusion of ubiquity”? We’ll dive into these topics and more, inviting participants to share their own creative digital advertising experiments.

Trainers: Colin Delany

Conversational AI and SEO for Changing Hearts and Minds

What if you could be more effective at reaching people earlier in their persuasion window at the exact moment they needed it? After a friend shared a piece of disinformation? Or as they look for answers after a major event? Learn how to leverage conversational AI and SEO to influence people during moments of personal persuasion windows while defeating disinformation and oppositional narratives that often dominate online spaces. We have the opportunity to leverage available tools and tech to make a significant difference in fighting the spread of disinformation and fascism by influencing the content and answers that people are consuming in the moments in which they’re most likely to be persuaded.

Trainers: Britt Bischoff

Federal Judges 101: Advocating for Good Judges from Pipeline to Confirmation

Now more than ever, we’re seeing the impact federal judges have on our day-to-day lives—and why it’s so important that we put as many great judges on the federal bench as possible who represent the diversity of our movements. But the federal judicial nominations process is weird and wonky, and it can feel hard to figure out where the key moments are to engage—and even harder to figure out how to get your people excited about the prospect or to ultimately ensure your movement is represented in Biden’s nominations. Building on decades of experience in the field, we’ll walk you through every step of the judicial nomination process and outline key opportunities and methods for engaging your community in the fight for fair courts.

Trainers: Cedric Lawson, Keith Thirion

Crafting a Persuasive Message: Using Rapid Pre-testing to Iterate Quickly

More than 60% of political campaign budgets are spent on advertising. Unfortunately, we struggle to know whether our message actually persuades. Many campaigns rely on social media metrics to get feedback, but these only measure clicks and shares, which is not the same as persuasion. In this training, we will teach you about the differences between pre/post-testing, A/B testing and RCT testing. Then we’ll show you how to use RCT rapid pre-testing to develop a persuasive message. Attendees will break into small groups to craft messages to respond to a Republican attack, utilizing race class narrative and other messaging tools. We will then launch a rapid pre-test of the messages and send results out to participants the following day.

Trainers: Taylar Harrington, Jason Toups

Creating Impactful Livestream Events that Center Accessibility and Language Justice

Lights…camera…propel your base of supporters to action! Livestreaming your next organizing meeting, training or event is an essential part of digital outreach, whether it be on your website, YouTube, TikTok or Instagram Live. Join us to learn quick, easy tricks to make amazing graphics and animations and produce a livestream that people want to watch while also boosting engagement, potentially raising dollars, and growing your base. We’ll cover everything from choosing the best platform and equipment to meet your needs, to ensuring that the accessibility and language justice needs of your audience are centered from the start. We’ll also do a Q&A and share practical tips we have learned for both live actions and pre-planned events.

Trainers: Bob Bland, Jeronimo Saldana

Using Time-tested Tactics to Evaluate and Boost Your Organizing

It’s no secret that organizing is hard work. Talking with people, creating relationships, and building leaders is what has, and will continue to, advance our movement. We’re at a pivotal moment where we know the importance of high-attention, short-term events like elections, voter registration pushes, and Census outreach. Our challenge is molding these moments into long-term power-building opportunities for our communities. This training will cover the basics of the “leaderful” organizing model—including assessments, one-on-ones and more—and how to bring them all together into an effective, power-building organizing program that identifies and develops leaders to help scale progressive movements.

Trainers: Harry Marino, Seth Pinckney

Engagement Systems to Break Silos

Struggling with low engagement? Supporters not sticking around? Inter-team or inter-campaign conflict? Struggling to scale? Caught between too many tech tools? Data all over the place? Campaigner, technologist, and network weaver Jay Carmona has seen it all, and has created a simple diagramming and planning process that puts deep supporter engagement back at the center of both digital and organizing programs. We’ll learn how to walk in our supporters’ shoes and how to design a scaled journey forward that will narrow our plans, unite our teams, focus our tech, and inform our data architecture. Get ready for a participatory, visually-driven process that is built to work at all levels of an organization.

Trainers: Jay Carmona

Social Media: How to Slay and Not Flop

Learn how to utilize social media in a strategic, effective and not cringey way. How does one communicate and more importantly, garner engagement on platforms on Instagram vs Twitter? Is it worth investing time into understanding opportunity on emerging platforms like TikTok? What is BeReal and should I be using it? The online space is continuously evolving and the way we use it should too. Participants from this panel will come away with the knowledge of how to be creative, authentic and harness the power of online platforms.

Trainers: Annie Wu Henry, Amelia Montooth

Data Storytelling: Building Your Messages with Data

What if you could use your data to better inform your creative campaigns? Content is most impactful when its strategy is built around a deep understanding of your audience. But, outreach strategy teams often struggle to plan around this complete picture and never fully realize the potential of their comms. Many communications professionals have an understanding of how to measure content performance with data but not necessarily how to leverage data in the development of their message. During this workshop, we’ll explore how teams plan audience experiences, and how to use marketing tools to maximize engagement. We’ll dive into use cases and how systems integrations can support those goals and leverage advanced capabilities like automation.

Trainers: Stefan Byrd-Krueger

Bridging the Gap Between Impacted Families and Community Activists

Heart-wrenching murders have sparked protests across the country. The need to eradicate state-sanctioned violence is at an all-time high, and developing a coalition of impacted families and grassroots groups is the order of the day to eradicate state-sanctioned violence. In this training, we’ll discuss how to empower and heal our communities impacted by police violence and how to affect policy change as a coalition that shares resources, information, and campaign strategy.

Trainers: Cat Brooks, George Galvis, Cephus "Uncle Bobby" Johnson

Stand and Deliver: Email Deliverability, Sender Reputation and You

Deliverability is the most important facet of any email program. You can have the smartest strategy, the most impactful creative and the most compelling ask; but none of that will matter if your email goes straight into the spam folder. But having a strong email sender reputation is harder than ever, especially with spam filtration becoming more rigorous, strenuous and algorithmic. How do you build and maintain a strong email sender reputation? How even is sender reputation determined? Does your CRM matter? Does your sender domain? What are some proven strategies to make sure your most impactful emails get to where they’re needed when they need to get there? This training will answer all of those questions—and more.

Trainers: Audrey Glaser, Damien Shirley

From Lead Ads to Outreach: List Building Using Meta Ads and Zapier

Running digital ads on Meta is one of the most cost-effective ways to grow your list and begin moving your audience from online to offline action. But too often, as organizers and campaigners, we get stuck in the weeds trying to keep data organized and follow up quickly, especially when we’re on a tight budget. In this ads-to-outreach crash course, we’ll cover first how to create easy signup forms with ads to help you generate the right leads for your campaign, how to design and move your leads with Zapier into your data system or an easy-to-use spreadsheet template to help your team manage follow-up and visualize data, and how to do effective outreach for your new leads.

Trainers: Giovanni Bravo Ruiz, Tamara Lunan

Civic Engagement Workshop: Identifying Challenges and Solutions in Organizing

Successful organizing work has challenges—from voter turnout to down-ballot drop-off to volunteer recruitment. We need to address these challenges if we want to keep winning elections. In this hands-on workshop, participants will break out into small groups to ideate creative solutions to chronic civic engagement challenges, with an eye towards scalability, impact and cost-effectiveness. We’ll break down problems to focus on the barriers most amenable to creative solutions. This workshop is the place to explore ideas that previously seemed impossible. Participants will leave the session with new strategies to try in their communities.

Trainers: Ani Kelemdjian, Andrea Vasquez

2024 Starts Here: Supercharge Your Digital Fundraising with ActBlue and Sophie Ota

When we hear ’23, we think ’24. Join ActBlue and Sophie Ota, former Digital Director for John Fetterman’s historic U.S. Senate campaign, to examine recent digital trends, dive into crafting a strong fundraising ask, and explore fundraising tips and best practices. Participants will leave with an understanding of how to supercharge their digital fundraising programs for the 2024 cycle and beyond.

This session is sponsored by ActBlue.

Led by: Sophie Ota, Ruby Sarron

Your New AI Intern: How to Navigate Chat GPT for Texting

Who is texting me? Are they even human? Does it matter? Sure, texting is fast, efficient and cost-effective, but who is on the other end? Join us to learn how Chat GPT can change your texting skills, habits and campaigns. We’ll cover what AI tools are and how to use Chat GPT to your progressive advantage as well as tips and tricks to keep your message fresh and relevant.

Trainers: Lloyd Cotler, Tamilla Mirzoyeva

How to Build a Powerful Deep Canvass Program

Deep canvassing is the only field tactic that has been found, through extensive study, to change voter attitudes and behavior long-term, both in person and on the phone. Join us to learn more about the latest in deep canvassing and to receive training on the aspects of how to build a power-building and persuasion program. We’ll share key case studies that demonstrate how deep canvass programs have been built to create change and build power on a variety of issues and contexts.

Trainers: Drew Frye, Heather Schmucker

Winning Jobs Narrative: Using Values Based Economic Messaging to Win

Working people decide who holds power in this country. The existential challenge facing Democrats is that we’ve been losing strength with these voters, particularly non-college voters, cross-race and geography. The Winning Jobs Narrative Project, launched in 2021, focused on creating effective, values-based economic messages that increase support for policies and candidates. Based on our research, we have created an easy-to-implement guide on how to communicate effectively with working people. We’ll go over the guide including specific messaging examples and a narrative checklist for you to implement in your own work.

Trainers: Bobby Clark, Melissa Morales

Prioritizing Accessibility in Advocacy

Prioritizing accessibility is critical to addressing ableism in both our advocacy and the systems we are working to change. People with disabilities make up 1 of 4 adults in the United States. But our country’s systems of communication, transportation, work and democracy were too often built without disabled people in mind and create barriers that exclude millions in our communities. Join this training on accessibility in advocacy to learn practical and meaningful ways to make your work more accessible and inclusive of the diverse disability community.

Trainers: Alexia Kemerling

2023 Social Media Platforms: Beyond the Big 5

With the increased chaos in the Twitter world, it seems like every week new social media platforms are appearing on the scene. Which ones should you be using? How do you even decide which to try? Join us for this discussion of how to choose which platforms to prioritize—and get some useful information about the fediverse platforms (aka Mastodon), BeReal, T2 and more.

Trainers: Beth Becker, Rosemari Ochoa

Campaign Disability: Making Your Social Media and Comms Accessible

Every day, progressive organizations and campaigns craft great content to reach folks in their community and fight for change. But, this content is too often not created with accessibility in mind. In this session, we will approach accessibility in communications through language, color and images. We will look at how all three come together in social media and work together to design a social media tool kit that is accessible to all audiences.

Trainers: Jessica Olson

Centering Race to Build Narrative Power

As both progressive & regressive movements have shown, we only win by strategically (re)claiming, deploying and making common our narrative of both problem and solution. Arguably, progressive movements don’t always have strong processes for cohesive online/offline engagement. In this training, we’ll explore how to strategically advance a progressive, intersectional narrative deeply connected to and working with communities to shift the political and ideological environments toward long-term structural change.

Trainers: Dr. Charlene Sinclair

The Long Game: How to Organize and Win in Rural America

Too often, rural races (especially in red states) are under-resourced because they’ve been deemed “unwinnable” in one cycle. But we need to look at the long game. In this training, we’ll discuss how to develop and deploy messages that resonate and fundraising techniques that work in rural communities. We’ll cover how to identify progressive organizers and create a boots-on-the-ground approach for reaching rural voters. We’ll also talk about how to keep going in rural America if winning in one cycle doesn’t seem possible.

Trainers: Jess Piper

Digital Ads from Soup to Nuts: Persuasion and Mobilization Campaigns that Win

Working on digital advertising can feel like playing whack-a-mole with new formats, channels and restrictions every cycle. In this training, we will review the benefits and limitations of the top channels and formats; discuss how to use audience research to build media plans and how to design creative that gets results; go over effective QA processes and show you how to report and optimize once your ads are running. We’ll also offer best practices from elections up and down the ballot and across the country. Every participant, whether they are “hand-on-keyboard” executors or strategists, will come away with a better understanding of what questions to ask and what to look for in strong digital ad campaigns.

Trainers: A.J. Carrillo, Michael OMeara

Golden Moments: Working with the Media to Enhance Your Campaign

Working with the media at the right place at the right time can take a golden moment to the next level and raise community awareness of your campaign in a massive way. In this training, you will learn strategies to communicate with the media, develop relationships and keep the media engaged with your campaign. We’ll show you how to create an effective media advisory and press release. You’ll also learn and practice ways to communicate your message to the media when you are interviewed for TV, radio, online or print media. This training is for those who are new to working with the media as well as experienced media relations practitioners.

Trainers: Laila Dalton, Bill Whitmire

How to Build Your Email List Ethically and Sustainably

Every campaign and issue-advocacy organization needs to recruit new donors, supporters and volunteers; and having an effective and ethical list-building strategy can save your team time, energy and money. In this training, we’ll discuss effective tactics you can employ to build your email list ethically and sustainably, including digital advertising, social media, internet communities, online actions, data modeling and even signup notebooks at your reception desk. We’ll also cover how to avoid common pitfalls like spam, list swaps and passive storytelling.

Trainers: Will Easton, Craig Grella

How to Organize Online (Even if You Don't Want to)—and Win

In 2020, every facet of U.S. life changed and organizers were forced to take their offline efforts online. Three years later, where have things landed? In this session we’ll follow the work of ACCE-LA (The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment–Los Angeles), a grassroots organization that was forced to go digital in 2020. Despite all odds, they tripled their membership, elected their people into office and won a city-wide eviction moratorium. This case study will trace the journey this member-led organization took from in-person, direct actions to flooding public comment spaces on Zoom, organizing communities on WhatsApp, and creating digital spaces that support real relationships and wield enough force to move decision-makers.

Trainers: Joe Delgado, Shireen Nori

How Digital Organizing Can Turn Community Organizers into Community Influencers

While a lot has been said about what happened during the most recent midterm elections in Texas, we have not heard enough about what grassroots organizers in Harris County did to galvanize the second-largest midterm election turnout in 30 years. Join us to learn four critical digital organizing tactics that will turn community organizers into community influencers to make a historic impact in the next election.

Trainers: Jess Moore Matthews, Chris Valdez

Standing in the Gap: Organizing Joy When Policy Fails

When policy fails to support thriving communities, particularly in neighborhoods being gentrified, how can social justice organizations step in? Using a case study in East Liberty, Pennsylvania, we’ll talk about how to center joy and community in the midst of efforts to displace and exclude marginalized people from changing neighborhoods and communities.

Trainers: Jasmine Green

Beyond Land Acknowledgement: Moving from Optical Allyship to Action

After hearing a land acknowledgment statement, do you ever find yourself asking, “Now what?” Land acknowledgment is growing in popularity, yet it often functions as optical allyship. Since releasing a guide to land acknowledgment in 2019, Native Governance Center (NGC) has received hundreds of inquiries from people wanting help. Most of these inquiries have focused on verbiage, rather than action steps for supporting Indigenous communities. In response, NGC created a new action-planning approach. In this session, you’ll learn why land acknowledgment can be problematic. You’ll engage in small and large group activities to learn how to design meaningful action steps. Finally, you’ll have a chance to begin creating your own action plan.

Trainers: Wayne Ducheneaux, Jessica Glidden

Effective Ways to Leverage Generative AI Tools for Your Digital Campaign

The exponential development of Generative AI technology over the past year, has brought about a lot of questions about the impact of this new technology and how to prepare for it. This training session is focused on helping progressive organizers at non-profits and campaigns navigate these questions and better understand how they can use these technologies to their advantage.

More specifically the training will focus on:

  • How do you properly evaluate an AI-powered tool for a specific use case in politics & campaigns?
  • What are the best practices of integrating AI in your digital organizing workflow
  • How can you develop efficient prompts for a large generalist AI model (e.g. ChatGPT, StableDiffusion, DALL E-2)?

Led by: Hillary Lehr, Tudor Mihailescu

Email Masterclass: It's Still the Killer App

Whether your community of supporters is five thousand or five million strong, email remains by far the most cost-effective and powerful digital channel at your disposal to inform and engage your base. The basics of how to run a good email program haven’t changed a lot over the years, but new developments—such as Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection, malware screening software, and the rise of unethical actors in the fundraising and activism space—are forcing us to develop new strategies. I’ll share lessons learned—about list growth, deliverability, messaging, testing, fundraising and more—from more than 18 years experience managing email programs for CREDO Mobile, Bernie 2016, NextGen, Vote.org, Mozilla Foundation and People for the American Way.

Led by: Will Easton

From Training to Trending: How to Build and Activate a Team of Trusted Messengers

Whether you’re trying to get out the vote, invite people to join a rally or collecting petition signatures, a grassroots social media team that is inclusive of all communities is your key to success. By learning how to build, train and activate a diverse team of trusted messengers to mobilize their personal networks using our tried and true best practices, you can reach an exponential number of people you won’t find on your own targeted list. Creating a low barrier to entry volunteer role for your supporters not only grows your base, it expands the communities you are able to reach. Let us show you how to build your team using recruitment tactics, volunteer trainings and ways to distribute messaging toolkits.

Trainers: Gabriela Diaz, Lisa Hendricks

Someone Always Calls the Cops: When Karen or Chad Dials 911 on Your Canvassers

Canvassing is protected First Amendment free speech, but that doesn’t stop residents from calling the cops on your team for canvassing while Black or Brown. And, unfortunately, it doesn’t usually stop the cops either. In this session, we’ll share three steps to support canvassers and keep the campaign strong and safe, without reverting to savior mode.

Trainers: Mira Weinstein

Religiously Unaffiliated: Understanding and Engaging the "Nones"

Religiously unaffiliated Americans, or the “nones,” are the fastest growing religious demographic in the nation—now representing nearly one-third of Americans and nearly 40% of millennials and Gen Z. But this population is stigmatized, overlooked and misunderstood despite its enormous potential as a voting constituency. Learn everything you need to know about the nones: their very diverse demographics; their voting behavior; how to reach and activate them; and how to be more inclusive of this constituency, including how to avoid common missteps and pitfalls that further marginalize them.

Trainers: Sarah Levin, Juhem Navarro-Rivera

Interactive Activism: How to Create Fun and Engaging Workshops

Training and educating are key components of organizing and advocacy work; but to keep organizers and volunteers coming to your events, they need to be fun and engaging. But how do you make trainings fun? How do you move away from panels and lectures and into engaging, thought-provoking, interactive sessions? During this training, which we promise will be fun, we’ll walk you through climate education examples of how to meaningfully incorporate games, music, art and other activities into your events. We’ll share both in-person and virtual options.

Trainers: Alaura Carter, Jill Leaness

Small and Steady Wins the Race: Microstorytelling for Campaigns

When amassing content for the long haul, it’s time to think smaller. Powerful, memorable stories don’t require massive monitors, video shoots and thousands of dollars: instead, mobilize 100 supporters to tell a tale in 15-second segments. Not every piece of content needs to belabor the issues. You can create tweets, teasers and small pitches that capture the mood, spirit and flavor of your campaign. Microstorytelling is scalable, sustainable, phone-based and makes digital organizing a group effort rather than a losing battle for a few tired staffers. Just as we ask folks to chip in small amounts like $5 or $10, we should feel comfortable asking them to dedicate 15, 30, or 60 seconds to amplify your impact.

Trainers: Janani Sreenivasan

Fundraising for Campaigns, an Overview

Your campaign needs money, and a lot of it. Every campaign does. Money is what powers our message, helps reach voters, pays organizers, and sustains your campaign. In this session we will cover the best practices and newest techniques and technology for campaign fundraising. Every participant will leave with a better understanding of everything from call time, events, texting, bundling, budgeting and more. Participants will hear from prominent progressive fundraisers, who have worked with notable progressive candidates and organizations such as Rep. Cori Bush, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, Justice Democrats, and more.

Led by: Connor Farrell, Jacob Sher