James is co-founder of the Change Agency and director of our Community Organising Fellowship.
Wise Democracy Card Decks
Printed card decks for the Wise Democracy Pattern Language (version 2.0) are now available for purchase in boxed sets with 96 pattern cards and educational inserts. They are backed up by an encyclopedic wise democracy website packed with methods and practical advice...
Why I’ve Started to Fear My Fellow Social Justice Activists
Nicole Mason reflects: “Callout culture. The quest for purity. Privilege theory taken to extremes. I’ve observed some of these questionable patterns in my activist communities over the past several years… If we as activists do not feel safe in our...
No Royal Road: Finding and Following the Natural Pathways in Advocacy Evaluation
As efforts at driving change become more diffuse, involve more actors, and have more transformational goals, we need a radically different approach to thinking about and assessing what effective advocacy looks like. Clear answers and simple tools are appealing, but...
Juggling many balls, many projects & many aspects of groups and businesses
How many balls do you juggle, and how well do you juggle them? Depending on how active each project is, the amount of structure needed varies. Robyn Clayfield’s blog explores 12 strategies to “nimbly and gracefully juggle all the projects, people and...
Running Effective Campaign Debriefs
Every campaign is a learning opportunity. Make the most of this by planning for the post-campaign period and setting up debriefs. Holly Hammond offers some useful tips for campaigners and facilitators…
The Commons Social Change Library
The new Commons Social Change Library recently launched online with hundreds of resources to support community action. The Commons contains articles, manuals, training materials, practical tips, podcasts and videos all in one handy online location. Topics include...
Our Wise Democracy Pattern Language
This is exciting. Tom Atlee and the Co-Intelligence Institute team have developed a terrific collection of 96 patterns they describe as… “features or design principles that we believe would show up repeatedly in a democracy characterized by collective...
Holly Hammond — Climate Community Care Bear (Interview)
Holly Hammond is a stalwart of the social activism community, but when she’s not on the baricades or on a march, she’s practising radical self-care, and helping others to do the same. Burnout is endemic in the activist community, but maybe it doesn’t...
Resources for Mindfulness at Work
It’s easy to be so concerned with what’s happening next that what’s happening now gets lost in the shuffle. This seems particularly true in this age of social media and handheld technology, which facilitate constant, nagging intrusions and demands for attention....
Why activists fail | Robert Burrowes
Robert Burrowes writes: “The foundation of any sound strategy… is a thorough understanding of the conflict. This means, most importantly, having a clear sense of the ‘big picture’… not just the detail of the issue on which you focus. Fundamentally,...
Nine common listening mistakes that sabotage your collaboration
Sarah Norton (Groupwork Centre) writes: Serious about leading or working collaboratively? Everyone you work with needs to know that their input is valid and valuable. Regardless of our situation in life, most of us want to feel heard. In fact, it requires conscious...
Five Tips for Building an Organization that Supports Movements
Phil Wilmot (ICNC) shares five tips derived from victories and shortcomings hoping they can “assist those walking similar paths and help progressive funders growing curious about resistance movements understand what to look for in movement-minded...
Weaving Successful Partnerships: When Funders, Evaluators, and Intermediaries Work Together
Funders who have ambitious goals to change large systems often create partnerships with intermediaries and evaluators to help realize their visions. But what does it take to effectively weave these partners together and position them for shared success? This new...
How we win | Book
Today’s new direct action campaigns require a new, down-to-earth guide to effective campaigning. George Lakey’s How We Win is that timely guide. The Women’s March of January 21, 2017 was estimated at four million people — the largest assembly of activist protest in...
The Burnout Generation – from shame to solidarity
Thank you Nick Taylor for sharing these reflections. Honest, hopeful and solution-oriented. “… If burnout is so widespread and systemic in our modern lives and work culture, then the shame and silence of burnout is preventing us from confronting and...
Women of colour in the nonprofit sector | New report
This Race to Lead report reveals that women of color encounter systemic obstacles to their advancement over and above the barriers faced by white women and men of color. Education and training are not the solution—women of color with high levels of education are more...
Measuring political will
A win often means getting the support of elected officials, and the Policymaker Rating method was designed to measure just that. This brief shares scenarios where this method was applied and modified to show what has worked (and what utterly failed). This resource is...
Critical path building – a different view
Critical path building allows campaigners to map a proposed campaign route and identify the key events, resource and time constraints and other dependencies which need to be taken into account as a milestone objective is approached. This level of analysis is essential...