Toolkits & tactics

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These materials include helpful toolkits and tactics guides for a wide range of organizing activities, and training materials on organizing fundamentals. It includes the full 2013 OFA Organizing Manual, as well as guides on volunteer recruitment and management, earned media and digital organizing, managing coalition relationships, advocacy tactics guides, and grassroots fundraising

OFA Organizing Manual

This manual, written in 2013, covers essential elements of OFA—who OFA is, building strategic issue campaigns, OFA teams and chapters, methods for building capacity, and step by step guides.

Personal story

This training reviews the ‘why’ of a personal story, elements of the personal story, as well as the five-step formula for crafting it.

Connecting personal stories to issues

This training reviews how to use a personal story to talk to different audiences about issues that are important to them. By the end of this training, participants will understand why talking about issues is important and have a framework to tailor their story to different audiences.

Making a hard ask

This guide walks volunteers through the mechanics of a hard ask and the best practices for making one.

Recruiting and managing volunteers

These materials compile best practices for volunteer-to-volunteer recruitment and management.

One-on-one meetings

This session defines one-on-one meetings in an organizing context, discusses why one-on-one meetings are important, and what mechanics are operating with an effective one-on-one meeting.

Identifying and testing leaders

This training walks volunteer leaders through effective ways to develop other leaders in their community and how to identify skills and qualities that make effective leaders.

Letter to the editor

This guide discusses why LTEs are an important tool in issue organizing, the nuts and bolts of writing this type of letter, and getting it published.

Earned media

These materials cover what effective earned media event looks like, how to pitch it to the press, and what to do to amplify the coverage.

Photography Tips

You don’t need to be a professional photographer with a fancy camera to capture your events. Your camera phone combined with free apps are convenient and work well to capture the excellent photos you need to raise the visibility of your organizing online or in the media.

Digital organizing

These materials are designed to give organizers online skills for issue advocacy campaigns and community organizing.

Working with coalitions

This training covers the fundamentals of coalition relations: How to find coalition partners, what a table is, and how to hold a political one-on-one. Also included are the fundamental do’s and don’ts of working with partners.

Choosing advocacy tactics

This module and guide will walk participants through the issue ecosystem and how understanding what motivates elected officials in the context of an issue campaign.

How to host a signature drive

This guide explains the value of signature drives as a tactic to raise awareness and build support for an issue. It teaches volunteers the basics of preparing for a signature drive, best locations, how to recruit, and follow-up.

Congressional recess events

These materials walk a volunteer through the steps of different organizing congressional recess events.

Running meetings and trainings

These materials walk through the best practices of prep and follow-up while organizing a grassroots training.

Action planning sessions

This how-to walks through the basics of event planning: Why community action planning matters, how to get started, locking in logistics, and recruitment.

Phonebanking

These materials guide volunteers through components of a successful phonebank and why they are so important for an organizer.

Planning a grassroots fundraising event

These materials walk volunteers through creating and running a grassroots fundraising event.

Grassroots fundraising: Making the Hard Ask

These materials cover the ‘why’ of grassroots fundraising and the best practices of making a hard fundraising ask.

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