Organizing New York takes place March 22-24 at the United Federation of Teachers, 52 Broadway. Register here. A full schedule for Friday and Saturday is here.
Clik here to view.
It's understandable really. New tools are coming out all the time, new research pours out with ever-changing best practices, and new people come up through the ranks with the unique lessons they want to share.
Organizing New York fits in this landscape by working with grassroots organizations and making sure our offerings match what they want, rather than serving as a vehicle to sell you products or services. Our larger purpose - beyond some session you find useful - is to create communities of practice that cross the silos that litter the progressive landscape.
Doing better at organizing is a shared interest for many. But it's often a struggle to find someone in your own organization who has the answer to a small but nagging software question, a good canvassing checklist, or a vendor recommendation. Good communities of practice exist, and should spread, beyond our narrow issue areas, geographic focus, and constituency boundaries.
We hope you'll come to one or more days of Organizing New York not only to learn, teach, share and network, but also to see yourself as part of more communities of practice than you knew existed. Even if you only wanted to learn how to organize your sock drawer!
Three Tracks, Three Days
Our sessions are formally divided into three tracks: online organizing, civic engagement, and grassroots fundraising. Practically, many of them cross those boundaries - and thatâs on purpose. It's hard to pretend anymore that online tools and traditional organizing methodologies aren't so completely interwoven that you can't do one without the other.
Highlights
Software and Tech Training: Many of our organizations use NationBuilder, Salsa, CiviCRM, and the VAN. Our priority is to offer basic training sessions AND opportunities for more advanced folks to get help. Staff from NationBuilder and SalsaLabs are coming to the conference, and weâll have many experts around who can try and solve some of those harder questions.
Strategy and Tactics: What is digital strategy? How to campaign in low turnout elections? Can your organization run a successful crowdfunding campaign?
Fundraising: Most fundraising trainings in New York are geared towards foundation fundraising. We know that only about 12% of foundation funding goes to social justice groups. We need to create a funding base in our own communities. This track will offer some of the best experts in the region training on everything from building a volunteer fundraising group, running amazing events, building your online fundraising capacity to creating asking (and receiving) big gifts.
Racial Justice: Sometimes, tech-oriented conferences skew towards white dudes. But our mission is to advance all our causes, and to prioritize issues that impact low-income communities, communities of color, women and queer people. This means highlighting and foregrounding experts from grassroots communities and making sure the conference is accessible to everyone. This also means addressing racial justice explicitly in a session about grassroots fundraising for people of color and sessions on working with the Dominican, Puerto Rican and African American online communities. Weâre also happy to announce that some sessions will be offered in Spanish, with others having simultaneous interpretation, that we will have child-care throughout the entire conference. We are working in partnership with base-building communities from across New York City and the region to move this from an idea into reality.
Workshops from the Community: Our third day is also called Rootscamp. That means it is part of a New Organizing Institute tradition of putting on âunconferencesâ that feature workshops proposed by attendees that become participatory skill shares. We are using this page to solicit workshop proposals and to learn what the community values the most. Submit your proposal today, and on Sunday morning volunteers will assemble the dayâs agenda based on feedback from the participants.
Camp Wellstone: Politics, how does it work? Thatâs a question often asked by activists trying to master the detailed specifics of running an election campaign or winning victories on issues during and after election campaigns. Camp Wellstone participants will spend most of their time together, learning from professional trainers. This is a highly sought after training and registration will close soon. Camp Wellstone uses the same registration page, but you can learn more about them here as well.
Faith: We are also running a special session on Friday for organizers from the faith community. If this is of interest to you because your nonprofit has a religious or interfaith affiliation, or you work from a strong faith perspective - please contact us at ony@organizing20.org for more details. This session will only be open to those who have pre-registered for it.
Organizing New York takes place March 22-24 at the United Federation of Teachers, 52 Broadway. Register here. A full schedule for Friday and Saturday is here. A listing of approved sessions appears below, though it is subject to change.
There is more after the jump, but let's hear it for the great orgs that came together to put this on: NY Civic Engagement Table, New Organizing Institute, Working Families, Democracy for America, Organizing 2.0, Wellstone Action, Citizen Action NY, and our many sponsors and endorsing orgs from labor, Occupy Wall St., community organizing groups and candidates.