Organizing is a high-pressure enterprise. So having a great team that really has each other’s back is critical to success. There are lots of steps to building a high-functioning team, but there’s one that we at Living Liberally take very seriously: Remember to have fun.

Why is gossiping destructive for your organizing? It's dishonest, doesn't accomplish any good, spreads quickly and breeds distrust. Gossiping about it will undermine your existing relationships, and poison the well so people won’t trust you in the future.

Organizing is busy work. It's easy to lose sight of motivators and lessons learned between managing staff or volunteers, reading horrible things the opposition is saying, or getting last-minute requests for emails, content updates, and whatnot. My solution? A simple Note to Self.

Filter is a tool for quickly analyzing a particular subset of your data. It is especially helpful when you want to evaluate what type of data cleaning you may need to do, find a smaller subset within a large data set, or to identify gaps in your data at a glance.

Live-tweeting an event sounds pretty daunting, but it’s actually pretty simple and fun, and a great way to stay relevant and maintain a strong presence on your followers’ feeds.

Have you ever tried to wing a 1:1 meeting? You probably pulled it off; but when it was over you knew you could have done better. Unfortunately, you don’t get a second chance to make that first impression. (I know, such a cliché! But still true.)

On a campaign, there’s a bloggable moment every single day. Keeping a blog relevant requires careful curating of content, knowing your audience and responding to what works and what doesn’t work.

If you find that you carry most of the "emotional weight" of ensuring that work you oversee is successful - including spotting what needs to be done and assigning work - you might need to give your staff members or volunteers more meaningful roles.

In my year at NOI, I've had the opportunity to match several talented digital strategists with organizations in need of talented people. Here are some tips I just offered our #BootCamp6 participants, but they apply to anyone looking for their first (or their tenth) job.

I have always been terrible at math. As an organizer, I've learned to love the numbers because I like to win, and if you want to win, you have to know your numbers. We invest a lot in the numbers for our work at CREDO Action, because the numbers give us power to make decisions based on what we need, what we know works, and where we want to go. Here's just one small example of why it's important to know the numbers.

Most online organizers are familiar with classic metrics to watch when sending mass emails: your open rate (how many people open an email), click rate (how many people click on one of your links in an email), and your action rate (how many people then complete the action). But there are more, perhaps better, numbers to watch.

Whether you're writing an email (or knocking on a door, or standing in front of a crowd) your ability to get someone to take action often depends on making a clear, confident ask. That can feel uncomfortable, right? But it's crucial to achieving your goal. Here's an example, not related to organizing, to illustrate my point.