Before we set them loose...

Are you disappointed at the growing quantity and slipping quality of the political/advocacy email filling up your inbox? Here's a chance to impact the next generation of online organizers -- before they get their fingers anywhere near the Send buttons of important progressive email lists.

During our upcoming training, we're dividing trainees into groups representing fictitious campaigns' Internet teams. Each night, they'll compete in campaign simulation exercises. On two of those nights, they'll produce email campaigns around a hot issue, a campaign crisis, or *maybe even* a fundraising deadline.

We would like to give our trainees the opportunity to send their emails to a live list so they can experience seeing real people read, click (or not click), and reply with feedback. It would be extraordinarily helpful if you would participate. There will be two days when you receive email (Monday, Feb. 27 and Thursday, Mar. 2). You'll get six emails each time, one for each trainee team.

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, will be to read all the emails, pick the one you think is most effective, and click the link inside to take action. Your click will be a vote for that email as the best of the bunch. (The link will go to a page that registers your choice -- but not a real donation or action page.)

To participate, please sign up at: http://neworganizing.com/testlist.php

We'll follow up with an email reporting on how the training went and what we learned as trainers too.  ¶ posted by Zack Exley @ 9:23 AM 0 comments links to this post  

NOI curriculum

Folks have been asking about our curriculum -- about just what it is we're teaching these new recruits. The online organizer curriculum is a work and process and the members of this first class are going to be our guinea pigs. We hope to start publishing presentations and other materials after this first training based on the feedback we get from the trainees. And then, as we support them through their first online organizer jobs, the idea is that we'll be able to constantly refine what "the Education of an Online Organizer" requires, and adjust our curriculum as needed.

At this training, we're going to have some of the most experienced online organizers, fundraisers, communicators and bloggers breaking down what they've learned in their work with organizations and campaigns. Many of these folks are the pioneers of this new field of online organizing. Here are just about all the topics we'll be covering in this packed week:

• Web Application Programming concepts
• Using a CMS & CRM
• Writing for emails (intensive writing workshop and several simulation exercises)
• Fundamentals of Direct Marketing and Grassroots Fundraising
• Email fundraising campaigns
• Internet field organizing tools and techniques
• Mass email technology and technique
• Concepts of Relational Databases
• Targeting and dealing with voter file data
• How to mock up ideas so that software developers can make them real
• Online ads and search optimization
• Blog politics
• Care and Feeding of Super Volunteers
• List building options and non-options
• Managing tensions between Communications and Internet departments

We're also having many sessions on traditional campaign topics. These include:

• Campaign planning and budget
• Field fundamentals
• Phone and Canvassing programs
• Research and Polling
• Message crafting
• Earned media and Paid media

  ¶ posted by Zack Exley @ 3:58 PM 0 comments links to this post  

NOI job fair: Friday, Mar. 3

Welcome! Our first weeklong training for online organizers is coming up in a couple weeks -- Feb. 24 to Mar. 3, in Washington DC.

I'm blown away by the quality of trainees we've got coming -- really surpassing all our expectations. We received more than 700 applications and could only take 40 because that's all our funding would allow. So many amazing people applied that this entering class could easily have been twice as big.

It's also been overwhelming too see so many people -- from both inside and outside of the online organizer community -- volunteer to put so much time into making this first training a success. Dozens of trainers have taken hours of busy work schedules to prepare brilliant sessions. Several vendors and consultants are donating their platforms and their staff's time. Susan Markham and Mary Hodge at Campaign Corps have been performing organizational and logistical miracles on a daily basis, teaching us how this kind of training is supposed to be done. Sujata Tejwani, who's a million trainings, is doing her best to keep us on schedule (despite enormous resistance on my part!) and making sure we end up with a high-quality professional curriculum. And Judith Freeman, has made this her second job.

Meanwhile, a lot of campaigns and orgs have been calling, asking how they can get a graduate of the program to be their Internet director or staffer. Well, we're going to have a job fair on the last day of the training, Friday, March 3 from 2:00 to 6:00 pm. Email us at info@neworganizing.com if someone from your org or campaign would like to come by.

  ¶ posted by Zack Exley @ 4:53 PM 0 comments links to this post