End of July 2010 Organizing Meeting Agenda
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Goals for this meeting:
- Debrief the summer pledge work
- Plan the August Congressional Recess including our August 10th rally
- Build our Council
Agenda outline (total time: 90 min.)
- Welcome and go around (10 min.)
- Review pledge work and debrief recent pledge events (15 min.)
- Discuss August congressional recess strategy and plan next tactics (40 min.)
- Council strengthening and building (20 min.)
- Wrap-up (5 min.)
Here is a detailed agenda for a 90 minute meeting. It's up to the facilitator and core group to plan the most effective agenda for your Council’s meeting, which may mean you need to change parts of this agenda.
1. Welcome and go-round (10 min)
- Welcome everyone, and ask folks to introduce themselves.
- Give a quick overview of the goals for the meeting, briefly review the agenda and ask for a note-taker and a time-keeper. (1 min.)
- Briefly re-cap your Council's recent organizing work, Other 98% launch events, community canvass, endorsements on the pledge. (2 min.)
- Go Around: What was your favorite thing about the Other 98% campaign so far? What was one moment where you felt like you were making an impact? (5 min.)
2. Review pledge work and debrief recent pledge events (15 min)
*If you have new people, you may just want to take a moment to say something like this: "Just to make sure we're all on the same page, the pledge is the tool we're using to put pressure on our members of Congress to fight corporate influence in our democracy. The pledge is also what we are using to build a grassroots movement around this issue–by canvassing community members, asking them to sign the pledge."
Review national results (5 min)
Here are some of the national results from the pledges so far:
- 2,748 MoveOn members stepped forward to deliver the pledge to 460 members of Congress.
- As of July 23rd, over 325,000 people have signed the pledge! The updated number can be found at fightwashingtoncorruption.org so check back for more updates.
- So far eight politicians have also signed the pledge:
David Segal (House candidate in RI-01)
Rep. Paul Hodes (NH-02 and Senate candidate)
Mac D'Alessandro (House candidate in MA-09)
Rep Stephen Lynch (MA-09)
Rep Grijalva (AZ-7)
Andrew Romanoff (Senate candidate in CO)
Chris Murphy (CT-5)
Debrief pledge events (10 min)
Suggested discussion prompts are below, but you may want to dig in on one or two of the questions. Do not let this section go too long. It is important for folks to give feedback, but you also need to move the agenda forward. If you have endorser/community/politician teams, you may want to consider breaking into those groups for a debrief.
Suggested Discussion Prompts:
- What went well with any recent pledge events? What led to our success in organizing the events?
- What was especially challenging? How did we overcome each challenge?
- What could have been better? How could we have organized together more effectively?
- As a Council, how did we get stronger? (More core members? New leaders trained in new skills? Did we move up in the Council rating system?) This month, how can we continue to strengthen our Council and build a stronger core group?
- How can we ensure that we have full participation in the Council? Are there any barriers to Council members' full participation?
- How did working with local partner organizations go, if we did so for this action? How can we continue to build local power?
- How are we continuing to follow up with potential endorsers to the pledge?
3. Discuss August congressional recess strategy and plan next tactics (40 min)
Review the August organizing story (5 min.)
The August congressional recess is an important opportunity to take our campaign to the next level with a massive grassroots campaign to pressure our elected officials and candidates for office to sign the "Fight Washington Corruption" pledge. Our goal by the end of the recess (Sept. 10) is to sign up the first 100 members of Congress and candidates on the pledge, which means every MoveOn Council is responsible for getting at least one target to sign.
Your Council should do everything you can think of to get your target to sign. Here's the basic plan: We'll kick off the congressional recess with the "Fight Washington Corruption" rallies across the country on August 10th. We'll "birddog" them by showing up at public events (e.g. town hall meetings or campaign events) to pressure them to sign. We'll also hold in-person meetings with all of our political targets as early in the recess as possible, to thank them if they've agreed to sign the pledge, or make our demands heard if they still aren't standing for democracy. You may also choose to write letters to the editor, recruit more local endorsers, organize pledge drop-bys at the target's office and more.
Your Council should set a goal of at least five "contacts"—the big rally, a district meeting, a birddogging event and at least two other direct contacts with your target. (Newer Councils will want to prioritize the Fight Washington Corruption rally, a district meeting and at least one birddogging event.)
At the end of the congressional recess, we'll launch into the fall election work—to support candidates who are willing to stand with the 98% of us and not with corporate lobbyists.
Review our target, goal, strategy and tactics (10 min.)
Who is our target rep. or senator and where do they fall in the spectrum of support for the pledge?
Our goal is to get our target to sign the pledge.
Our Strategy is weekly pressure on the target in some public form!
Developing our tactics:
Our goal is to pressure our target to sign the Fight Washington Corruption pledge while they are back in their district. We are going to organize events in the district to keep the pressure on. Here's a helpful break-down of that may look like:
- Big rally: first week of August. This is already being planned.
- District meeting: have an in-person meeting with the politician
- Public presence: be present at 2-3 of their public events during the month
- Grassroots media: aim to get 1-2 local media hits in addition to your rally
Ask these questions to start the discussion:
- What sounds exciting and challenging about this?
- Which tactics have been most effective for us in the past?
- What kind of public tactic do we think would bring out the most MoveOn members in our community?
- What will have the biggest impact on our target?
- What are our allies organizing in the community?
- What did we learn from our recent actions that might apply to this event?
Making a decision:
- Let's decide which tactic or tactics to organize. If we don't all agree, can one person make a proposal, and see if there is majority agreement?
- The Fight Washington Corruption rallies are coming up next so lets start planning more of the details.
The Fight Washington Corruption rallies (15 min)
Our event will be at _________ [location] at ____________ [time].
*If you have not picked a location and time yet, you need to do this ASAP and post here: http://pol.moveon.org/event/events/create.html?action_id=215
Determine speaking line-up for the rally
- Who are the three speakers who would be the most influential for this target?
- Are there any pledge endorsers who would speak at the rally?
- Who is going to contact these folks to see if they will speak at the rally?
Recruitment plans for the rally
- What are our plans for recruiting for the rally?
- Discuss phone banking, flyering, and inviting friends and other local groups that you work with.
Media Plans
- We want to get media at the event. Who can be our point person for media? This means sending out the press release, and following up with calls.
Schedule a check-in call
- Can we set up a time for a check-in phone call before the rally to be sure all our plans are moving forward?
Make the August congressional recess plan (10 min)
The District Meeting:
- Is there someone that wants to take the lead in scheduling the meeting?
- Who should we invite to be part of the meeting? Who influences our target?
Birddogging:
- Is there someone who wants to take the lead in organizing these?
- Do we know of any public events that our target is going to be at?
Other contacts:
- Is there someone who wants to take the lead in organizing these?
- What types of public contacts will put pressure on our target?
4. Council Strengthening and Building (20 min.)
Reflect on our current core (5 min.)
- How many core members does our Council have now?
- What would we be able to do with more core members?
- What are some roles we need filled?
Make a plan for building our core (5 min.)
- What is our goal of new core members for August?
- Make a list of who we want to ask to become core members. Who is going to ask them and by when?
- Make commitments by person on how many leadership asks they are going to make and by when. Also get a volunteer to enter your August core goal into our Council page.
How do we do it? (10 min.)
Spend this time in one of two ways. If you have a Camp MoveOn coming up, talk about how you can use the planning process and recruitment for the Camp as a way to build your core. If you don't have a Camp MoveOn approaching, spend time thinking through how you can use the August campaign activities to build the core.
Group #1: Camp MoveOn Planning
- Review the date and location of your Camp MoveOn.
- Are there roles for the training that need to be filled? Brainstorm a list, or ask folks how they would be interested in helping out.
- How can we plug people who register for the Camp into being core members?
Group #2: August Campaign
- How can we set up one-to-ones and make leadership asks in context of the August congressional recess events? For instance, can we use early recruitment for the rallies to set up one-to-ones with folks and invite them to our core group?
- Can folks make some commitments around the ideas we just brainstormed?
- Should we schedule a training on one-to-ones or making leadership asks?
Don't forget to set your goal for core members for August and ask for a volunteer to enter it in the Council Planning Pages: http://www.moveon.org/team/members/Council_goals.html
5. Wrap-up (5 min.)
Set a date, time and place for your next organizing meeting. Do you want to plan them for a regular date and time? Who can host?
Go-around: ask everyone to restate what they committed to during the meeting, and their next steps.
Thank everyone for being part of the meeting, and conclude!