[TEXT: Expert Advice Series]
Omekongo Dibinga: My name is Omekongo Dibinga, and this is
“Creating a Successful Grassroots Campaign.” [TEXT: Creating a Successful Grassroots Campaign]
In this lesson, we'll learn [TEXT: Learning Objectives]
how to strategically identify challenges that [TEXT: How to strategically identify challenges.]
need to be addressed,
How to understand and incorporate important
stakeholders in a campaign [TEXT: How to understand and incorporate stakeholders.]
and how to develop a step-by-step plan of action to
build a sustainable campaign. [TEXT: How to develop a plan of action to build a sustainable campaign.]
[TEXT: Omekongo Dibinga Director, UPstander International] Creating a successful grassroots campaign does
not happen by accident.
It requires serious and active action planning [TEXT: Active action planning]
on the part of the leaders of the campaign.
Step 1: Strategically identify challenges that
need to be addressed. [TEXT: Strategically identify challenges]
Your team cannot address every single challenge
facing your community.
Therefore, it makes the most sense to sit down with your team
and identify one specific issue that you are going to target. [TEXT: One specific issue to target]
Ask what topic, issue or theme do you want to work to change?
If you’re wanting to address unemployment in your community,
for example, three problems could be
lack of available jobs in your community,
lack of training for the available jobs
or lack of transportation to get potential workers to the jobs.
While all three of these issues are worthy of your attention,
you must pick one to channel your efforts towards. [TEXT: Channel your efforts towards one issue]
Step 2: Brainstorming ideas for the project and incorporating
important stakeholders into your campaign. [TEXT: Incorporate stakeholders]
Amongst your leadership team, you should now begin to come up
with creative ideas to address your issue. [TEXT: Creative ideas]
Every idea at this point should be welcomed. [TEXT: Every idea should be welcomed]
Ideas can range from having training weekends
where professionals come and volunteer their services
(or are paid a stipend if you find the right funding partner)
to partnering with the local university to provide
language classes, if language barriers are one of the
obstacles for members of your community to gain employment.
After this ideas-sharing session, choose, by vote, [TEXT: Ideas-sharing session]
the topic you are going to focus on.
Make sure that the goals and timeline
of your program are SMART. [TEXT: SMART]
Smart stands for Strategic, Measurable, Attainable,
Realistic and Timely. [TEXT: Strategic, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely]
Once you do this, you must identify [TEXT: Identify stakeholders]
stakeholders. Stakeholders are people or organizations
that you believe will support your cause. [TEXT: People who will support your cause]
If you recognize early on institutions or people who may
be against you, the chances of you being able to figure out
ways to work with them positively will increase. [TEXT: Work with stakeholders positively]
Also note that some stakeholders who may support you could also
work against you if you do not approach them properly. [Approach stakeholders properly]
For example, if you identify university professors as
potential stakeholders, they may join your cause because they
want to teach students.
However, if you are asking them to volunteer and cover their own
costs for the training, they may choose not
to support your efforts.
Try to think of as many scenarios as possible in your
search for allies and create a strategic plan [TEXT: Create a strategic plan]
for engaging each one.
Once you do this, you are able to move on to Step 3:
Developing a step-by-step plan of action to build
a sustainable campaign. [TEXT: Step-by-step plan of action]
What you need to do in this step is solidify the date or dates
that you plan to have your activities. TEXT: Solidify date of activities]
Before you create the timeline of events, you absolutely must
delegate responsibilities to your team. [TEXT: Delegate responsibilities]
One of the biggest mistakes leaders make is trying to do
everything on their own.
Delegating responsibilities is a good way to hold everyone on
your team accountable. [TEXT: Hold your team accountable]
Be as specific as possible in your delegation.
Some examples of duties that may need to be filled include media
relations, social media engagement, government or
university liaison, advertising, etc. 00:04:09.149,00:00:00.000 Every person must have a detailed summary of their roles [TEXT: Detailed summary of roles]
that should be shared with everyone on the team.
Once this is done and everyone is working with their
respective assignments, you can begin the process of
launching your campaign! [TEXT: Launch your campaign]
To build a sustainable grassroots campaign,
everyone must know their roles and have clearly
defined ways that they can contribute. [TEXT: Contribute]
Leaders who try to take on too many responsibilities will
be building a campaign of one, not of many.
To be successful, you must trust your team and have
specific SMART goals that can be repeated [TEXT: Have SMART goals]
for long-term success.
[TEXT: Expert Advice Series Produced by the U.S. Department of State]