In this chapter, we explain how to get started with grassroots organizing. Our toolkit explains how to build a movement by looking at successful examples.

Chapter quality: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4/5)

Start organising #

To build an impactful grassroots movement, start small. Organise a protest action that helps you to grow your group. Next, plan a campaign: a series of actions to pressure decision makers. Then scale up by building a decentralised movement. Finally, improve your teamwork by learning from other movements.

1. ✊ Organise a protest — Take action today

2. 📢 Organise a campaign - Make plans for the upcoming months

3. 🌊 Build a movement — Scale up your campaign

4. 📄 Organisation frameworks — Better teamwork

5. 🔥 Movement of movements - Intersectional & international activism

Capacity building #

You want to make a big impact. But you have a limited access to resources needed to get there. This section focuses on building capacity to bring about change:

• 📢 Outreach & mobilisation

• 💪 Membership engagement

• 🙌 Coalition building

• 🎓 Knowledge sharing and training

• 🤑 Fundraising

Team building #

Organizing is all about bringing people together and building strong teams. Learn how to transform a collective of individuals into an impactful group of activists:

• 🙌 Roles and teams

• 🙋 Facilitating meetings

• 🗳 Decision making

• ❤️ Community building

• 🏳️‍🌈 Diversity and intersectionality

• 💻 Online organising

• 💬 Internal communication

• 🔐 Security culture

Q&A #

What is grassroots organizing? #

Grassroots organizing is a way of working with communities to create change from the ground up. It involves building relationships with people, mobilizing resources and taking collective action to address the issues that affect them. It is a way of empowering people to take action and create positive change in their own lives.

What is community organizing? #

Community organizing is a form of activism and grassroots organizing that involves bringing people together to work on a shared goal or cause. It involves engaging people in their local community to identify common issues and goals, and then taking action together to address those issues and achieve those goals.

How to start a grassroots movement? #

To start a grassroots movement, identify a cause that you are passionate about, gather a group of like-minded people, create a plan of action, and spread the word. Take a look at the many guides on Activist Handbook to get started.

Case studies #

This section still needs to be written. What methods and types of organisation have been used, and why, and how successful have they been? Has direct democracy or some other form of horizontal organising method been used? If not, why? Includes studies of leadership.

Improve this chapter #

You can make this chapter about organising better. Here are some things you can do:

• Make this chapter better by reusing existing resources. Check out the ‘Creative Commons’ materials in the external resources section below - we can freely reuse those as long as we give attribution to the original author. Merge them with existing guides or create a new page.

• Translate our best articles. See a high-quality article? Make it available in other languages!

• Add more resources. We already have a lot of awesome resources for this chapter, but if you find some more valuable material, definitely add it to the External resources section below. Also check out the subpages of this chapter to see if there are any with a small number of external resources.

• Improve the contents of this chapter using these suggestions, or add some suggestions below:

  • Presenting the content of this guide through examples of good practices (or failures!) coming from across the globe. Form to do that: podcast with interviews (in english); illustrated book/pamphlet; posts on IG.

  • How to keep your movement inclusive

  • How to make your movement intersectional

  • How to be an effective leader

  • Long-term sustainability of movement

New topics #

Life cycle of a movement #

• Beginnings; case studies of how activist groups, political parties, NGO's, revolutionary civil disobedience movements or any other type of group, formed.

• Endings; case studies of how different types of groups ended, either voluntarily or involuntarily. (And did they end because they succeeded, failed, or evolved into something else?)

Search queries #

People want to learn more about the following topics. Focus on the most popular ones to help as many activists as possible.

*According to Semrush

External resources #

Creative Commons resources #

The authors of these materials want you to reuse them! They are available under a Creative Commons licence or similar:

Introduction articles:

• Why Community Organizing Matters by Citizen's Handbook

• Thinking about Organizing Your Community? by Citizen's Handbook

• Organizing: Start Here by Commons Library

• Collection: Organizing by Commons Library

Roles and structure:

• Grassroots leaders by Citizen's Handbook

• Group structure by Citizen's Handbook

• Forming a core group by Citizen's Handbook

Other:

• Guide: Distributed organising by Blueprints for Change

• Collection: Developing an Organizational Structure for the Initiative by Community Tool Box

• Guide: Improving Organizational Management and Development by Community Tool Box

• Academic: Arranging for Community Mobilizers by Community Tool Box

• Academic: Defining Organizational Structure and Operating Mechanisms by Community Tool Box

• Book: Organising - People, power, change by Marshall Ganz [PDF]

• Workshop: Organizing by Marshall Ganz [PDF]

• Block by block organizing by Citizen's Handbook

• The Skinny for Local Community by Citizen's Handbook

• Top 11 Guidelines for Community Organizing by Citizen's Handbook

• Grassroots Rot: How citizen's groups destroy themselves by Citizen's Handbook

• Dealing with bad apples by Citizen's Handbook

Copyright resources #

• Collection: Resources for Organisers by 350.org

• Why stories matter: The art and craft of social change by Marshall Ganz (2009)

• Book: Building a movement to end by Marshall Ganz (2015) [PDF]

• Six building blocks of distributed organizing campaigns by NetChange