The Commons Library is a collection of resources for activists and campaigners. The Commons Library furthers the work of progressive campaigners by providing them with the inspiration and knowledge of other campaigners.

Also make sure to check out other resources for activists.

About the Commons Library #

The Commons Library is an online resource centre for those working towards social change. It offers a wide range of educational materials on topics such as campaign strategy, community organizing, digital campaigning, and diversity and inclusion.  Originally started in 2015 by the Australian political movement GetUp!, it was relaunched in 2019 by its current team Commons Library Ltd.

These resources are available in various formats including videos, podcasts, articles, and training materials. The library is free to use and aims to be inclusive, accessible, and beneficial to many.

It seeks to collect and share the key lessons and resources of progressive movements around the world. The Commons Library also pays respects to the traditional owners of the land on which it operates and advocates for Indigenous self-determination and justice.

Users can search for resources on the home page, browse topics and collections, use filters to refine their search, and access curated guides. The library also has a team of Librarians available to answer questions and provide recommendations.

The Commons Library is a go-to resource for social change and activism. It is a comprehensive and user-friendly website that provides a wide range of tools, resources, and guides for those interested in social and ecological justice. The focus on intersectionality is particularly noteworthy. The Commons Library is free to use and is recommended by a number of organizations and individuals who have found it to be an invaluable resource for their work. Charlie Wood of Tipping Point, Maya Newell of In My Blood It Runs, Lexie Keller Sheard of TEAR Australia, Aliya Ahmad of Democracy in Colour, and Sarina Foulstone of Council on the Ageing NSW (COTA) have all spoken highly of the Commons Library and its usefulness in their work.

People #

• Holly Hammond (Twitter)

• Antje Dun

• Iain McIntyre

• Aoife Carli Hannan

Types of resources #

The Commons Library offers a large collection of over 1000 resources in the following formats, many published under a creative commons licence. More than 450 people contributed to their library:

• Articles (301)

• Tips (133)

• Case Studies (99)

• Manuals (64)

• Training Materials (64)

• Templates (45)

• Books, Journals and Excerpts (44)

• Book Reviews (37)

• Research Findings (37)

• Speeches and Presentations (34)

• Topic Overviews (32)

• Reports (25)

• Interviews (18)

• RRG Discussion Starters (7)

Topics #

The Commons Library contains resources about the following topics:

• Organising: This collection of articles is about organizing for social justice campaigns. It includes case studies, podcasts, surveys, and training materials on various organizing topics. We can include these guides in our organising chapter.

• Campaign Strategy: This section offers resources and inspiration for planning and executing effective campaigns for social change, including tools for systems thinking, climate action, and case studies of successful campaigns. It also covers topics such as power dynamics and activism. These guides can be added to our strategy chapter.

• Nonviolent Direct Action: This collection of articles explores the history and tactics of nonviolent direct action, including case studies, manuals, quotes, training materials, and practical how-to-guides from different social change movements around the world. These insights about these nonviolent action tactics are valuable to integrate with our tactics chapter, and specifically our guide about direct action.

• Communications & Media: This collection of articles is about how to effectively communicate and engage audiences to create change, including tips on storytelling, framing, interviewing, visuals, media campaigns and more. These resources would be a valuable addition to our communications chapter.

• History: This collection of articles covers Australian social movement history, collective action for social and ecological justice, protests, campaigns, case studies and other forms of activism over several decades. It includes stories of activism, campaigns, and resources to provide insights into strategy and tactics.

• Digital Campaigning: The collection of articles is about leveraging technology to create change and digital campaigning, with resources on mobilising strategies, measuring success, brand campaigns, digital security, progressive tech, virtual meetings, online picket lines, and more.

• Tactics: This series of resources is about different tactics used by activists and social movements to create social change. It includes activities to help you choose tactics and organise actions using case studie. Tactics discussed include blockades, brandjam campaigns, films, conversations, elections, protests, boycotts, dilemma actions, and land rights. It would be awesome if we could integrate these resources with our tactics chapter.

• Working in Groups: This collection of articles is about resources and tools to help people work together in groups to make change. It includes guidelines for setting up a group, making decisions, navigating conflict, developing skills, understanding emotions and fostering cohesion. These resources fit well with our organising chapter.

• Wellbeing: This collection of articles provides tips, resources, and strategies to help activists stay healthy and well while working to change the world, and includes topics such as burnout, stress, high-risk environments, and the covid-19 pandemic. These resources go well with our wellbeing chapter.

• Justice, Diversity & Inclusion: This collection of articles is about creating a movement for justice that is accessible, inclusive and diverse, and is supported by resources, stories and perspectives from a variety of communities. It includes guides that are relevant throughout our chapters.

• Arts & Creativity: This collection of articles is about people using creative approaches to challenge and solve problems in society, from subvertising, to protests, to street art, to urban play. It provides practical tips and case studies, as well as resources to help integrate various art forms into your campaigns.

• First Nations Resources: This collection of articles is about First Nations resources and stories related to justice, self-determination and empowerment. It includes legal cases, protests, strikes and rallies, examining their impacts on Australian history and present struggles.

• Lobbying & Advocacy: These articles provide practical advice and information on lobbying, advocacy, and policy-making, including tips for effective advocacy, training materials, policy reports, coalition building, research, and case studies.

• Theories of Change: This collection of articles is about different tools and techniques for creating social change, such as theories of change, systems thinking, the Four Roles of Activism and frameworks for winning change. It includes activities, discussion starters, templates, interviews, reports and resources.

• Coalition Building: This collection of articles is about how to build coalitions and alliances for social change, including tips on roles, networked change, intersectionality and examples of successful campaigns. This collection of resources would be a great addition to our coalition-building guide.

• Management: This collection of articles contains resources and guides for managers, supervisors, volunteer coordinators and lead organisers in not-for-profit organisations. Learn how to manage people and projects, implement data projects, measure and evaluate projects, manage turnover, create team culture, develop policies and procedures, and develop leadership skills. This collection fits well within our organising chapter.

• Research & Archiving: This collection of articles provides useful tips and tools for researching, archiving and influencing policy related to social change projects. It includes guides on data analytics projects, conducting interviews, internet research, campaign monitoring and evaluation and activist archiving.

• Fundraising: This collection of articles provides tips and advice on fundraising for not for profits. It discusses various fundraising tactics such as crowdfunding, sponsorships, and attracting major donors. Thes resources be added to our fundraising guide.

Most popular articles #

The articles below on The Commons Library are the most popular, according to Ubersuggest. Most are published under a Creative Commons licence.

You can help make these guides better by merging them with existing content on Activist Handbook:

• The Four Roles of Social Activism by Bill Moyer (people looking up ‘social activism’ and ‘activism types', ±500 visits → can be included on our website as ‘Social activism’ campaign)

• Elements of Campaign Strategy by James Whelan (people looking up ‘campaign strategy’, 'strategic campaigns' and ‘campaign strategy examples’, ±300 visits → can be integrated with our strategy chapter)

• Five Principles for Building Powerful Coalitions by Amanda Tattersall (people looking up ‘build coalition’, ‘building coalitions’ and ‘examples of successful coalitions’ →can be integrated in our coalition building guide)

• Facilitating Meetings: A guide to making your meetings effective, inclusive and enjoyable by Seeds for Change (people looking up ‘facilitated meeting’ and ‘facilitating a meeting’ → can be included in our organising chapter with a new page ‘Facilitating meetings’)

• Power Mapping and Analysis by Anita Tang (people looking up ‘power mapping’, ‘power mapping tools’ and ‘power mapping template’ → can be included in our strategy chapter as new guide ‘Power mapping’)

• How to get more petition signatures by ActionStation (people looking up ‘petition signing’ and ‘how to gather petition signatures → integrate this page with our petition guide)

• Organising: Start here by Holly Hammond (people looking up information about ‘organising’ → can be integrated with our organising chapter)

• Games and energisers for your workshop by Change Agency (people looking up info about ‘energisers’, ‘energizing games’, ‘energizer for groups’, ‘interactive workshop’ and 'activities for workshops → can be added as a new guide ‘Energizers and icebreakers’ in our organizing chapter.)

These articles are also popular, but we have not found a place to include them on Activist Handbook yet:

• A collection of nonviolence quotes by Pt'chang (people looking up ‘non violence quotes’ and ‘anti violence quotes’, ±550 visits)

• Activists Guide to Archiving Video by Witness (people looking up ‘archiving videos’ and ‘archiving footage’ → maybe include it in our knowledge sharing guide, or somewhere in our communication chapter?)

• 3 resources to assess and open policy windows by Fee Mozeley and James Whelan (people looking up ‘policy window’ and ‘kingdon policy window’ → maybe include it in our strategy chapter or tactics chapter?)

• Introduction to Community Mapping by Fee Mozeley, James Whelan, Jason MacLeod (people looking up ‘mapping communities', ’community mapping' → maybe include it as subpage our community activism guide or as part of our organising chapter in relation to outreach?)

• Collection: Digital Campaigning (people looking up ‘digital campaigning’, ‘online campaigning tools’ and ‘interactive campaigns’, ±250 monthly visits → maybe integrate the articles in the collections in the tools chapter, communication chapter or online organizing guide.)

Reach of the Commons Library #

In their annual report of 2021-2022, they report to have had a total of 1 million website visitors. Their current visitor rate is around half a million per year.

On average, people look up ‘The Commons Library’ (not to be confused with the 'House of Commons Library’) 110 times monthly globally, of which 40 from the UK, 30 from Australia, 30 from the US and 10 from Germany (data from Semrush).

The website of The Commons Library receives about 9.2K monthly visits through organic search traffic, of which 34% from the US, 18% from Australia, 6% from India and 5% from the UK (according to Semrush). The website has 11.8K backlinks.

Social media #

• Facebook (3.7K likes)

• Twitter (480 followers)

• Instagram (860 followers)

Improve this page #

Why do we have this page? #

In our resources chapter, we have compiled an extensive list of external resources that activists can learn from. We use this list of resources to bring together small bits of knowledge from all over the internet into one comprehensive handbook. The Commons Library is one of those resources.

This page exists for various purposes:

• SEO:

  • People looking up the Commons Library might end up on this page, and get to know other resources for activists as well.

  • In addition, by linking to and creating content about other organisations that provide training materials to activists, we help search engines understand what our website is about.

  • Finally, we only link and write content about organisations we like. By linking to their websites, we give them an additional authority on the topics they write about. This helps them show up higher in search rankings (in comparison to websites that we do not like, and thus do not link to). This way, we make it easier for activists to find the right resources.

• For our editors: We create an overview of all content that the Commons Library has to offer, and how this is related to content on our website. We provide suggestions how both of our resources can be combined. This way, we create a single well-organised and collaborative knowledge-base for activists. In other words: we ‘steal’ their content for the purpose of making it better (and we welcome everyone to 'steal' our work back).

How to contribute? #

You can make Activist Handbook better! Here is how:

• Integrate the popular guides from the Commons Library into Activist Handbook. If you do, please add the keywords listed for each resource below in the ‘Improve this page’ section of the page(s) that you integrate the content with.

• Share more info about the Commons Library

• Translate this page into other languages

Related websites #

• Beautiful Trouble

• Blueprints for Change

• Seeds for Change

• The Change Agency