ORGANIZING @ CCAN
CCAN’s mission centers on building the biggest and broadest coalitions possible to secure climate justice wins and to put our region on the path to climate stability. In taking on the big fights, we know that we have to reform and/or dismantle the structures that perpetuate climate change. The key to overcoming the power of the fossil fuel industry and to holding our leaders accountable is by investing in people — helping them realize the power that they have — and launching volunteer teams that can lead on organizing, educating, and mobilizing their communities to take action.
Regional Climate Action Teams
Find a Local CCAN Climate Action Team
Action is the Oxygen of Organizing Work...
Action is the oxygen of organizing work–the more events, activities, and programs we run that are strategic, the more people want to be a part of campaigns. And, we are intentional to not advocate on behalf of communities, but to advocate with communities and to make space for the most impacted to lead. A guiding principle for building volunteer leadership is that we don’t do for others what they can do for themselves. We believe people are able to act on shared interests together if they are supported through training, skills and best practices.
Our organizing framework is inspired by Professor Marshall Ganz, professor of the Harvard Kennedy School and co-founder of the United Farmworkers of America. In his introduction to organizing, leadership, and action program, he names three questions that are the building blocks for exercising leadership in organizing:
The Building Blocks of Leadership in Organizing
Three questions to Consider...
These three questions focus on the interdependence of self, other, and action: what am I called to do, what are WE called to do, and what do we need to do right now?
They’re framed as questions – not answers – for a reason. Organizing means entering a world of uncertainty. We could develop a relationship to move a particular legislator only to have them lose their primary. We could hear about a new gas pipeline without any notice.
To be successful organizers, we need leadership development practices that recognize this uncertainty.
Our definition of leadership:
“accepting responsibility for enabling others to achieve a shared purpose under conditions of uncertainty.”
What is Organizing?
Organizing is a form of leadership that enables a constituency to turn its resources into the power to achieve its goals through recruitment, engagement, training, development and retention of leadership. Organizing is about equipping people (constituency) with the power (story and strategy) to make change (real outcomes).
Learning how to organize people to build the power they need to make change begins with learning five key leadership practices, including: (1) Having a shared story, (2) Relational commitment, (3) A clear leadership structure, (4) Creative strategy to be successful in building power and achieving your goals, and (5) Developing an effective action.
A team leadership structure can enable organizing that grows stronger through collaborative and cascading leadership development. Volunteer efforts often flounder due to a failure to develop reliable, consistent, and creative individual leaders. Structured leadership teams encourage stability, motivation, creativity, and accountability—and use volunteer time, skills, and effort effectively. They create a structure within which energized volunteers can accomplish challenging work. Empowered teams can achieve the goals they set for themselves, grow more effective as a team over time, and enable the growth, development and learning of their individual members. Effective leadership teams must be clearly defined, stable, and diverse. They must agree on a shared purpose, clear norms, and specific roles.
A leadership team offers a structured way to work together interdependently. At their best, leadership teams recognize and put to productive use the unique talents of all individuals who make up the team.
Team structures also help create capacity and the ability to plan creatively together in ways that produce a more vibrant, engaging strategy than any individual could create alone. We utilize the snowflake organizing model to create multiple layers of leadership teams to engage people creatively and strategically at all campaign levels. For example, each of our action teams is made up of core leadership that drives the agenda, priority setting, and strategy for the local action team.
And there are also volunteer leaders who join groups within the team that are spearheading/driving particular issue campaigns or programmatic areas (like onboarding new members to the team). Within each of the subgroups there are 1-2 people leading that initiative and they are helping to train and organize other people within their group to be taking action. At every level, the people on the action teams have a clear mission with clear goals and the ability to strategize creatively together about how to carry out their mission and meet their goals. This structure creates multiple points of entry for volunteers, and multiple opportunities to learn and to exercise leadership.
Leadership teams provide a foundation from which an organization can expand its reach. Once a team is formed, systems can be created to establish a rhythm of regular meetings, clear decisions and visible accountability, increasing the organization’s effectiveness. One person alone cannot organize 500 people. A movement is built by doing relational outreach to and recruiting people willing and able to commit to helping build it, and both creating or supporting relationships and a solid structure from which it can be built.
Since CCAN launched our volunteer action membership team program in October 2022, our staff has trained hundreds of volunteers on the fundamentals of organizing and advocacy, including storytelling, relationship building, structuring leadership teams, and campaign planning. This has led to the launching of 8 semi-autonomous volunteer Climate Action Teams across DC, MD, and VA that have identified a shared purpose that guides their work, campaigns and projects that they are working on, and volunteer roles for sustaining the team, recruiting new members, and leading on local and state campaigns.
Each of these Climate Action Teams is made up of 3-7 volunteer leaders who currently or are in the process of being empowered to lead the monthly meetings, onboard new members, do community outreach, and lead on the ground campaigns. We have dozens of volunteer leaders driving these teams, and each is made up of a core group that organizes around the projects and campaigns they are most interested in. These volunteer member leaders have formed over 45 advocacy teams that lead our lobbying work in their districts/wards AND/OR lead issue specific advocacy in their region. That is over 135 volunteers that run climate advocacy programs!
