Grassroots Organizing – Identify Your People Networks

In Phase One of our Grassroots Organizing process you did your homework on The Big Picture of your issue area and selected a specific agenda on which to work. Understanding the Big Picture of your issue is crucial to grassroots organizing but so is doing your homework on the People related to your issue area. In Phase Two you identify The People Networks related to the agenda you just selected and dig in deeply to assess your network resources and support.

Phase Two focuses on people: relationships, networks of connections, collaborations, and reciprocal exchange. We focus on naturally occurring, every day interactions in which every individual naturally engages no matter who they are or what they do. By understanding these natural processes and by paying attention to how they work, you can gain a key set of skills that will help you to level the 'playing field' in support of your agenda. Grassroots organizing is all about information and people; it is not about money, or power or prestige.

There are six steps in Phase Two of the IWA grassroots organizing process. Identifying your People Networks and then learning how to engage them in collaboration and reciprocal exchange are the most crucial steps of all 18 steps in the process.

Phase Two. Identify Network Resources, Determine Support

Map the social network of people related to the issue
Map the social networks of group members' personal connections
Determine who to approach for support
Approach each person as a potential ally
Discover the "currencies" of each potential ally
Identify the natural advantages and assets of every member of your group

The word collaboration is used in so many different contexts that its exact meaning is somewhat fuzzy. Here when we talk about collaboration we mean interaction among two or more individuals that includes a variety of behaviors: communication, information sharing, coordination, cooperation, problem solving, and negotiation.

The IWA grassroots organizing process builds on the idea each person has:

agendas - goals and objectives that he/she would like to accomplish
currencies - things he/she values and issues that concern them
network relations - people to whom each is connected

In simplified terms our grassroots agenda is accomplished by:

identifying The People Networks in our issue space
assessing the agendas, currencies and network relations of potential allies
proposing an opportunity for both self and this ally to gain something of value (a win-win proposal)
accomplishing an exchange

In my next IWA grassroots organizing blog post, we'll dig into the first step in Phase Two:- Mapping the social network of people related to the issue