Recruiting, enlisting and activating your supporters through boycotts, rallies, petition drives and endorsements.

To determine whether field organizing and public mobilization has a place in your campaign, consider the following:

• Based on your goals and targets, what key groups do you need to mobilize? Prioritize these groups based on who is the most likely to become engaged and what resources you have available.
• Map your human resources. With whom do you already have relationships that can help you access your target groups? For example, do you have a board member who has access to powerful business leaders? Or do you have an existing partnership with a group that can reach an audience with which you don't already connect?
• How do your target audiences receive their information? How much money and time will you need to invest in reaching them?
• If time is a constraint, what do you most need each group to do?
• How can you make it easy for each target audience to do what you want them to do?
• How can you utilize every opportunity to get your message across? T-shirts, signs and pins at rallies should promote your primary message, not your name.
• Can you do a grasstops campaign (with a focus on opinion elites) rather than a grassroots campaign?
• Do you truly need to do a public campaign, or is it possible to move key players behind closed doors to meet your goal?

Best Practices

• Start with the positive. People respond more effectively to messages that start with a positive, shared value and then make a call to action.
• Practice consistency. You want everyone to think the number of supporters for your issue is significant. You can create this perception by ensuring that everyone who is speaking about your issue is saying the same thing— again and again.
• A few very squeaky wheels can make a lot of noise. Sometimes just a few people instead of a huge crowd can accomplish your goal. Many advocates on conservation issues provide compelling examples of how "small and devoted" activists often out-trump "large and occasional" activists.

Pitfalls

• Avoid all references to "the general public." This is especially critical for field work. You cannot reach everyone. Being focused and deep will yield much stronger results than being broad and thin.
• An ad campaign is not the best way to mobilize all target audiences. Many people respond more positively to an "ask" from a specific person or other audience, such as their minister, their teachers or their peers. Direct, person-to-person outreach is often more effective than even the best ads. Make sure you have the human element first, and consider the ad campaign as enhancement of rather than a replacement for that effort.
• The best messenger isn't always you. Think hard about who is best able to reach your target audiences. Your audiences may listen politely to you, but be realistic about who they look to as genuine validators who can persuade them that something is truly in their best interest. Is it an ally? Is it one of their peers? How will you engage that messenger?
• Web sites can be great resources and tools to support your campaign, but do not forget the human face of peers who will actually motivate people to act. Get the human messengers first, then add the tools that best support their efforts.

More Resources

Activation Point^™
www.activationpoint.org
Spitfire Strategies conducted this research on the best practices for planning for persuasion, tailored to the unique needs of social change organizations.

Organizing for Social Change
www.midwestacademy.com/academy_manual.html
Now in its third edition, this 425-page manual covers every aspect of direct action organizing.