Overview
This is a crash course in “movement data,” with a deep dive into data for legislative advocacy and organizing (including distributed organizing). Over the course of three weeks, participants will practice building an organizing plan with metric goals, learn how models work, and develop tests. They will also investigate and practice working with open data, and assessing the data safety of their organization.
This course is intended to be taken with a data engineering course.
Who is this course for?
Staff across departments: This course is helpful for staff across departments: Data, organizing, and digital staff will all find that this course takes their work to the next level.
Future Data Managers & Directors: Past students have successfully pivoted to data manager & data director roles after completing this course.
Ideal applicants come from all walks of life—we welcome everyone from data practitioners looking to sharpen their skills, to complete beginners who are passionate about organizing. Here are some attributes shared by all our applicants:
- Open to new things: Participants should be excited about challenging themselves to learn new ways of doing the work and partnering with others to come up with creative solutions.
- Technical Aptitude: Whether you have experience working directly with data or not, we are interested in organizers who are able to pick up new technical skills quickly and proficiently. If you like spreadsheets and lists, or investigating innovative ways of organizing, you may be a good fit.
- Organizing Insight: You don’t need to be a professional politico, but we’re looking for applicants with experience doing organizing work on the ground. That work can be tied to grassroots, electoral, and/or issue organizing. We seek to support organizers who are currently part of an organizing effort or are seeking to build one.
- Dedication to Inclusive Politics and Intersectional Solutions: At re:power, we center race, class, gender and sexuality across all our trainings—it’s part of our practice of inclusive politics. We encourage organizers to be open to new ideas regarding inclusive politics, especially from their fellow organizers who will reflect our diverse communities.
Course Expectations
This is an interactive course. We ask participants to write in the chat box, share verbally, and participate in breakout group discussion. We understand that folks have a lot going on though, so if you are not able to participate in a breakout discussion you can let the tech moderator know.
We encourage, but do not require, participants to turn on video during breakout discussions.
Participants should set aside about 5 hours a week for coursework—including attending live webinar sessions, homework, and optional office hours.
Optional office hours: Every other Friday, 3:00–4:00 pm ET
Lesson Plan
- Session 1: Intro to Movement Data
- Session 2: Data During the Electoral Cycle
- Session 3: Data for Issue Organizing Campaigns
- Session 4: Data Collection & the Ladder of Engagement
- Session 5: Open Data
- Session 6: Next Top Model
We will provide supplemental materials on Tests and Experiments, as well as Digital Safety, and also be able to answer questions on those topics during office hours.
Questions? Please contact us at data@repower.org
