The Center for Innovation in Worker Organization (CIWO) has collaborated with PowerLabs to create a new workshop tailored to economic justice organizers who want to expand and deepen their power by designing and implementing distributed organizing models.

 This workshop asks: how can we embed engines for growth and action within our organizations?

The training is about evidence-based strategies for growth based upon recruiting and developing members to recruit others into the organization, take on roles and participate in teams. The workshop provides a framework for building organizational structures and systems that are designed to support this type of member-driven growth.

You will learn a set of practices that are rocket fuel for growing a powerful membership base:

• Act-Recruit-Train Cycle: How to use every public action to recruit people into the organization and start them on a successful pathway to meaningful and long-term participation
• Teams for Exponential Growth: How to design teams that perform excellent work, get stronger over time, and contribute to the team members’ growth and learning and can be led by volunteer leaders
• Coaching for Growth: How to increase members’ commitment and leadership skills and embed leaders coaching other leaders into the ongoing life of our organizations
• Work design: How to design the work that our members do to increase their ownership and creativity and contribute to their development as leaders

The training recognizes that we all live and organize now in a combination of in-person and online spaces and highlights how digital tools and strategies are being effectively used within these spaces. It is not an “organizing 101,” or a digital organizing “how-to”. It is targeted to managers and organizers who are in charge of designing and carrying out the organization’s base-building strategy.

Training dates

• Wednesday, June 2nd
• Friday, June 4th
• Wednesday, June 9th
  
• Friday, June 11th

All sessions are 1:00-5:00 p.m. Eastern / 10:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m. Pacific.

FAQ

Who is this training for? This training is designed for people who want to build a more powerful organization by incorporating new practices to recruit members and develop leaders. It is targeted to managers and organizers who are in charge of designing and carrying out the organization's base-building strategy.

Where do the case studies come from? The case studies are based on the work of Movimiento Cosecha, the Pilipino Workers Center, Rideshare Drivers United, and others.

Is there discounted registration available?
We have a few reduced fee spots available. The number depends on how many people register for the group at the full price. If your organization can pay the full fee, please do because you will be supporting other organizations to participate. Fill out this form to request a reduced registration fee.

How can I convince my boss to pay for this? You might tell your boss that you'll apply what you learn directly to your job and tell them which of your organization's goals that this course will help you accomplish. Focus on the outcomes of the course instead of the process.

You know your boss better than we do, but we made a memo you can edit and share.

Can I pay by check or bank transfer? Can you send me an invoice or fill out a form for vendors? We’d be happy too. Email [email protected] and let us know what you need.

I still have questions. Email Mary Kate Marasco, CIWO Program Coordinator, at [email protected] and we'll do our best to get answers for you.

Your trainers

Aquilina Soriano Versoza has served as Executive Director of the Pilipino Workers Center of Southern California, a resource and advocacy organization that empowers the Filipino community in Southern California to improve the quality of their lives. She studied her BA in Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Aquilina has been at the head of PWC as it has been a part of the growing statewide and national movement of domestic workers and serves as the current President of the Board of Directors of the National Domestic Workers Alliance.

She has played a leadership role in member base-building, policy and enforcement strategies for domestic workers, as well as in ground-breaking Strategic Co-enforcement work with the CA Labor Commissioner's Office.

She is also a fellow at the Center for Innovations in Worker Organization in the Build the Base program to support efforts to implement new distributed leadership and membership recruitment models.

Janice Fine holds a Ph.D. from MIT in Political Science and is a Professor in the Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations at the School of Management and Labor Relations, Rutgers University where she writes and teaches about economic justice movements and organizations including unions, worker centers, community organizing groups and other forms of collective action in the U.S and cross-nationally; historical and contemporary debates within labor movements regarding immigration; labor standards enforcement; privatization and state capacity for contract oversight. Prior to joining the faculty at Rutgers in 2005, she worked as a labor, community and political organizer and trainer for over twenty years and continues to collaborate with unions, worker centers, immigrant rights organizations and community organizing groups.

Fine is Director of Research and Strategy at the Center for Innovation in Worker Organization (CIWO) at Rutgers, a national think and do tank devoted to strengthening worker organizations where she leads the Labor Standards Enforcement and Base-building projects. She is also a member of the graduate faculty in Political Science and the Department of Latino and Hispanic Caribbean Studies at Rutgers. Fine is the lead editor of the 2018 research volume No One Size Fits All: Worker Organization, Policy, and Movement in a New Economic Age, of the Labor and Employment Relations Association, author of the groundbreaking book, Worker Centers: Organizing Communities at the Edge of the Dream, and co-author with David Donnelly and Ellen Miller of Money and Politics, Financing Our Elections Democratically. With her colleague, the sociologist Hana Shepherd, Fine is currently working on a national research project funded by the Russell Sage Foundation on municipal labor standards enforcement regimes across four cities: San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles and New York.

She has authored and co-authored many articles in scholarly journals including Politics & Society, International Migration Review, Studies in American Political Development, International Labour Review, Regulation and Governance, Journal of Industrial Relations, Labor Studies Journal and the British Journal of Industrial Relations. She has written articles and editorials the Boston Globe, Newark Star Ledger, Philadelphia Inquirer, the Nation, New Labor Forum, Working USA, Boston Review, and many others and has been interviewed on several National Public Radio and BBC programs. Fine is frequently quoted in the New York Times, Bloomberg and other national media outlets.

Randall Smith is the founder of PowerLabs, a consulting firm that helps organizations design and run people-powered campaigns.

He specializes in training, coaching, and strategic support to help organizations create the strategy, structures, and processes to allow them to scale through the work of volunteer leaders.

Organizations he has worked with include Courage California, Free Press, IfNotNow, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, Movimiento Cosecha, MPower Change, Showing Up for Racial Justice, Sunrise Movement, and United for Respect.

Previously, he provided strategic support to user-generated campaigns on Change.org's platform. His work at Change.org helped people win life-changing (and life-saving) victories including freeing loved ones from prison and changing the policies that govern lung transplants for kids. At Change.org he was part of a team that garnered the company millions of dollars of earned media and added millions of users to the platform.

He has also worked as the digital director at a global advocacy organization, the operations director of an immigrant-led human rights organization, a tenant organizer, and a direct action trainer during the global justice movement.

Vera Parra is an organizer with Worker Justice Project and a trainer with the Momentum Community.

She organized for 5 years with the Cosecha Movement, where she led a successful statewide campaign to expand access to driver's licenses to immigrants in New Jersey, regardless of status. As an organizer in Cosecha she also coordinated the national field program and experimented with how to run campaigns that build power among immigrant workers and develop leadership at scale.

Before joining Cosecha, Vera worked with Faith In New Jersey, an affiliate of Faith In Action (formerly the PICO National Network), and was a volunteer with the New Jersey Dream Act Coalition.

She was introduced to organizing through the Dream Movement where she participated in campaigns to expand in-state tuition to undocumented students, stop deportations, and pressure the Obama Administration to grant administrative relief to immigrants across the country.

Vera is deeply committed to building the power of undocumented and low wage workers in this country. She also believes it is critically important for organizers to learn and share lessons from our movement successes (as well as our failures).

Brought to you by

The Center for Innovation in Worker Organization (CIWO) is a “think and do tank” whose mission is the promotion of strong workers’ organizations. We seek to shift the balance of power towards greater economic and social equality. CIWO leverages the resources of a highly respected research university to create a centralized go-to institute for strategic and organizational development. Our primary objectives are to facilitate the generation and dissemination of ideas, strategies, and programs for newly emergent as well as established worker centers, community organizations, labor unions and their local, state and national networks.

Learn more about The Center for Innovation in Worker Organization (CIWO).

PowerLabs helps organizers design and run people-powered campaigns.

Organizations we’ve worked with include Movimiento Cosecha, Pilipino Workers Center, Sunrise Movement, and United for Respect.

Learn more about PowerLabs.