How to Plan an Action

Making Change: From concept to reality

Learning Agenda

What we will accomplish together today:

1. Define an “action”
2. Contextualize actions as part of a campaign
3. Learn the steps of action planning
4. Practice action planning
5. Final discussion

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What is an action?

An “action” is a planned and coordinated event that furthers a campaign to accomplish a goal.

So...what is a campaign?

“A campaign is a series of organized, planned actions that put increasing pressure on a decision-maker (target) to take the action we want them to take.”

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Adapted from Marshall Ganz’s course Organizing: People, Power, and Change (2002).

What are the steps to planning an action?

Action Planning Steps

1. Determine your participants.
2. Determine your target.
3. Choose your action.
4. Plan your action.
5. Plan your action homework
6. Execute your plan.
7. Party.
8. Follow up.

Step 1: Determine Your Participants

Who should participate depends on the answer to two questions:

1. Who is directly affected by this issue?
2. Who are the stakeholders in the process and outcome?

Example:

• If you’re addressing renters rights, renters are the most directly affected individuals.
• Additional stakeholders include the landlord, property manager, building maintenance and employees.

Determining Participants is Crucial!

• Once you’ve listed out your stakeholders and directly impacted folks, begin reaching out to your most obvious allies and expand from there.
• This is a great place to apply your power map, network map, landscape assessment. Someone may already be doing something! (Week 2)
• This is also where you do your equity checks and noticing work. Keep asking who isn’t yet at the table.
• This is the time to make sure everyone is agreed on what you want, collectively.

Step 2: Determine Your Target

An inspiring action is cathartic. An effective action helps you get what you want.

Your ideal action target should:

• Be susceptible to pressure
• Capable of giving you what you want
• Capable of forcing another person/entity to give you what you want.

Examples of Good Targets

Examples of good targets include:

• Elected officials (the more local/the closer to the issue, the better)
• People with executive positions (Mayors, CEOs, Executive Directors, etc.)
• Businesses with an outsized interest/share in the problem.

Don’t know who your target it?

• Time for a power map, a network map, and/or landscape assessment!

Step 3: Decide on Your Action

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Choose your action by considering the following questions:

1. What are you going to do?
2. What are you willing to do?

DO ANOTHER EQUITY CHECK:

• Can everyone DO the action?
• Is everyone’s safety and relative risk being considered?
• Are there alternative ways to participate?

Plan ahead:

1. Know what you will do (how you will escalate) if your target says ‘no.’
2. Know what you will do if your target says ‘yes.’
3. Know how you will respond if you receive an invitation to talk.
4. Remember the “you” is always collective.

Examples of Actions

Occupy a public building

Silently follow around a corrupt official wearing T-shirts proclaiming their shame

Send a million postcards

Phonebank/jam phone lines

Send a million emails

Leave hundreds of cheap symbolic gifts at an office

Step 4: Plan Your Action

Lay it all out as a team:

• Who, what, where, when, and how?
• What cost? (monetary)
• What risk? (social/legal)
• How much time is required?
• How accessible is this action?
• Who are the spokespeople?
• Communications plan? (press, public, participants, etc.)
• Support plan? (legal aid, jail support, mutual aid, food, money, housing…)

• Continue doing your equity checks.
• Make sure every person has a job.
• Make sure every job has an owner.
• Make sure someone is checking in on everyone.
• Make sure someone is taking notes.

Step 5: Plan Your Homework

• If your action involves members of the general public joining in (like most marches and rallies), you need to plan crowd homework.
• If people leave your rally and can’t answer the question “what’s next?” the energy will dissipate and your movement will lose momentum.
• Make sure everyone in the core planning team knows what they will do immediately after the action.
• Make someone in charge of a post-action party. You’ll need it.

Step 6: Execute the Plan

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Remember to distribute crowd homework and follow thru on any immediate escalation steps.

Step 7: Party!

Step 8: Follow-up

• Congratulations! You did the thing!
• Debrief with the core-team.
• Debrief for all the stakeholders and directly impacted folks.
• Send out a communication to all your general public participants (if you have any).
• Follow-up with the press (if relevant).
• Nice work.

Let’s Practice!

Action Planning Practice

In your breakout groups, choose one of the following examples to use for practice action planning:

1. Dozens of homeless people in [your city] are currently left without adequate shelter services during the winter.
2. Hundreds of renters in properties owned by three different landlords in [your city] have received letters stating that if they are not up-to-date with their rent, they will be automatically evicted as soon as the State’s eviction moratorium is lifted.
3. The university you attend announces that budget for ethnic and diversity studies departments will be cut by 50% in the next school budget.
4. The sheriff’s department in [your county] announces the hiring of several deputies who have a documented history of broken trust with communities of color in the places they were previously hired.

Breakout Practice!

(Take 20 minutes to move through these steps.)

Final Discussion

1. What is one thing you learned during the action planning activity?
2. What was easy about the action planning activity?
3. What was difficult about the action planning activity?
4. How might you apply what you learned during this activity to your own change-making efforts?
5. Any other comments or questions about this week or any other week during the Activist in Residence Program?

Questions?