Online Resources - Materials for Organizing
- Organizing Guides
- Intro to Direct Action/Applied Power Organizing
- Picking and Choosing an Issue
- Campaign Strategy, Campaign Planning, and Powermapping
- Facilitation, Consensus, and Running Fun and Effective Meetings
- Building and Sustaining Your Group: Recruitment, Retention, and Leadership Development
- Conference and Event Organizing
- Networking
- Miscellaneous
- Issues
- Materials for SEAC Outreach
Organizing Guides
- SEAC Organizing Guide
- Rainforest Action Network Activist Toolbox
This contains great info on campaign strategy, direct action tools, and media skills. - Campus Action Handbook
This is the Rainforest Action Network's Campus Action Handbook which has lots of great information on running effective groups on campus. It covers a wide array of topics. Written by SEAC alums! - Free the Planet Toolkit
This is Free the Planet's Activist Toolkit. It contains helpful information on various organizing skills such as recruitment, retention, leadership development, campaign strategy, and media. Just as SEAC's organizing guide lacks a clear analysis of how racism and oppression affect our group dynamics and work, this guide ignores the ways we perpetuate the very problems we are trying to fight in our own groups.
A massive revision of SEAC's original 1991 organizing guide, this 104 page (5.5*8.5 size pages) spiral-bound manual is a great tool for beginners and experienced activists alike. Covers all angles of student organizing, including starting or reviving a group, group structure, effective meetings, issues, strategy, tactics, an anti-oppression analysis, a lengthy resource list and much more. Well illustrated and slick looking. Useful for non-environmental organizing too. An unbeatable organizing value. Last updated in 2003.
Intro to Direct Action/Applied Power Organizing
- Intro to Direct Action Organizing
This illustrates the differences between community service, education, advocacy, and direct action organizing. It also covers the three principles of direct action organizing and the basic steps of direct action organizing. - Intro to Applied Power Organizing
This is a similar handout to the one above. It has slightly more in depth explanations of the three principles of direct action/applied power organizing.
Picking and Choosing an Issue
- Choosing An Issue Guidelines
This is the "Choosing an Issue" guidelines sheet with explanations of what each criteria means. - Picking an Issue: From Service Projects to Issue Campaigns What is a service project? What is an issue campaign? Wanna learn how to get to the root of the problem? Read this!
Campaign Strategy, Campaign Planning, and Powermapping
- Midwest Academy Strategy Chart
This is the basic campaign planning tool that the Midwest Academy, SEAC, and tons of other organizations use to strategize around campaigns. - Blank Midwest Academy Strategy Chart
This is a blank version of the Midwest Academy Strategy Chart that you can fill out with your group. Go to page 3 of this 4 page document to find it. - Campaign Strategy Guidelines
This is our Tampaction Action Packet but inside, on page 7/8 under "How to Run the Tampaction Campaign" you will find a whole section on campaign strategy and planning applicable to any issue/campaign. - Guide to Effective Meetings with Administrators
This is our Tampaction Action Packet. Go inside to page 26 (of the PDF file) or page 25 (of the packet) under "Week 3: Meet with Your Target/Communicating Effectively With Your Target in the Tampaction Campaign" to find the guide. - Checklist For Tactics
A useful 9-item checklist for choosing tactics, from the Midwest Academy.
Facilitation, Consensus, and Running Fun and Effective Meetings
- Guide to Running Fun and Effective Meetings
Four page guide covering the basics of facilitation, how to prepare for meetings, what to do in the meetings, and afterwards. Also covers facilitation tools, hand signals, and meeting roles. - Tips For Facilitating Conference Calls (2 pages) (HTML) (Word File)
- Consensus Factsheet (1 page) Majority rule decision making has the potential to be oppressive in itself, since it can let the majority dominate and cause the minority to feel voiceless. This quick and dirty guide to consensus decision making will give you the basics needed to use consensus within your group.
Building and Sustaining Your Group: Recruitment, Retention, and Leadership Development
- Leadership & Organizing 101 (2 pages)(HTML) (Word File) (PDF)
- Structuring a Functional and Just Group (2 pages) (Word File)
- But We Don't Have Leaders:
Leadership Development and Anti Authoritarian Organizing
Great article on leadership development and how to incorporate anti-oppression. - Guide to Starting or Reviving a Group (4 pages) Is your group in the pits? Haven't had a meeting in months? Worse yet, is your school devoid of environmental or social justice groups? This guide is designed to help you organize a group at your school or to revive a dead or failing group.
Conference and Event Organizing
- Conference Organizing Guide (16 pages) (HTML)
(Word File)
SEAC's Conference Organizing Guide is an invaluable tool for groups who plan to organize a SEAC conference in their community. This comprehensive guide provides tips for outreach, logistics, planning your program, balancing time, fundraising, follow-up and more. - Event Planning Worksheet (PDF) A compact worksheet to help you figure out what you want to get from an event, and then how to get it.
- Organizing an Event (4 pages) This guide provides some hot tips for putting on a successful event in your community. Plan well, be realistic, delegate responsibilities, expect the apocolypse, etc. Whether you're hosting a forum, a conference, a vigil, or a live animal show, these guidelines will put you on the right track.
- Conference Planning Timeline Template
This is a sample template to use to help you come up with a plan and timeline for a conference. - Sample Conference Timeline
This is a sample timeline for conference planning. The layout of the "Conference Planning Timeline Template" above is clearer, but the information in this document is more in depth.
Networking
- SEAC Coordinator's Guide(DOC) or in PDF: A guide to helping create a city-wide, area, state, or regional activist network. 19 pages.
Miscellaneous
- Exposing Corporate Ties at Your School: Investments
- Sample Press Release Example 1 Example 2 Example 3
- Student Power
Issues
- Tampaction Packet A comprehensive 48 page guide to challenging tampons and to educating and taking action about menstruation and womyn's health.
- Ecofeminism Factsheet
- National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture Fact Sheet
- Factory Farming: Read about Wesleyan Environmental Organizers Network's successful
Spring 2003 campaign to ban "battery eggs" from their campus
Materials For SEAC Outreach
- Caucus Guide (4 pages) SEAC's Caucus Guide is a short explanation of how we aim to address issues of oppression and domination through the use of caucuses. A Caucus is a safe space for people facing different forms of oppression such as sexism, racism, heterosexism, or classism, to meet and discuss how this oppression affects them both within and outside of SEAC or their local group. The use of caucuses can be very useful for your local group, as it has been for more than a decade for SEAC on a national level.
- Clearinghouse Ad (1 page) A simple one-page advertisement and price sheet for SEAC's for-sale Clearinghouse items. Useful for tabling with SEAC materials or taking orders to be sent to the SEAC National office to fill.
- Group Membership Form (1 page) Fill out this form and send it in to have your group join SEAC. You can also join online.
- Individual Membership Form (1 page) Fill out this form and send it in to join SEAC. You can also join online.
- Join SEAC Flyer (2 pages) This flyer is the most basic outreach tool we have. It explains all the essential functions and programs of our coalition. If nothing else, use this flyer to get new people turned on to SEAC.
- SEAC Logo (Updated Link) - A high resolution copy of the SEAC logo that you can use on materials you create.
- National Council Guide (2 pages) Ever wonder how SEAC makes decisions on the national level? I'll give you a hint: we're youth and student run and led. SEAC's National Council Guide provides the background information one needs to become a representative on our National Council. A must read for SEAC groups.
- Organize a Conference Ad (1 page) SEAC conferences are hosted by local groups excited about bringing other activists to their community. Print out a few of these ads when you travel places or for some reason want to show people the basics of organizing a conference.
- Sign Up Sheet (1 page) Using year's of experience gathering bad contact information at events, we've put together the ultimate sign up sheet with just enough space for all the essential information. Print out a sheet on both sides and put these sheets out on every table you operate. Sign up sheets are THE essential tool for networking. Once you fill up a sheet, help SEAC build our network by sending us a copy of the information at the national office.
- Sign Up Sheet for Highschoolers (1 page) This is the same sign up sheet as the basic version except it's made for highschoolers who typically have only one address. Once you fill up a sheet, help SEAC build our network by sending us a copy of the information at the national office.
- Speaker's Bureau Ad (1/4 sheet) Don't let your schools monopolize your education with meaningless course material and biased history books! These small leaflets promote SEAC's most useful education tool: our Speaker's Bureau of youth trainers. These speakers are trained in everything from organizing basics to tampon manufacturing, global warming, racism, and corporate power. Visit www.seac.org/speakers for a full list of SEAC speakers and trainers.
- "Wanted -- Organizers" Ad (1 page) Do you know people who are itching to build the SEAC Network in their locale? Hand them this ad to encourage them to become a SEAC coordinator.
- What is SEAC? (2 pages) This flyer answers the basic questions you might ask if you wanted to know what SEAC is or what SEAC does. Carry it whereever you find new activists or old activists without a clue about SEAC.
