OUR METHOD
When we work with a new group, we start by establishing a Community of Practice, a group of people who are all engaged in similar work or share a similar role. This is where participants experience the transformative power of deep connection.
For each Community of Practice we deliver programming through three distinct but interdependent modules:
Deep Connection
(Being Community)
A Community of Practice brings individuals into a connected group, guided by a shared purpose. Through regular in-person meetings, structured discussions, and informal relationship-building, participants build trust, deepen their understanding of one another, and develop a culture of mutual support and accountability. Those strong relationships empower participants to accomplish more together than they could on their own.
Meet regularly in person (typically every 2–4 weeks) to build relationships and maintain momentum.
Share personal values, experiences, and motivations to foster trust and connection.
Create opportunities for both structured collaboration and informal social interaction.
Develop a culture of mutual support and accountability that strengthens the group.
Enable participants to achieve greater impact together through strong relationships and shared purpose.
Practical Tools & Skills
(Building Community)
This module equips participants with the practical organizing skills they need to be effective in their communities. By combining proven organizing strategies with local adaptation, peer learning, and hands-on reflection, participants develop actionable skills that go beyond traditional campaign tactics. The focus is on fostering creative, community-centered organizing and ensuring every participant leaves with a clear plan for putting their learning into practice.
Curate and adapt organizing tools and training to fit local needs.
Build practical organizing skills through interactive learning and peer-to-peer knowledge sharing.
Encourage creative, innovative techniques for community-focused organizing.
Reflect on real-world experiences to continuously improve organizing strategies.
Ensure participants leave each session with a concrete action plan they can immediately implement.
Ongoing Connection
(Sustaining Community)
The energy and focus created during a Community of Practice meeting can fade as participants return to daily demands. Our Ongoing Connection Module keeps participants connected to one another, their commitments, and the larger purpose of the work between meetings.
Each gathering concludes with members identifying actions to complete before the cohort reconvenes. Show Up Better then helps keep those commitments visible and participants in contact with each other through methods such as:
Weekly newsletters
Inspirational text messages
Individual check-ins
Peer mentoring and targeted support
Talks delivered by experienced leaders
Social, political, and service-oriented gatherings
Together, these practices help members maintain momentum, follow through on commitments, and remain engaged with their community and its shared goals.
OUR IMPACT
Why spend 90 minutes in a Community of Practice? Because it makes your fieldwork more effective.
Connection work creates trust, which gives organizers the resilience and courage to keep doing difficult work and allows for the authentic sharing of field experience necessary to adapt strategies to unique situations. The payoff compounds as organizers build supportive, creative volunteer communities of their own, giving people more reasons to stay together.
Impact for Organizers
1. When enthusiasm wanes, organizers sit knee-to-knee and share what’s grinding them down, helping them regain the energy and willingness to keep going.
2. A precinct executive nervous about knocking on doors, making calls, or hosting a gathering can share that fear in a small group and receive peer empathy rather than general advice from the front of the room. Feeling understood helps them stop delaying, find their courage, and do the work.
3. Organizers break into small groups to compare local conditions and tailor strategies that fit their situation.
4. When something goes wrong, it becomes shared learning instead of personal failure, pairing to understand what happened and develop something new to try.
5. Good ideas stop getting trapped in one precinct because when someone finds a better way, they learn about and adapt it for their own neighborhoods.
What Changes in the Field
6. A GOTV call party becomes more than a shift. Before making calls, volunteers gather in a circle and share what a satisfying voter conversation would feel like. Afterward, they talk about what the work meant to them. The calls get made while relationships deepen and people gain another reason to return.
7. A logistics-heavy meeting deepens relationships and learning through small, ritualized changes—an opening go-round check-in, a mid-meeting small group discussion, a closing circle to share what they are grateful for.
8. Instead of arriving with just answers, a precinct executive brings questions to which volunteers can contribute local knowledge, contacts, and ideas that the leader might lack, making the community a source of strategy rather than another group to manage.
9. After a disappointing event, volunteers meet to check on one another and help each other return to their emotional center. The precinct executive no longer has to manufacture all the morale, and fewer people quietly disappear.
10. Two volunteers clash over policy, but disagreement does not become a test of who belongs. The organizer helps each person feel heard and reconnect with what they still care about together. The disagreement remains, but the volunteers remain too.
11. After Election Day, the group celebrates, reflects, and asks what it wants to build next. The campaign ends, but the relationships continue, so the next election begins with people who already know one another rather than a volunteer list rebuilt from scratch.