Win Your Campaign
By adopting the organizing mindset, you’re already halfway there.
The next step in the organizer’s journey is learning how to play the game to win.
What is organizing?
The goal of organizing is to develop movement leaders.
Have you ever wondered why there are so many people who support various causes, yet real change never seems to happen? The simple answer is that the American left tends to focus on mobilizing, rather than organizing. We can turn out millions for street protests, which are a powerful way to show strength, but on their own they rarely create lasting change. The energy that brings people out to demonstrations quickly fades, because movements don’t have the systems to keep them engaged. They were mobilized for a single event.
Organizing, by contrast, is about bringing people into movements in a more sustained way. The goal is to give them a clear path to deepen their involvement and build a sense of ownership over the movement itself. The Democratic Party has leaned heavily on mobilizing in recent years, often focusing on voter registration drives during election cycles, while doing very little real organizing in communities the rest of the time. If we want to win, we must start organizing.
What does it mean to organize?
At its core, organizing is building relationships. Relationships are an organizer’s most valuable asset.
-
Relationships are the most valuable resource for social movements. The other side has more money, so we will use people power to win—and that means building meaningful relationships with our fellow citizens.
You’ve probably had the experience of trying to explain an issue you care deeply about, only to watch the other person’s eyes glaze over. No matter how clearly you lay out the problem or how much you highlight the benefits of a solution, they just don’t seem to care. You might wonder: are they simply a bad person? Usually, the answer is no. The truth is that most of the time, you just haven’t found their self-interest.
Self-interest is what makes someone truly care about an issue—because it connects directly to their own life. This doesn’t mean they’re selfish. Joining a movement because an issue affects you personally is far from selfish—it’s the only sustainable path for most people. The alternative is to be completely selfless, working on something with no connection to your own needs or well-being. And nine times out of ten, that leads to burnout, which doesn’t help anyone.
-
So how do you actually figure out someone’s self-interest? That’s where 1-to-1 conversations come in. A 1-to-1 isn’t small talk, and it isn’t a debate where you try to convince someone to care about your issue. It’s a structured conversation with the purpose of really understanding the other person—what they value, what frustrates them, what gives them hope, and where they’ve taken risks before.
A good 1-to-1 feels natural, but it’s intentional. You ask open-ended questions, and then you listen more than you talk. You’re not looking for “the right answer,” you’re looking for the story behind their choices. What brought them to this campus, this job, this community? When did they feel powerful, and when did they feel powerless? What’s keeping them up at night, or making them angry enough to want change?
When you uncover those motivations, you’ve found the entry point for organizing. Maybe a tenant is tired of constant rent hikes, maybe a student is sick of campus debt traps, maybe a parent is scared about climate disasters. The point is: it’s their story, not yours. And once you connect their story to a bigger fight, they’ll be in it for the long haul.
That’s why relationship-building is the foundation of organizing. A spreadsheet of names and emails isn’t power. Power comes when you’ve sat across from someone, built trust, and discovered together what’s at stake for them. Do that dozens, even hundreds of times, and you’ll have something stronger than any billionaire’s checkbook: a community of people bound together by shared self-interest and ready to act.
Further reading:
Practice: Since 1 to 1s are such a critical skill, we’re connecting people who are interested in organizing so that you can practice understanding someone’s self interest!
Start applying the concepts.
Your organization is already doing good work in the community. All you have to do is show up with the organizing mindset.
Remember, mobilizing treats people as participants for a single task, while organizing treats people as leaders who can grow into long-term power.
Here’s what it looks like to mobilize vs. organize in a few of the most common activities organizations do today:
-
Issue campaigns, such as fighting for climate action or housing protections, often rely on petitions or rallies. Mobilizing stops there. Organizing means using those campaigns to build leadership. Instead of just collecting signatures, you train volunteers to gather stories, host house meetings, and recruit others. Over time, those volunteers become leaders, and the campaign becomes a base that can fight for the next issue too.
-
Voter registration is often treated as a numbers game: knock on as many doors as possible, collect signatures, and move on. That is mobilizing. Organizing means taking the extra step to connect with the people you register, inviting them into a community meeting, and showing them how their vote connects to their power beyond Election Day. It is not about a one-time action but about building relationships that last.
-
Community service programs, like food distributions or mutual aid efforts, are another space where mobilizing is common. People show up, volunteer for a day, and leave. Organizing happens when those service projects become a way to identify leaders, build relationships, and ask deeper questions about why the need exists in the first place. Done right, service becomes a gateway into collective action.Item description