At Spitfire, we think of communications and campaigning as crafts that need tending. We stay on top of trends and best practices, consider new ways to do work and always want to know how to have more impact.

With our friends at We Are Rally, we formed a State-of-the-Art Power-Building Task Force. We are meeting regularly and asking ourselves: How can we use the latest intel on behavioral sciences and effective organizing and mobilizing, along with the potential of artificial intelligence (AI), to expand support for issues and make them something that more people can see themselves in? We’re exploring ways to build power that are welcoming, activating, creative and — when possible — lasting. 

As part of this, we invited Hahrie Han, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University, where she is the inaugural director of the SNF Agora Institute. To say she expanded our minds is an understatement. She used her knowledge of how megachurches get hundreds of thousands of people to show up on Sundays to give us a master class on movements and power-building.

Here are six big takeaways I plan to use immediately. I took so much of this from Hahrie, though I am not putting everything in quotes because I may not have her exact words.

  1. The point of power-building is not to get people to do a thing but to get people to become the kind of people who do that thing. Yep, you may want to read that again. It is so important I put it first. Too often we are focused on quick-hit actions rather than experiences that lead to transformations. The latter is what builds lasting power. It allows you to pivot people from one issue to another without losing them. Here’s how not to do this. Treat them like an ATM with quick-hit actions they know don’t make a difference, e.g., give $5, sign a petition. Don’t treat people like cogs. They don’t like it.
  2. When power-building, we mistake attention for power. But real transformation requires a new way of being — not just a new way of thinking. Power-building can offer people a chance to rehearse new ways of being. For example, when asking people to be poll workers and contribute to protecting people’s right to vote, people become election protectors. They become part of a proud ritual in a democracy and are in community with neighbors. While threats can motivate in the short term, power-building needs to offer people belonging, dignity and a feeling like they matter. That is what gives the oomph to power-building and gives it staying power.
  3. Keep top of mind that culture is upstream of politics. When you approach people as political beings, you are already veering toward transactional rather than transformational relationships. People settle on who they are and who their people are before they decide what they are for. In short, belonging comes before belief. People find their people and then work on issues. So many efforts have this backward. We think people come for the issue. We need to focus more on a sense of welcoming and belonging and then educate on the issues. This means less upfront litmus tests and more curiosity. This is how we’ll find people we can join forces with, and that is how we expand power. Instead of thinking of one door for people to enter, consider how many doorways you can create as entry points.
  4. Power-build with purpose. When mobilizing and organizing, you are creating a lot of energy. Make sure you aim it at something. You need to seek alignment. Line up what people want to change (based on their needs) with who has the authority to do it. Then, when engaging people, denaturalize their sense of powerlessness. This means rejecting how things happen now. Awaken a sense that change is possible. Then resocialize them so that they know they aren’t alone. 

    For example, when scarcity consumes folks, they focus on managing the immediate crisis rather than questioning the system that created it. As a result, scarcity produces internalized beliefs that they simply “aren’t the kind of people who have savings or property or hold power.” But, when you put them in a relationship with others and show them they aren’t alone in their grievances, they realize they have more power than they originally thought possible. That, combined with creating moments of awe — like the massive community response to ICE occupation in Minneapolis — where folks can be amazed at what they can do when they set their minds to it, changes the game of power-building. And, as Hahrie says, “Once people experience their own dignity, they can’t un-have it.”
  5. Let’s build power in ways where we enhance agency rather than diminish it. People want to feel agency, and that means that they can do something about something — and that it will matter. Too often, we are offering plug-and-play, super easy ways to get involved. We ask people to sign petitions and share social media posts that are unlikely to move decision-makers. This is the exact opposite of what cultivates agency. Don’t shy away from bigger asks that make people have a higher commitment to change. That is what gives a stronger sense of agency.

    Cultivate collective agency by nurturing relationships, not transactions. Sustain difference without domination. Think about whom people respect and turn to for their perspectives, and organize from there. Hahrie called this “tilling relational soil.” In addition to how to do relationship-tilling, use the structures that work. According to Hahrie: The cellular structure — small, intimate cells connected to each other — is the structure of every successful social movement. It gives people both intimacy and scale. Pull people into these small structures; set up the leaders to do what they think is needed to make progress; and make bold asks that take courage and commitment to complete.
  6. Hahrie made the important point that when pushing for change, which takes real power, leaders often skip articulating and doing what must happen in the middle. Organizations assume that if people are outraged or motivated, then change will magically happen. But between outrage and change is a very important set of strategies that build and unleash power toward the very authorities that can make change real. It is critical to name and do what is necessary to make this happen.

Next up in this power-building series: The role AI can play in all of this.