Miski Noor, The Forge (MN): What was the inspiration for this project?
Jack Zhou, Climate Advocacy Lab (JZ): We’ve gotten a lot of requests from our members over the years ––– climate advocates of all stripes, plus researchers, funders, and movement support folks in the space ––– for resources on operating effectively in coalition. These requests also often came along with stories about the challenges of working in coalitions. After taking a good look around, we couldn’t really find a lot of guidance when it came to climate coalitions or even progressive organizing coalitions more generally. So we decided to make our own.
Lynsy Smithson-Stanley, P3 Lab at Johns Hopkins University (LSS): We have some evidence that diverse coalitions help major policy wins endure, but we know far less of the how. So we wanted to look across recent examples in our area of the advocacy world: (climate). In the end, we ended up with a Report that lays out all our findings and a Workbook that we hope helps groups translate these ideas into action.
MN: Why is now a good time for this to exist?
JZ: The conversation around climate policy has largely shifted away from carbon accounting schemes like cap-and-trade to bundled policy asks that tie climate benefits with other social and economic wins. These more expansive and intersectional climate policies (as in concepts like the Green New Deal) demand building support and buy-in from diverse constituencies. Because few (if any) organizations are set up to do that themselves, the work often demands multiracial, cross-class (MRXC) coalitions made up of multiple organizations, each with their own political bases and resources to contribute. These coalitions are often pretty diverse in makeup, particularly along lines of race, class, and theories of change. And sometimes those differences in personal and political perspectives don’t naturally mix as well as we’d all like. So the Blueprint is kind of a guide for how folks can work with one another more effectively to get the wins they want.
MN: What are some of the key takeaways from the Blueprint report?
JZ: First off, we want to acknowledge that coordination and communication in coalitions is difficult, especially when participants are coming from disparate political perspectives, personal assumptions, and ways of working. This is why building Trust and Clarity among the collective is important ––– to provide a buffer of good faith when the going gets tough (and yes, we provide a definition of these terms in our report). We learned that the first thing a coalition should do is get very explicit on how they intend to treat one another and crystal clear on the shared goal or goals they want to pursue. Especially for longer-lasting coalitions, interviewees told us you have to go back again and again to your North star, otherwise you risk drifting too far off course.
LSS: We also found that coalitions need to develop clear internal processes for decision-making and information-sharing that work for their members. Interviewees shared a range of examples: total consensus, consensus minus one, fist-to-five hand rating… — the point is not to pick the perfect system but make sure everyone is aware of what has been chosen and why. The same goes for whos, hows, and whats of the daily activity. — cCoalitions have to be attentive to seemingly little things like: Who takes notes in meetings? Where do those notes go? How does someone who missed a meeting get caught up? I realize some folks think of these questions as too far into the weeds, but our research shows that they matter both for members’ experiences and for the coalition’s ability to pivot as circumstances demand.
And then from a macro perspective, for a coalition to function, it needs to define what it means to be “in.” This could look like clearly spelling out the expectations of coalition members in regard to sharing material resources, offering skills and capacities, staffing internal structures, and maintaining public solidarity. Coalitions can and often do grow. But the idea is that for every potential partner, there are candid conversations about expectations, resource allocation, and revisiting the “who does what” of the everyday work. That can also mean new members need time and space to to get caught up and bought into the coalition’s internal culture and ways of working, rather than dumped headlong into campaign work.
MN: What was maybe an unexpected result from your research?
JZ: This isn’t much of a surprise when you actually break down what a coalition is, but I was struck by how much of a coalition’s successful operation depends on soft skills and managing personalities. We found that the foundation of MRXC coalitions are the relationships between members and the group culture they collectively create. In some cases that might mean leaning on years of friendship and camaraderie. In others it might be intentionally front-loading a relational culture, a shared set of commitment that foregrounds relationships and establishes norms about how you are going to treat one another.
If a coalition says that it supports equity, — do they know whether all coalition members share the same definition of that term, or how that definition ought to translate into the day-to-day processes of the work? Understanding and treating each other as full human beings (as opposed to political functionaries or stereotypes) can create downstream benefits for alignment and solidarity. That kind of orientation can function as a buffer when misunderstandings or miscommunications arise.
LSS: For example, people might come to coalitions with different “red lines” for which policy outcomes are unacceptable for them. These red lines need to be communicated explicitly so that folks know what is negotiable and what is not. Checking in on red lines should be a regular occurrence during the shifting course of a coalition’s work.
JZ: Right., cConflict within coalitions is inevitable, so coalitions have to pre-emptively figure out ways of managing and working through it. Members may come into the coalition with rocky histories with one another. These past disputes or breaches of trust need to be directly acknowledged and addressed in order for the coalition to function at its best ––– it’s wishful thinking to believe that conflict can simply be ignored. Coalition members attributed conflict to all kinds of reasons, from the weight of historical marginalization to frustration with lost office supplies. Coalitions have to be ready to confront these conflicts head-on, ideally using procedures that were established as part of its foundational conversations. By having a clear set of mutual goals and holding an expectation of good faith, coalition participants can work to ensure that conflict and disagreements are productive rather than destructive.
MN: Coalitions can be really complex and it’s easy to get lost in the details, especially when campaigns start moving quickly. What are some areas of coalition work that are important but easy to forget?
LSS: For coalitions to achieve their goals, they have to define the metrics by which they can judge whether their strategy is working or not. These can be a combination of quantitative and qualitative data from both within and outside the coalition. Program evaluation should be conducted at regular intervals, and insights gathered from the evaluation process should be integrated back into the function of the coalition to promote learning and growth.
MN: You all focused on and wrote this report for climate coalitions, but you’ve said the findings apply to coalitions across all sectors of organizing. Could you say more about what you mean there?
JZ: For sure. The climate movement comes with its own particular history of cooperation and conflict between traditional green groups, environmental justice organizations, frontline communities, youth activists, and organized labor. But it’s not like other progressive movements are free of disagreements or messy dynamics. At its heart, the Blueprint is about spotlighting and understanding the tension points that hold back effective collaboration, especially among parties that actively want to work together but can still get stuck in the weeds. From talking with folks across the progressive organizing space, it seems like our takeaways on things like relationality, ways of working, and conflict management are universally relevant.
MN: What are you doing with the Blueprint now?
JZ: Well one thing we’re doing is public outreach –– like this interview –– to tell folks that this resource exists, and that we want them to use it! But rather than just talk pretty words about application, we wanted to make applying ideas from the Blueprint Report or Workbook as streamlined as possible.
We’ve been running a series of online Blueprint trainings this Spring that’s been really exciting. There seems to be a lot of demand for ways to improve coalition work! A big part of those trainings is walking folks through how to use the exercises in the workbook in their own coalition settings. The Forge readers are welcome to email me if they’d like access to those training materials.
LSS: Even though the cases at the heart of this research come from the climate movement, we really think the lessons we learn and the insights we draw apply to plenty of other fights. That’s why we want to get in front of as many progressive organizing spaces as possible, whether they’re climate-related or not. We’ll be running a version of the training program and sharing copies of the Workbook at Netroots this July in Baltimore (10:30 am on Friday 7/12 in Room 320). If any readers are attending, please reach out — we’d love to connect!
