Aspiration has developed an eAdvocacy training program for grassroots nonprofits and we’re offering trainings all over California and beyond!

Funded by Community Technology Foundation of California [1] (CTFC) and designed in partnership with Radical Designs [2] and ScoutSeven [3], the trainings seek to demystify the fast-evolving world of online organizing by explaining how to integrate internet tools into existing organizational campaigns and programs.

We offer three strategic eAdvocacy trainings,

• eCampaigning Best Practices and Emerging Tactics [3]
• Email For Advocacy and Community Organizing: Basics, Essentials, and Best Practices [3]
• Web Sites For Advocacy and Community Organizing: Basics, Essentials, and Best Practices [3]

Trainings have been delivered to over 50 nonprofits in Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento and San Francisco to very positive response.

Topics covered in eCampaigning Best Practices and Emerging Tactics [3] include:

• Creating Passionate Online Activists
• eCampaigning Roadmap
• Best Practices for eCampaigning
• ”Web 2.0” Tools and Tactics

Topics covered in Email For Advocacy and Community Organizing [3] include:

• Overview of email campaigns: Defining goals and mapping strategies
• Summary of email campaign process
• Survey of tools used in email advocacy
• How to write effective email campaign messages
• Measuring impact: tracking open rates and responses
• How to manage and sustain email lists
• Best practices for privacy, security, and avoiding “spammer” status.

Topics covered in Web Sites For Advocacy and Community Organizing: Basics, Essentials, and Best Practices [3] include

• Web Advocacy Overview: What is it?
• Defining online advocacy goals and mapping strategies to tools
• Anatomy of an eAdvocacy Web Site
• Raising money on your Web Site
• Best practices for “press rooms” and media outreach
• How to sustain effective organizational, campaign and program Web pages
• Measuring impact: assessing Web traffic and trends
• Best practices for privacy and security of Web Site visitors
• Blogging basics
• Overview of emerging technologies including cell phone text messaging, “Voice over IP” (VOIP), and Geographic Information Systems.
• Survey of tools and services used in Web advocacy, organizing, and activism

All materials are distributed under a Creative Commons license: Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 [4].

We welcome comments, suggestions and any other feedback. Please address all correspondence to training@aspirationtech.org [5].