Grassroots Organizing: "Bottom-Up" Change

Earth Day 2008 Presentation: Grassroots Organizing – “Bottom-Up” Change
Professor Henry Schissler

All materials (pages 1-6) are from: ORGANIZE TO WIN - A GRASSROOTS ACTIVIST'S HANDBOOK: A GUIDE TO HELP PEOPLE ORGANIZE COMMUNITY CAMPAIGNS by Jim Britell, 2001 (available at no cost on the Internet)
ASSUMPTIONS AND MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT GRASSROOTS CAMPAIGNS
(You can be universally popular in your community or you can run successful campaigns to eliminate threats to it, but you can't do both.)
1. Any campaign can succeed if it has enough community support. But most people who are not active in environmental work or political activity have no idea how the political process works; let alone that they can speak directly to their elected representatives or attend meetings and speak up on issues.
2. Community support, essential for any campaign, is effective only to the extent that the concern of the community is specifically introduced into and expressed in the political process.
3. Elected representatives can control, modify, and cancel the proposals, activities, and actions of a government agency. Your elected representative may lack the power to begin things, but usually has the power to stop them.
4. "Time-windows" for campaigns are longer than you think. ANY project can be stopped until the trees are on the ground, the holes are dug, or the physical structures actually built.
5. Agencies will align their reports and recommendations to reflect the views of the elected officials who have authority over their staff and budget.
6. When you cannot develop enough community support to get your own elected officials on your side, you can often get elected representatives from other jurisdictions to support you.
7. Any citizen can create and successfully implement a grassroots campaign - if he or she has the will.
8. Campaigns succeed or fail based on how much "action" occurs. Action consists of phone calls to decision makers, written material they actually read or physically handle and personal contacts with and comments expressed by people at meetings. Everything else: alerts, videos, TV coverage, advertising, posters, email, etc. are mere precursors and facilitators to action; not, in themselves, action.
9. Regardless of what action a person promises to take on an issue, most are too timid to actually contact their public officials unless you properly prepare them to do it. Ninety percent of those who agree to take action, don't until your second or third follow-up.
10. Good TV and press coverage alone won't win campaigns. Coverage for your issue should be sought, but information on TV generally does not create action. Often when people see an issue on television, they assume others are taking care of it.
11. No campaign can be won by sending out two thousand or two million alerts, emails and calls for action. The test of any lobbying campaign is how many letters and phone calls are actually received by decision makers, not by how many alerts, appeals and other exhortations to take action are spammed out.
12. Elected representatives never do more than represent their constituents. That's why they are called "representatives." They aren't teachers or change agents. Elected representatives will bend themselves into pretzels to keep their ear to the ground. What representatives do is a function of who they talk to and what information and lobbying they have been exposed to directly.
13. You can't lobby another person without being lobbied yourself. Anytime you lobby another, you are lobbied back or counter-lobbied. If the person on the other side of the table is better at it than you are, you may find the person whose mind you seek to change, has changed your mind.
14. Projects that stink environmentally, invariably also stink politically, financially, and ethically. Lift the lid from most bad projects and you invariably find public funds used to enrich bad actors with political connections.
15. Environmentally bad schemes usually create windfall profits for someone. When you try to stop bad projects, some people will get angry with you. And the more they benefit, the madder they will get. Machiavelli said that people may eventually get over your killing of their relatives, but not the taking of their money.
16. If you turn the other cheek when you encounter personal intimidation in public meetings, you just encourage more of it. Bring people to meetings who are emotionally and psychologically capable of dealing with intimidation. If you don't have any people like that in your organization, find some.

ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF GRASSROOTS CAMPAIGNS
o Decide on the goal of your campaign.
o How to assess community attitudes.
o Choose one person to be your spokesperson.
o Do your homework.
o Find an angle that motivates people to take action.
o Know who owns the land.
o Build your campaign on a sound foundation. (Checklist).
o Create a well-designed one-page Alert.
o Seize unexpected opportunities.
o Civil disobedience - nonviolent and otherwise.
o Preparation for public meetings:
Formal meetings set up by public bodies.
Meetings setup by your campaign. (Checklist).
Dealing with confrontations in meetings.

Other Chapters:
HOW TO MOTIVATE OTHERS TO HELP YOU
o Getting help at a distance:
Enlisting distant environmental groups. (Checklist)
The initial phone call. (Checklist)
Follow-up. (Checklist)
o Mobilizing and motivating local people:
How to verify mail and phone campaigns.
o Issues with professionals.
THE SECRET OF USING EMAIL

THE SECRET OF SUCCESSFUL LOBBYING
o Misconceptions about elected representatives and agencies.
THE MEDIA (See Chapter Below)
o Use the media effectively.
o Don't assume decision makers will see good press. (Checklist).
o Misconceptions about television coverage.
HANDLING CONFLICTING GROUPS AND AGENDAS

DIFFERENT KINDS OF ORGANIZERS

EXAMPLES OF SUCCESSFUL COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT
APPENDIX A: SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

Chapter on THE MEDIA
(Getting lots of good press is not as important as making sure decision makers see every piece of good press you do get.)
Use the media effectively.
Publicize your issue as much as possible and use announcements, press releases, and press conferences to generate news about your campaign. Letters to the editor are effective if they are from as many people as possible, with each Letter focusing on different aspects of the issue. Letters in the newspaper keep your issue alive. Op-Ed pieces are always more effective than letters. To maintain momentum, your campaign needs to constantly be in front of the public. Don't ignore anti-environmental letters to the editor criticizing your efforts. Respond promptly to each one in the next edition. Do not attack the person who writes the negative letter - focus on the issue.
Placing your alerts in other organizations' newsletters is a good way to reach an audience of environmentally-friendly people. Most organizations will print well-written copy from other groups. But you should write the piece and not depend on others to do the writing for you.
Editors never know how much room they have until their newsletter is being laid out. To make your material newsletter/editor friendly, prepare alerts and "calls to action" that are camera-ready or electronically-ready to print as is in various formats: one page, half-page, and quarter-page so that whatever space is available, you have furnished just what the editor needs. If the editor wants a paper version, give them your copy on heavy print stock and laser printed. If the copy calls for local officials to be contacted, include those local officials' phone numbers and addresses in your copy so the editor won't have to look them up. The less work for editors, the more likely they are to use your material. Make it easy and avoid placing them in a situation where they have to edit and cut your material so it will fit. Increasingly editors, want material as copy-ready email attachments.
For public events and for general public information have a video made. A video can be one of your most effective tools. Send it to newspapers, other organizations, public officials, and libraries. At a booth or table at public events, you can show it and sell it. It can be used at fund raisers too. Send it along with grant applications. If you are trying to get other organizations to help your cause ask them to show your video at one of their regular meetings.
A good video always finds many more uses than you can imagine. A video gives your campaign weight, provides an organizational focus, and enhances the seriousness of your issue. Decision makers will often not sit still for presentations, but will seldom interrupt a video. A good friend of mine made several unsuccessful attempts to give a presentation to a decision maker who lacked the attention span to sit through more a than a few minutes of any presentation without interrupting, taking phone, calls etc. Finally my friend videotaped his presentation and showed it to the decision maker. They both sat there and watched, and his entire presentation was uninterrupted. People worship television. It is America's national religion and most houses provide a shrine to it in the most prominent place in the house. Most people have more respect for, and attach more probative value to someone on TV telling them something, than if the same person told them the same thing in person.
Don't assume decision makers will see good press.
If you get a good story written about your issue, that is only a good first step. Step two: send it to your representative with a cover letter. If it is a TV piece, put it on videotape and send it to them. But just because you send an article or video to a decision maker, don't assume it will ever be seen by anyone other than the mailroom staff who will send you a routine response. To make sure a decision maker actually reads/views your material, do three things.
1. Phone the staff person with lead responsibility for the issue and tell them an important piece has been created and you are sending it to their attention. Then send it addressed to them. Confirm their exact address, as this step creates a sort of implied commitment to open and read/view your material.
2. A week later, phone again and ask if they received it. Since mail arrives in legislators' offices in hand trucks, and it piles up on staffer's desks in foot-high piles, it will probably be sitting on the staff's desk unopened. They will probably tell you it's there but they haven't got to it yet. Tell them you will phone in a week to get their reaction.
3. Telephone in a week and ask them if they have had a chance to read it. They probably will have. If not, repeat the last step. At that point, you can ask them if they will forward it to the decision maker. Elected representatives generally only read or watch material their staff has screened and forwarded to them. And even that much pre-screened material will consist of large stacks of material.
You might assume that major prime time TV coverage of your issue will automatically come to the attention of decision makers without any further action on your part. Not so.
Misconceptions about TV coverage
TV coverage, by itself, seldom results in any concrete action. For example, a one-hour powerful documentary about a beautiful place under threat of clear-cut logging was seen by ten million people. That documentary resulted in less than thirty letters protesting the proposed destruction. Specials about the wonders of, and threats to, a pristine and precious place mostly generate calls and letters from vacationers who want to add that place to their itinerary before it's destroyed and other inquiries from retirees looking for a nice place to retire, NOT cards and letters to save it.
Have you ever watched a hard-hitting expose' on TV and afterwards written a letter of complaint? Probably not. No one else does either. When folks see an issue on television, they assume that because the problem was on TV, it is no longer a problem they need to attend to because now everyone knows about it. Most people are in a trance when they watch TV and don't get up from their couches to write letters and make phone calls.
On the rare occasion when a TV viewer is motivated to phone an agency and complain, the call is often of a very peculiar type. They will address their concerns in such a tentative, circular and tepid way that the agency will not even know what they really want or why they called.
Nevertheless, good TV coverage of your issue can be helpful. It educates and informs, and does occasionally lead to important victories. But more importantly it provides hard, primary lobbying material that can be reproduced and delivered, preferably in person, to the legislators' offices to bolster a personal visit where you deliver a pitch.
Good television coverage is an important tool and a precursor to action, but it is not a substitute for action.


All materials (pages 6-13) are from: Social Change Activism and the Internet: Strategic Online Activities by Rory O’Brien, 2003 (available at no cost on the Internet)

Elements of Social Action
The Role of the Internet
Philip Kotler (Kotler, 1973), writing in a time of reflection following an intense period of social dissatisfaction that fostered social change movements for peace, the environment, social justice, and women's rights, developed a framework of social action that is still applicable today. After studying the ways that social problems were approached in a wide variety of social situations, he postulated five elements common to all interventions, which he called
"...the five C's of social action:
Cause. A social objective or undertaking that change agents believe will provide some answer to a social problem.
Change Agency. An organization whose primary mission is to advance a social cause.
Change Targets. Individuals, groups, or institutions designated as the targets of change efforts.
Channels. Ways in which influence and response can be transmitted between change agents and change targets.
Change Strategy. A basic mode of influence adopted by the change agent to affect the change target." (Kotler, 1973, p. 172)
The following are brief descriptions of each of the first four elements. The fifth, change strategy, will be taken up in greater detail in the next section.

Cause
According to Kotler, causes can be classified into three categories: helping causes, which seek to aid the victims of a social problem, but rarely attempts to attack the problem at its roots; protest causes, which seek to alter the behavior of the institutions that contribute most to the problem; and revolutionary causes, which strive to eliminate those institutions who very existence is thought to be the primary source of the problem. Causes generally progress through four stages: a crusading stage, in which a few individuals attempt to raise awareness of a problem; a popular movement stage, where many followers are attracted by the original, often charismatic, leaders; a managerial stage, that sees the leadership shifting to people with organizational skills in order to better manage the activities of the growing movement; and finally, a bureaucratic stage, in which the original zeal is lost and the movement is operated in a more rigid and bureaucratic manner, with well-established policies and procedures, and functional specialization. (Kotler, 1973, pp. 173-174)
Change Agency
A change agency is comprised of two main types of change agents, leaders and supporters. Leaders include: the directors, who start or head the organization; the advocates, who promote the cause through media advocacy; the backers, who finance the agency; the technicians, who provide expert advice or service to the directors; the administrators, who run the daily operations of the organization; and the organizers, who ensure that the agency's supporters and campaigns are well-organized. Those who are supporters of the cause have three roles: workers, who give their time to conducting the activities organized by the agency; donors, who contribute money; and sympathizers, who espouse the beliefs of the movement, but who otherwise remain inactive. Individuals have many different motives for participating in a cause - they may desire affiliation with zealous people, seek to acquire respect from others and improve their status, have power over others, or need to believe in something to give meaning to their lives. Due to the numerous set-backs and ups-and-downs of any social movement, those involved in the change effort can expect to pass through several psychological states over time - from initial enthusiasm, to frustration and reduced expectations, and finally, to adjusted participation. (Kotler, 1973, pp. 176-178)
Change Targets
Change targets vary according to the nature of the cause. Helping causes target victims, often referring to them as clients. Protest causes target institutions of power, such as corporations, the military, and government, seeking to change them in ways that will eliminate or mitigate the problem. Revolutionary causes target these same institutions of power, but attempt to destroy rather than change them. In order to have the most impact on direct targets, change agencies often strive to influence intermediate targets: the general public, the professional establishment (e.g., educators, scientists, lawyers), government regulators, and the business establishment. In mounting an effective campaign, target segmentation is important. Rather than stereotyping all members of a target system, the change agents must be aware "that any target group contains persons at different stages of accessibility and susceptibility to the cause. The change agency must pay attention to these differences and search for the most meaningful dimensions of effective segmentation. The change agent can draw on demographic, geographic, psychographic, behavioral, and social structural variables for segmenting target individuals and institutions." In choosing particular segments, three conditions must be satisfied: accessibility, or the degree to which channels exist to reach the target; substantiality, the degree to which the target is worth the effort; and susceptibility, the degree to which the target will respond to the initiative. (Kotler, 1973, pp. 179-182)
Channels
For effective communication with the change targets, agencies must carefully select the appropriate channels of communication, of which there are two types, the influence channels and the response channels. Influence channels, by which targets are reached, are subdivided into media and personal influence channels. Media influence channels are further broken down into the mass media (e.g., television, radio, newspapers), which sends messages to a mass audience, and specialized media (e.g., niche magazines, newsletters, reports), which distributes communications among particular audiences. In general, the mass media is used to reach the public and outside targets, while specialized media is often used within a change agency system, such as from leaders to supporters. Personal influence channels are predicated on a face-to-face basis, ranging from mass meetings (e.g., rallies, demonstrations, conferences), to small groups (e.g., negotiation teams, committees), to individual visits or phone calls (e.g., lobbying). Overall, the higher the status and the more similar to the targeted individuals the change agents are, the more effective they will be. Response channels are the venues for obtaining feedback from the change target. Like the influence channels, response channels can be divided into media response channels and personal response channels, each used in a similar way to their influence channel counterparts. By increasing the number and accessibility of response channels, the likelihood of receiving a positive response is enhanced. (Kotler, 1973, pp. 182-184)

Internet Activism
Although the proliferation of the Internet in mainstream society only happened after the introduction of the World Wide Web in 1994, there have been several commentators, researchers and activists who had discussed electronic communications as a means of enhancing public action on political and social issues prior to that time. Murray Turoff and Starr Roxanne Hiltz, in 1978, first sparked people's imaginations with their visionary scenarios of the social uses of computer messaging systems in the seminal book The Network Nation (which won the 1978 award of the Association of American Publishers as the outstanding technical publication of the year). (Hiltz & Turoff, 1978)
Social theorists such as Alvin Toffler (Toffler, 1980), Yoneji Masuda (Masuda, 1981), and Ithiel de Sola Pool (Pool, 1983) wrote of the benefits that computer communications would bring to society. Later, Nicholas Negroponte, head of the Media Lab at MIT, continued this techno-optimism in Being Digital (Negroponte, 1995), a re-compilation of his columns in Wired Magazine, one of the more widely-read journals of the new communications media.
Assessing how networks were being used to foster grassroots movements, Howard Reingold wrote The Virtual Community (Reingold, 1993), in which he devoted a chapter to describing the early activities of early online activists involved in community development, civil rights and the environmental and peace movements. Rory O'Brien (O'Brien, 1992) and Howard Frederick (Frederick, 1993) were more explicit in their explanations of the workings of the Association for Progressive Communications, the world's largest umbrella organization of computer networks for social change activists.
As the popularity of the Internet increased, the genre of writing moved from the theoretical to the descriptive to the practical. Mark S. Bonchek (Bonchek, 1995) studied how the Internet changes the way people participate in political affairs. In NetActivism (Schwartz, 1996), Ed Schwartz showed his readers how to use the functionalities of online networks to revitalize communities and engage in political activism. Maureen James and Liz Rykert (James & Rykert, 1997) wrote Working Together Online, a 'how-to' book on facilitating nonprofit groups seeking to collaborate on projects. That same year, "An Activists' Strategy for Using Email and the World Wide Web", was published online by the One Northwest (One Northwest, 1997) organization. This was followed in 1998 by another online document, "The Virtual Activist", in which the authors stated their beliefs in the effectiveness of the Internet for enhancing change efforts:
"So you want to be a Virtual Activist!
The Internet makes it possible for activists to expand our networks by identifying and contacting activists in other communities who have similar interests and concerns. If you're a grassroots activist, chances are you already know the people in your own community who share your concerns. By joining the appropriate discussion lists and news groups, you can identify and communicate with activists in other communities who are working on similar issues. By sharing information, strategies, and/or advice, you may be able to enhance the effectiveness of your efforts. Even activists who have the resources to broaden their networks by attending conferences and meetings outside our own community will benefit from the additional networking opportunities provided by the Internet. " (Krause, Stein & Clark, 1998)
More and more, facilitators of network activism are themselves using the net as a way of guiding the organizations they serve. Websites and e-mail lists are increasingly preferred over the book or the journal article, as is evidenced by several such initiatives. Audrey Krause, one of the writers of "The Virtual Activist", operates a virtual organization called NetAction, whose website [http://www.netaction.org/] is a popular one for those who wish to keep abreast of the latest cyber-policy issues. Besides a listing of related online resources, the site offers a distance education training course in Net activism, and visitors can sign up to an e-mail list to receive periodic articles and notices of events.
Another organization that is dedicated to promoting the use of the net by grassroots organizers is the Benton Foundation. An important part of their website is Benton's Best Practices Toolkit [http://www.benton.org/Practice/Toolkit/], which is frequently updated to provide the best examples of effective uses of the new media. The Toolkit contains hyperlinks to advice and examples categorized into the following headings:
• Announcements
• Planning, implementation & evaluation
• Organizing & advocacy tools
• Publicizing your efforts
• Technology funding for nonprofits
• Fundraising on the Internet
• Technical assistance
• Web Stuff
• Nonprofit-related electronic newsletters
• Nonprofit-related electronic discussion lists
• Related publications
• General & miscellaneous
These last two examples are just some of the many instances of activist groups making good use of the Internet to keep people informed as well as help them get organized. As techniques are developed that prove useful, they are quickly copied and modified to suit particular constituencies. The last decade has seen a profusion of new ways of using the Internet to improve the operations of social change activists. Such innovations have been commensurate with the communal modus operandi of most advocacy groups, which itself is uniquely designed to achieve the goal of fostering changes to the social status quo.
The Internet, being an unprecedented and still experimental communications medium, is being used in a myriad of novel ways by change agencies. It can act as a single channel of communication with change targets that assumes the functions of Kotler's influence and response channels, or as a mass medium, with a single online event or document attracting large numbers of the participating public. It can also behave as a specialized medium, with the capability for many-to-many interaction, useful for sharing information among a geographically and temporally dispersed group.
The Internet is becoming the common platform for digital communications, with the Web browser the common user interface. These platforms support many different types of software tools for information manipulation, such as hypertext links on web pages, online databases, e-mail, sound and video clips, chat rooms, and virtual reality modeling. Many of these tools are in common use by change activists, eager to get their message out to the public, engage people in their cause, and improve their organizational communications. In the following sections, we will explore a general typology of online techniques and activities currently used by social change agents based on the facilitative, persuasive, re-educative, and power types of change strategies, and link them with some examples of their application within the online environment.

Facilitative Activities
Organizational Maintenance
Facilitative strategies are used mainly to support other types of strategies, but there is one type of facilitation that is paramount to the change agency - the facilitating of organizational maintenance, without which there would be no organized strategy. Maintenance activities include fundraising, personnel development, project management, and intra-organizational communication.
Fundraising is being increasingly conducted online, with searchable databases of foundations now available, linked to their websites for downloadable application forms. Donations are not only solicited, but are being processed electronically. E-commerce is also enhancing online fundraising, allowing sales of information products and organizational memberships. Intranets are becoming popular, helping personnel be better organized with the help of online directories, group forums for project management, and sign-up forms for volunteer recruitment. For larger groups, with offices in several locales, the intranet has become the online office filing cabinet, making important organizational documents such as policies, reports, schedules, announcements available on an insider-only website, and even serving as an informal 'water cooler' via private computer conferences.
Information Sharing
The real power of the Internet lies in its ability to allow information to be shared by anyone online, almost anywhere, relatively quickly and inexpensively, A website, even if it is just an 'on-line brochure' is becoming de rigueur for non-profit organizations. Many go beyond just posting public information about their operations, and enhance their sites with newsletters, events calendars, and job postings. Information is now fairly easy to put online, making it relatively simple for even the poorest of grassroots organizations to keep the world informed about their issues. Compilations of related sites help some groups find others that share their problems, leading to closer collaborations. Some organizers provide daily summaries of presentations and workshops held at conferences, permitting non-attendees to keep abreast of things. In some cases, video streaming technologies allow the viewing of the actual presentations made. Reference materials are no longer relegated to brick-and-mortar libraries - researchers now search online repositories of documents, and the contents of websites, quite easily, with the problem of overload being handled by specialized non-profit online services that filter and aggregate specific information content.
Coordination
The coordination of action between and among several change groups is greatly assisted by the Internet. Rallies, demonstrations, and other forms of public protest are increasingly conceived, planned, implemented and evaluated with the help of the Internet. Computer conferences and mail lists are good ways for activists to suggest ideas, decide upon particular actions, publicize the activity, and engage a wider public in an on-line discussion of the issues. In Toronto, for example, Citizens for Local Democracy made extensive use of online communications to coordinate a number of demonstrations against the policies of the provincial government, as well as facilitating the organizing of citizen workshops on issues of local governance. (Citizens for Local Democracy, 1998) Internationally, the Council of Canadians used the Internet to publicize the dangers of the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), and coordinate a world-wide campaign of hundreds of groups opposed to it. (Council of Canadians, 1999)
In addition to coordination of actions, the Internet has proven useful for the joint development of policy. The major international policy summits of the United Nations since 1992 have included representation from non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The unprecedented involvement and participation by the thousands of NGOs and other stakeholders has been made possible only with the use of the new communications tools. The tracking via Internet of the series of regional and global meetings leading up to the development of the Kyoto Protocol to establish binding national targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, is a good example of a greater participation in joint public-policy making by civil society organizations. (IISD, 1997)
Re-educative Activities
The purpose of re-educative strategies is to create an awareness of a problem, and to teach people skills and knowledge required in order to create the needed changes. The Internet is now a preferred venue of alternative news sources, many of which act as a balance to the offerings of the mainstream media. In certain instances, mail lists and computer conferences maintained by change agencies provide a wealth of information about particular issues and problematic situations. Websites are occasionally enhanced with geographic information systems (GIS) that help people get information about their local environment, such as the location of nearby toxic waste dumps. Social issues are also being addressed online in a more formal distance-education mode, in which educators link students with online resources, or help them share local data with classes in other countries. Online research, often conducted by means of searches through scientific databases, promotes learning about solutions to problems as well. Finally, in order to use the technology, it helps to be taught by those who know. There are many non-profit organizations teaching others how to make the best use of the Internet, through hands-on training, or by providing advice via online documents.
Persuasive Activities
Much social change advocacy follows a persuasive strategy, and this is mirrored in the online world. A good many of the non-profit organizations with websites seek to promote their cause by means of web pages designed to be persuasive. Often, single issue websites will contain hundreds of supportive articles and reports that argue their position on the matter at hand. Pictures, or video clips, are frequently chosen for online presentation on the basis of their emotional appeal. Most of these kinds of websites do not allow for public interaction, eliminating any immediate potential for the audience to publicly respond to the host's assertions.
One interesting case of online persuasion is akin to an educative function, though its bias toward the negative precludes it being classified as a balanced educational activity. This is the case of the 'watchdog' organizations. Though they existed prior to the Internet, the new digital capabilities have allowed them to proliferate. Anyone interested in knowing about any harmful, unethical, or wasteful activities of companies or governments can now locate websites that contain a constantly updated historical record of transgressions against the public interest.
Power activities
Power strategies are coercive, with the aim of making the target respond positively or else risk jeopardizing the satisfaction of its needs. The use of the Internet has helped make activities derived from a power strategy more efficient. Economic pressure on corporations, for example, is heightened by the easy availability of information on boycott issues via websites maintained by consumer advocates. The social investment movement has also begun to use the net to amass and disseminate data on corporate social responsibility, to dissuade potential shareholders from investing in companies that offend the public interest. Political pressure is brought to bear in an online environment through such things as action alerts on breaking issues, online petitions, and mobilizing supporters to participate in electronic mail or fax campaigns targeting politicians. Though such use has followed from the more traditional forms of non-electronic advocacy, the ease and speed of the Internet has encouraged more public involvement in political action.

Civil society organizations and social change groups in particular, choose activities strategically in order to accomplish their aims. Since these activities often involve different forms of communication, whether it is with their colleagues, supporters, the public, or the change targets themselves, the new communications technology of the Internet has had a major impact on the operations of non-profits. Many such groups have adopted a variety of Internet-based tools and techniques for enhancing their effectiveness. Because the number of non-profits using the Internet is increasingly rapidly and there has been very little written regarding the strategic implications of Internet use by social change organizations, it is an opportune time to look further into the subject of strategic uses of the net.