ENERGIZE Clinton County

Working towards sustainability is unique for each community, but there are resources and methods to creating conversation, organizing, and  identifying projects that we hope will be useful in many different contexts. We’ve created an ongoing list of these resources, as well as some thoughts from ECC on what we’ve found to work, and we’ve found to not worked. We hope that it will serve as a starting point for others across the country who are interested in building a sustainable home by ENERGIZING their communities.

BUILDING A VISION

– Identify the problem you want to solve: The most important first step is to clearly articulate the problem you want to confront in your community, and then identify the root causes that have produced that problem. One of the most effective tools we have used is a root cause analysis chart. We completed our first root cause analysis while applying for a grant, and found it so helpful that we wished we would have completed it sooner. We highly recommend it as an activity to bring together a group of people to work on with the goal of getting ideas flowing and to develop the necessary foundation for building a vision.

Download a sample root cause chart and then check out this example.

– Develop a vision, and get it on paper: The next step is to develop a vision that will guide your work. If you’re tackling a specific issue, find out if other organizations are working on the same thing, and think about how your vision compares to theirs. 

Can the identified vision be addressed without forming a new group? Maybe it makes more sense to work with an already established group, or getting an existing group to shift towards a shared vision. If you’re focusing broadly on your community (like we are), think about how your vision fits into the current vision for your community (if it has one).

Then put it down on paper. As often as possible, we try to limit our documents to about one page. It makes it easy to read, and challenges us to articulate our message precisely and succinctly. Here is an example of the first document we produced discussing our vision. Our vision has shifted a bit since then–so it might seem a little outdated–but that’s ok. Be ready for your vision to shift as part of the process.

–Decision Making: As you begin to develop a vision and strategy for your organization, one of the best skills you can develop is effective process for decision making. Here is a guide from Rocky Mountain Institute’s Sustainable Communities department that we’ve found useful (see Sustainable Communities section for more resources from RMI). What we especially like about it is its focus on facilitaing a decision making process that includes a broad range of stakeholders, an essential component for developing an inclusive community organization.

– Build a framework for beginning discussions: After we got our vision in place, we created a framework for beginning discussions with public officials and other community members. For us it took the form of our Roadmap to Development. This framework served as the basis for our first community meeting, and is still a document by which we judge each of our projects; confirming that it fits within the focus of the organization. We liked the idea of the roadmap because it allowed us to lay out some signposts that we can follow without going into the details of specific projects.

– Establishing a brand: Its amazing what a catchy name and a cool logo will do. When Mark sat down one day and worked out a logo, we felt the first tingling of inspiration that the ideas we were throwing around might serve as a basis for a grassroots movement. This is a big decision, because once you commit to something you’ll want to stay with it. We encourage you to think of a name that will resonate with your community, but if you’d like to use the ENERGIZE brand we’re happy to share it. Just let us know, and we’ll walk you through the process of putting together your own ENERGIZE ________ brand. 

If you’ve completed these steps, you should begin to see projects emerge that will begin moving you and your community towards your vision. The next step is to begin sharing your message and bringing people in.

STARTING A CONVERSATION

Once you have your vision and framework in place, its time to share you vision with your friends, neighbors, fellow community members, and public officials. 

We found that starting as low tech and as grassroots as possible meant we didn’t have to immediately stress about things like a web site (although it would come soon enough), and allowed us to get early rounds of feedback on our message and ideas from people we know and trust.

Here are a few simple ways to get your ideas out there that we found effective:

(1) Write a letter to the editor: It’s old school, but was very effective for us. Most newspapers have word limits, so it will force you to articulate your ideas succinctly. If you live in a big city, it might be harder to get your letter in, so consider independent newspapers or other city publications. Make sure you include a way for people to contact you.

(2) Send out an e-mail to friends and neighbors: Without a doubt, this the easiest way to get a lot of quick feedback. Try to keep it to one page, and use it as an opportunity to put some effort into the design and presentation (a slick, well designed one-pager will take you a long way).  

(3) Talk to EVERYONE you can about your idea: For most people, having a conversation about an idea is the best way to get them excited. In its earliest days, we used to just sit in our local cafe and talk to everyone we could about the Green Enterprise Zone (often loud enough for everyone else to hear), and got a lot of great ideas from people in the process.

(4) Host a community meeting: When you’ve created a buzz and gotten people excited, its time to have a community meeting. This will be your opportunity share you vision and recruit supporters to help you push your organization forward. Make sure you put a lot of planning for your first meeting. Early on, we found ourselves overlooking simple questions, so don’t make the same mistake. Here are a few we found particularly important: what time and place will draw the most people? how do we convince people that this meeting is something important? how should we frame the meeting so people walk away feeling like they’ve been apart of something meaningful? One format we found to be successful is to slipt the meeting into two parts, the first outlining the organization and its vision, the second splitting attendees into small groups to discuss and share ideas. For us, this format has been successful for encouraging our supporters to contribute their ideas.

When you’ve got the planning in place, GET PEOPLE TO COME: advertise everywhere you can, send out press releases to every press outlet in your region, and get people talking. Be as creative as possible. We even resorted to pinning signs advertising our meeting on the backs of runners at a Thanksgiving Day 5k. Make sure you get at least one newspaper and one TV camera at your first meeting. It might take some extra work, but the value will go a long way.

ENERGIZING ON-LINE

As your ideas and organization grows, you’ll have to eventually confront the need to build an on-line presences. We can not reiterate how important a well-designed and informative web site can be. Here are a few reasons we’ve found our web site to be essential:

(1) It will become the face of your organization: Most people in your community will never see you or speak to you about your idea, so you’re website will be his or her only opportunity to interact with your organization. Therefore, it is important to make sure it reflects, as much as possible, the seriousness, professionalism, and thoughtfulness of your organization. This becomes especially important when receiving press coverage, as one’s work can often be judged by the quality of the web site.

(2) It can help you insure transparency: One of the most important parts of building a grassroots community organization is transparency. This is especially important when promoting an idea or vision which is new to your community. Making your web site a tool for providing organizational transparency can, in many cases, help you address criticism and misinformation. Our goal is always to anticipate, and answer, as many questions as possible on the web site before people have to ask them. In the end, this will save you time.

(3) It provides a means for conversation: In the ideal world, your web site will serve as an extension of the conversation with your supporters and the stakeholders on which you are focused. That means updating on a regular basis and keeping your audience coming back–something easier said than done. A blog/website gives you the capability to post articles, thoughts, news, research, and ideas that you work with on a day-to-day basis, which will keep people interested, informed, and educated. 

(4) It saves a ton of paper

For many (including us), starting an organization like ECC will be the first real motivation you’ll  have to develop a web site. Here are a few resources that will allow you to quickly, and cheaply, get an effective website up and running:

– Google Apps & Domains: The best deal on the internet for getting you web site up and running. For $10 a year, you can get: a domain name for your organization, 200 e-mail accounts through Gmail, an organizational Google Calendar, and much more. What it lacks is personal tech support.

– Blogger & WordPress: For those of us who are less “html” savvy, we’ve found the best way to quickly set up an easy to maintain website is to modify a blog site–like Blogger or WordPress–into a website. Both of these services are free, and you can find a wide array of templates for Blogger and WordPress that will allow you to customize the theme and structure of your site.

Energizecc.com is built on WordPress, and we’re pretty happy with it. We have found that the interface for building and adding content to the website is great and will be very intuitive for most. It also has built in stats which are a huge help. The drawbacks are that it is difficult to customize, and it doesn’t support javascript.

To see a comparison to blogger, you can check out this site built by Mark for a local yoga studio. As you can see, its pretty similar in terms of functionality. The Blogger user interface isn’t quite as slick or easy to use as WordPress , but you get much more power to customize the layout, design, and colors, and you can also use javascpript. Here is a great site for finding Blogger templates which will help you give your site the right look and feel. 

The one drawback for both is that they are both a little tricky when it comes to directing your domain to the site (so you don’t have to use ____.wordpress.com or ____.blogger.com). You’ll have to follow the instructions for the site to make your domain work.

–Google Docs & Calendar: Resourcefulness has been essential to building ECC. We have been able to expand out capacity by constantly trying to get more done, more effectively, and for less money. These free on-line services will allow you to collaborate and communicate in real time. Google Docs gives you the capability to collaboratively develop and share documents, spreadsheets, survey forms and presentations. Google calendar allows you to share a calendar among organizers which can also be shared publicly and viewed by supporters. And even better, both services can be accessed from any computer with the internet. Used effectively, these resources will be some of the most valuable tools you’ll have. We use them every single day.