The next time you’re tempted to take control and expect others to fall in line, consider the leadership model of two successful social action groups: Mothers Out Front and Moms Demand Action. These two different organizations mobilize mothers at the heart of their missions. They rely on mothers’ strong social capital and community ties to build their ranks. And though they have strong social media and digital presence, they encourage passionate supporters to bring in new members via in personal and social media contact. Most important, action is driven via chapter leaders and motivations in particular regions or cities.
Moms Demand Action fights for public safety measures to protect people from gun violence. Founded by Shannon Watts in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting, Moms Demand Action campaigns for new and stronger solutions to lax gun laws and loopholes. It has established a chapter in every state of the country. With more than 5 million supporters and more than 350,000 donors, their members have become a fixture both in State Legislatures and at local coffee shops, where they organize. While Watts is an outspoken progressive whose Twitter presence often trolls Donald Trump, what’s remarkable about the Moms Demand Action members is how very “Red State” they are. After the Parkland shooting, Moms Demand saw huge growth in states like Arkansas, fueled by angry, and scared, mothers. Since its founding Moms Demand has seen legislative victories in Kansas, Utah, North Dakota and many other states.
Mothers Out Front is a non partisan movement of mothers and grandmothers coming together to make climate change an issue that our leaders can no longer ignore. Mothers Out Front makes the impact of dirty energy truly tangible, an effort that has challenged the climate movement for decades. By including, as another Mother-leader Dominique Browning has said, “fewer polar bears,” and emphasizing the very real effect of climate change on own own communities, MOF manages to avoid partisanship and focus on the work. This focus is reflected in their social media, where they share information and articles on their various Facebook pages around urgent issues that affect local communities.
For example, members log gas leaks in local communities - an issue that came to life in terrifying fashion after three cities in Massachusetts exploded because of faults in the natural gas lines.
Mothers Out Front founder Kelsey Wirth brought her training as a successful entrepreneur and student of legendary organizer Marshall Ganz to use a model of distributed leadership- the “snowflake method,” to organize action. This is a model which replaces a single leader in a network with interconnected leaders, each responsible for an aspect of a campaign.
What can you take away from these leaders?
Go One to One One of Mothers Out Front’s biggest a-ha moments has been finding a way for their members to connect with the challenge of slowing climate change by encouraging members to see it on a personal level, and connect with community members who feel the same. Mothers Out Front depends on face-to-face connections to build their numbers and to attract more people to their cause. They believe that being personally accountable to someone else in the organization is more likely to encourage women from hiding behind their screens. Kelsey Wirth explains, “the idea is that mothers come together in their neighborhoods, working with friends, neighbors, fellow community members, and they focus on local issues, actionable change that they can influence at the local level.”
Ladder Up Engagement The snowflake model allows individuals to engage with social action on their own terms, and also helps bridge the tricky divide between “slacktivism” and taking it to the streets. I’m a digital political consultant and I’m often asked: will thousands of Facebook likes or visits to my campaign website actually advance social change? And the answer is, maybe.
Models like Mothers Out Front and Moms Demand Action “ladder up” their members’ engagement, so that someone who initially clicks on a social media link may over time become so personally engaged that soon she is showing up at a State Legislature. They’re extremely active on social media, using it to spread their message, raise hackles with powerful national and local stories, post upcoming meetings, and encourage women to act. There are dozens of local pages as well, so that women in any state can connect with each other and organize to take action on a local level. Social media is the first rung on the ladder.
Chapters and Friends Moms Demand Action organizes via chapters, and relies on very active local members to recruit more from their own communities. Shannon Watts says there’s a chapter leader in the middle who owns or runs that specific state, then a snowflake of volunteers around her to provide support. “Members have almost every conceivable type of skill, so no matter what they’re looking for, they can find it in their own organization,” Watts says. There are several dozen paid organizers across the country who are responsible for making sure each chapter has a "legislative agenda, they have swag, membership is growing, the mission is staying on track, and providing relief when it’s needed."
Both groups use their social media presence to attract new members, and to get the word out about issues they care about, but they depend on in-person meetings and accountability to encourage women to keep going, to show up, to volunteer, and to get out there and do everything they can to make the world better for their children. This way, even someone who considers themselves an introvert (like me) and is uncomfortable speaking in public or being in a spotlight can make a difference. They can contribute to the social media campaigns, help behind the scenes to create swag, flyers, information packets, whatever might be needed.
Facebook for Organizing, Twitter for News Moms Demand Action uses Twitter to pass along information about legislation, articles about shootings, statistics, etc. They also use Twitter to communicate with the media, lawmakers, and companies. Their actual gathering and organizing activities take place on Facebook, at both the national level on the main page, and on the local levels on the individual pages. Each group of leaders has their own Facebook page where they can gather to discuss issues, share information, and communicate with each other.
They’ve recently started using Slack, too, in order to get everyone out of their email inboxes and into a more immediate conversation.
Shannon Watts herself uses Twitter vociferously, amassing over 250K followers in the last two years. She says her goal is to raise the voices of all her volunteers. Because it’s her personal platform, she can talk about whatever she wants to: gun violence, women’s issues, education, anything that strikes her. And she can use her own platform to funnel people to the Moms Demand platforms.
Mothers Out Front uses Facebook for most of the actual organizing of their events; there are dozens of Mothers Out Front pages, each of them focused on their own locality, spreading information on gatherings, issues, upcoming votes, upcoming council meetings their members would be interested in being involved in.
Pass It Along Traditional leadership looks like a pyramid: one overlord at the top and everyone else spread out in increasing number to the rank-and-file. The snowflake model requires that everyone feels that they have a voice, and each group is responsible for their own decisions for everything in each effort. It leads to people feeling more like their own voice matters, and more like they’re individually making a difference while simultaneously contributing to the greater goals of the organization. It also allows new activists to enter in gently, perhaps starting on social media, and laddering up as they want to.
So today, if you’re angry about the state of the world, join the mothers, get local, check Facebook, and demand change!
Learn more: listen to my extended interviews with Shannon Watts and Kelsey Wirth on Hiding in the Bathroom podcast.
