Introducing TakeAction Minnesota
TakeAction Minnesota is a nonprofit, statewide network of people working to realize racial and economic equity across Minnesota.
Impact of Mentorship
New Media Mentors' work with TakeAction Minnesota focused on supercharging their offline organizing work with online tools and building their planning capabilities to better achieve their goals. As a result, they won a critical campaign—raising the minimum wage in Minnesota.
How We Got There
New Media Mentors worked with TAM to:
Design successful online campaigns
During the mentorship, TakeAction Minnesota used the organization’s work to raise the minimum wage in Minnesota as their “practical campaign” (a NMM exercise). As part of the exercise they mapped out a multi-channel new media plan with the New Media Mentors campaign planning template. They received input from NMM staff on the plan, ran the campaign, and ultimately won big. This new approach to planning, combined with strong offline work, led to the win. As TakeAction’s New Media Strategist described, “The work we did with New Media Mentors as part of our campaign to raise the minimum wage helped us plan strategically so that we knew we were using our time and resources to engage our members in the most effective way possible. This saved us huge amounts of staff time and also meant that we were able to try new things and capitalize on opportunities – like crowdfunding online ads – in the midst of a hectic campaign.”
Teach “offline” organizers to use new media effectively
New Media Mentors' campaign planning templates made it easier for TakeAction’s New Media Strategist to help traditionally offline organizers plan campaigns that leveraged both online and offline organizing techniques. This allowed the organization to take full advantage of the efficiencies of online organizing and increase the amount of work the organization is able to take on.
Plan effectively for the long-term
Long-view tools such as our New Media Roadmap changed the way TakeAction Minnesota approaches new media work, ensuring that at any given moment, online staff is clear that the work they’re doing is bringing the organization closer to achieving long-term goals. As TakeAction’s New Media Strategist said, “This work has changed us for the long-run.”
Our work together included the following learning modules:
- Social media
- Ladder of engagement planning
- List building
- Campaign planning
- New Media Roadmap
- Measurement
- Search engine optimization
- Testing
- Social action technology review
- Google AdWords
“The mentorship changed the way we plan for new media work so that at any given moment, I can be clear that what I’m doing is bringing us closer to our short-term and long-term goals. The work we did as part of our campaign to raise the minimum wage helped us plan strategically so that we knew we were using our time and resources to engage our members in the most effective way possible.”
Banner image courtesy of TakeAction Minnesota.
