Organizational Models: Deconstructing Music for America
A conversation began on this blog a few weeks ago about the effectiveness of Music for America's model for reaching and activating young voters. It started here, with a segment of Alex's thesis devoted to his experience volunteering with MFA in 2004. Both MFA's executive and communications directors posted replies to Alex. It continued here, in a response Alex wrote. In the comments section, a conversation evolved between Alex, myself, and Mark Ristaino, MFA's current communications director, about the problems with MFA's organizational model and execution (disclosure - I'm MFA's founding communications director but have not officially worked at the organization for over a year and a half, though I do give advice occasionally).
This is an important conversation. MFA has a list of 70,000 young voters. They've been present at over 4,000 music events since October 2003 and registered approximately 20,000 young voters. No other organization dedicated to engaging Millenials/"Echo-Boomers" is more integrated within the fabric of youth culture and touches so many people on a nightly basis.
Yet in many ways the organization is dysfunctional. There are problems with the volunteer process, little cohesion to MFA as a movement, and for many volunteers it is a dead-end, providing no way to move further into the ranks of the progressive movement. As a result, to quote Mark "employees and young activists and partner bands start to get disillusioned with politics due to MFA."
This post is an effort to keep this conversation going. As I noted above, MFA is uniquely positioned to reach young voters in the 2008 Presidential cycle. Parts of it are broken, but I hope that it is fixable. Below the jump I've summarized the conversation thus far, and I invite readers to contribute their own ideas. We have a rare chance here to openly discuss with the current leadership of MFA ways to correct the course of the organization well in advance of 2008, when once again MFA could have a significant impact on the outcome of the election.
As Alex noted in his thesis, this is not meant to as an attack on Music for America or any of the other groups that worked extremely hard during the election, but a critical critique of the problems people face when they attempt to become more involved. If we are to regain majority status in this nation we have to look at ourselves with extremely critical eyes.
The conversation so far:
Alex noted that MFA faced huge challenges in creating a workable infrastructure - volunteers failed to show up, materials never made it to concerts, and bands themselves sometimes lost materials. Just as great a problem was the lack of intra-organizational knowledge. There was very little knowledge of who had volunteered for MFA, when they volunteered, what they volunteered for, or how well they performed. Finally, there was no way to plug highly motivated, talented kids into other forms of activism. MFA was raising interest among young voters and finding potential leaders, but had no way to help those leaders develop.
MFA Staffers Molly Neitzel and Mark Ristaino responded by noting that some of Alex's proposed solutions were, in fact, tried by MFA or were unscalable for fundraising reasons. They also asked Alex to provide examples of organizations that effectively mixed online and offline activism among young voters.
Alex responded with a post about IAVA and Cosmopolity/Drinking Liberally, which he held up as examples of successful organizations combining online and offline organzing.
- Mark responded with a mix of interest and doubt as to the relevance of Alex's examples, and posed this doozy of a questions: If a lot of damage control can be dealt with by personal interaction, how do you make a national organization with a huge membership more personal? How does a staff of 6-12 maintain meaningful, personal contact with 70,000 kids? This, in many ways, is the million dollar question.
- I responded to Mark and Alex by expanding on the ways in which Drinking Liberally is a successful organization in its use of online activism to fuel offline activism. I also noted that comparing MFA to Drinking Liberally is not an apple to apples comparison because DL has 3 advantages over MFA that makes its model much easier to pull off:
- DL chapters have a consistent venue
- DL meetings have a consistent meeting time
- DL has a much lower bar for what constitutes an acceptable outcome for each meeting
- Alex responded to Mark with an incredible post that I won't even attempt to fully summarize. Suffice to say that it touches on the meaning of leadership, the consequences of failures in MFA's activities, and the need for more decentralization, more accountability, and a teasing reference to the need to combine political movement building with for-profit activity models
Here is Mark's final response, and where the conversation stands now:
I'm gonna try and reply to both y'all in one comment cuz I'm short on time. First off- THANK YOU SO MUCH for all this honest, frank feedback. I have to admit that Alex's comments and commentary on the direction of MFA was a little tough for me to read at first, since I've been so deeply invovled with the org for the last year, but after reading through multpile times, I started to see that there's good points throughout.
So, the main feedback that I'm getting from the both of you is that MFA's biggest failing right now is an inability to continuously maintain meaningful communication with our national membership. The reasons for this problem are apparent when you look at our model- hundreds decentralized events attached to structure of bands touring nationally, managed and coordinated from one centralized location, with little crossover between the events and people doing the coordination. Our inability to connect with our members offline tops the list of problems.
Stepping back- this problematic decentralized structure is also one of the main reasons MFA was funded in the first place, so the best solution would involve finding different ways to connect offline rather than changing our strategy of outreach.
Solutions vary from little tweaks to a complete overhaul.
The "overhaul solution" is something that Alex has been pushing for- creating a decentralized management structure in key community building places across the country. Admittedly, MFAs robust online capabilites would be very conducive to a structure like this. This solution, though, is the opposite of the direction MFA has been heading- consolidating staff, stripping down operations and focusing on streamlining our model. So while this is a good idea, it would be a complete u-turn in terms of the orgs' direction, and I don't see this happening under our current management. Subtle moves in this direction would definitely be possible, though.
The next solution would be to tweak the existing model and manufacture a local MFA presence in order to ensure some manner of personal, offline connection with members. There have been many failed attempts at manufacturing local communities. Hiring "state coordinators" in key communites died due to poor management and an unclear vision and direction, as well as our inabilty to hire these positions as full-time jobs due to funding. Attempts at getting our committed Minnesota community to organize themselves failed- mainly due to the similar reasons. We provided them with their own website in hopes that it would jumpstart the action, but at the end of the day we were asking too much from unpaid volunteers.
Both of you talked about the importance of local places for local MFA organizing to live. Mike hinted towards some sort of "partner venue" model which could work. I'd love to talk more about that. Can someone fill me in on what happend with venue partnerships in '04? What did MFA attempt, and why did it fail?
We over in MFA land right now have talked extensively about organizational partnerships and how they could end up filling that dead space in MFA right now. Our partnership with "The league of pissed-off voters" is our first real attempt at this. We "engage young people in politics" and then plug our members into select other organizations where they can start really making a difference in the progressive movement. For this tactic to be successful, we need a stronger, more focused communications strategy than we have right now, but it totally works with our model. And it oversteps the need for a local community presence by changing the utility of the org. MFA would no longer be a virtual lobby, but instead be a recruiting center.
In this sense, MFA could be the organization that mines music communites and plugs young activists into other progressive organizations like the League, Young People For, Young dems... Do you think having this function would be enough to make MFA a worth while org in the greater picture of the progressive movement? We would still have to tweak our volunteer program so it's less frustrating.
Oye- too much thinking. Sorry if I sound like a robot right now. Let me know if you need clarification on any points.
I'll post my own response to this later today. I invite anyone and everyone to take part in this conversation and help determine the future direction of MFA.
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DFA and Age Demographics
This is in response to a comment left on one of the previous "MFA" threads. Quoted here:
Buffalo Girl,
I think you're right that DFA is a model to hold up here. My one nit pick with using DFA as an example is the average age of DFA folks. I'm totally speaking off the cuff here - and please correct me if the rant I'm about to go on is wrong - but I would guess that it is say 30+. Maybe its a little age-ist, but I think that DFA is somethign that appeals to an older crowd that is already politically aware and looking to become more engaged in a meaningful way. Kind of like MoveOn appeals to tail-end GenX set, but DFA is for people who want to do more than click a button. But it's not something that appeals to the majority of 18-30 year olds who aren't already involved in their local Young Dems or tooling around places like DKos.
So if you take as a given that reaching folks under 30 has to involve the inter-webs, and your goal is to bring new folks into the fold, find talent, and move talent up the ladder of participation (ie create leaders that can organize the rest), how do you do it?
I'd love it if you could maybe give some examples of successful online to offline programs that DFA has run lately. I know that myself and Josh both got involved in politics most recently through the Dean Campaign, but I haven't followed DFA too much since Dean got elected Chairman.
As for your comments about wasted talent further up the scale, I'm interested to know more. I would have thought that places like DFA would foster such talent or help funnel it to newly revitalized state party organizations . . . ? On the social justice side, there are ways to get involved with some of those talents, but linking the social justice world to the explicitly political is another area where connections are loose or nonexistent.
Got to work. More later.
DFA -- Of Course!
I don't know why DFA slipped my mind at first, but yes, they are currently the standard bearer of a national on- and off-line grassroots organization. As Mike noted, they have minimal appeal to younger and marginally political people, but they do have a great decentralized organizational model which is fostering activism in many areas of many states. This group has a real advantage over MFA and any other youth oriented political group--the members have paying jobs and are not as broke as young people tend to be. I'm also not sure about how their staffing works, but I believe you are correct that the vast majority of their leaders are not paid.
I also think that DFA needs to work sometimes on outreach tactics, as the chapters that I've had contact with have had little success reaching outside of the net- and grass-roots communities that they are a part of, and this would be more problematic for a youth and culture driven org. But, there's no reason that DFA and MFA couldn't coexist and work together side-by-side, other than the fact that MFA is not really built at the moment (so far as I can tell) to work with another organization at this large level. The streamlining that Mark referred to seems to me to mean that they only have enough staff to do whatever they are already doing, and baring a managerial change, this will be the direction that the organization continues to move towards (I'm just extrapolating from the comments, so I could be wrong).
Anyway, thanks for bringing the example of DFA up, as it was a bad oversight on my part and they are a really great organization that has a ton of potential.
The question of how to plug in more skilled people is a really, really amazing one, and something that I have to think about a lot more...
DFA had Dean
DFA is the remnant of a 2003-2004's nearly-successful political coup-de-etat that was the Howard Dean campaign. Their meetups really were drawing 100s of 1000s of people on a monthly basis with very very little in the way of centralized organization. A lot of those people have stuck around.
But that campaign was a freakish and beautiful anomaly in several ways:
1) It was a presidential campaign that seemed to have a chance. It's hard to beat "taking over the country" for motivation. Clobbers "beating bush" by a mile.
2) The campaign itself was crazily flush with cash. They burned more than 60 million dollars in a year. A lot of it was wasted but there were paid "official people" to work with the roots groups.
3) With money also allowed relatively large field offices in places like New York where many other campaigns had at best a single fundraiser in place. These groups served as a natural graduation for people who were enthused about meetup and wanted to do more.
4) The central office in some way understood what was going on and didn't try to manage the informal groups. They didn't set quotas or metrics. They would throw out needs, and groups would respond how they could.
5) They brought about 3,000 people to Iowa, which turned out to be not so effective for winning the caucus, but it was like being "in the shit" for those individuals. Many burned out afterwards, but many didn't. Few went back to "regular" civillian life.
An important part of movment building is actually good campaigns, either for office or on ballot measures. These are things that have a tangible result, and if they're run on a movement strategy (rather than the kind of pump-and-dump equivalent that typifies traditional poltics) they can be extremely effective at building power and growing numbers, not least of all because when they work people get office or laws get made.
Which returns me to my other idea that we have to start actually putting people in office and getting laws passed if we want to seriously do this.
My $0.02
There are two sorts of discussions to have here. One is an attempt to concretely address specific problems within an organization, another is to imagine how an organization can be more effective. Starting with the first, I'll quote what Mike laid out as some of the existing problems:
I think in many ways I think these problems are part of the nature of the beast.
The volunteer process is always going to be somewhat rocky because of the complexity of the logistics and the number of potential points of failure in trying to follow small to mid-sized artists on tour. This is especially true when you have people who have never done this before (e.g. the new participants we so highly prize) in the mix.
Cohesion is also difficult given the variety of artists and individuals who interact with MFA. Attempting to provide (or worse, impose) some kind of "MFA ideology" would, I think, be counterproductive. While the organization could be more tightly and aggressively messaged, and perhaps pursuing more avenues (other than the website and issue cards and t-shirts) for delivering that message, this has a cost in terms of resources and in rigidity. It means you don't pay for other things, and it means you turn some people off.
The last point, about a lack of places to "graduate to" in the progressive movement is really a much larger problem with the Left in the US today. MFA is a victim of this situation, and not really in a position to change it.
Now, I don't think these problems are totally intractable, but I do think they are in part a result of choices (and I would argue good ones) that were made in terms of what MFA can and should do as an organization. Focusing on the bread-and-butter of reaching kids with a simple bit of message at a tour is an excelent choice given the constraints of resources, etc.
It took me a while to accept and digest that MFA wasn't going to be the revolution, but once I did realize this and got past the idealized, and somewhat unrealistic, role I wished MFA would play, I began to appreciate the value in what the organization was actually doing.
Specific Challenges With Decentralization
I've always been a fan of decentralization, but it's much easier said than done. In reality, the lifeblood of MFA stems from a finite number of personal relationships, most importantly the relationships the Music Director has with various tour managers, and also the various relationships with lables and the like that generate tour leads. These are not contacts that it is often possible to distribute.
The nature of the music industry -- where successful people insulate themselves from unknown persons and jealously guard the relationships they value -- means many bands just won't deal with you without a trusting relationship that develops over time between specific individuals. You can't just hand that off and maintain the same bond.
Furthermore, the logistical realities of touring on a tight budget (everything is fucked up all the time) make it almost mandatory that these connections be to a large extent centralized. If we think the volunteer process is messed up now, try handing off responsibility for making it work from venue to venue. It will get worse.
Another problem with attempting to decentralize is that doing so means involving more people. This brings up issues: again with trust, but also with compensation. People are remarkably expensive. How many metro areas do you want to break into? Each one probably needs a full time staffer, and unless you want to be a Wal*Mart-type employer, that means finding around $50k a year. You're also going to need to find those staffers some budget of their own. The numbers grow very quickly.
Possible Future Developments
I tend to think that given the resources available, MFA is carving out a valuable role to play, and that probably what should be worked on first and foremost is systematizing, streamlining, and in general perfecting the process of building relationships with artists and getting volunteers to their gigs.
To the extent that this specific activity remains centralized within MFA, I think that as the model becomes clear (which can only happen over time) it can be open-sourced and spread/seeded within other groups. I also think that if MFA can really knock this out of the park -- making the process smooth like butter and perhaps finding a way to take the at-show presence up a notch (better tabling gear or something) -- that the organization can mature into a foundational piece of infrastructure for the wider progressive movement.
As the technology person who set a lot of stuff up originally, I see a lot of room for improvement there. I think that the MFA volunteer system needs an overhaul. There are a lot of bugs that never got fixed during campaign 2004, and it's clear now that a more myspace-like model for volunteers -- where they get profiles which retain reputation over time -- would probably work and provide a lot of value. It would also help to move MFA away from the old-world model of listbuilding (still powerful/important, but in the long run limited, especially w/Millenials) and into the new world of networks.
This would also (theoretically) allow some of the 70,000 kids in the MFA universe to connect with one-another, which addresses the limits of a centralized/professional staff. Again, in a perfect world the organization would seek in a very real way to be "taken over" by its members, serving as a piece of infrastructure to do what they can't: lining up volunteer opportunities and helping to aggregate resources to create message (e.g. t-shirts) for the membership to disseminate on a peer-to-peer basis.
That's an extremely ambitious goal, and not one which may sit well with a board of directors. It's also one which has no guarantee of working. I think it's most important to continue to focus on the bread and butter, and to push towards a diversified and sustainable funding model to retain organizational longevity and independence. However, I think charting a course toward a more network-centric organization around these major goals is a win-win, not least of all because it will help in strengthening cross-organizational, regional and local development, all of which are key for the broader movement.
What's still missing in the bigger picture, and what I just don't think MFA or any other single group can provide, is the wider ecosystem of organizations/opportunities to plug into, and that stronger sense of mission, purpose, and agenda for the whole deal. These are problems with the Progressive Movement generally, and that's an even larger discussion than the one we're having here.
MY-MFA-SPACE
A wealth of info here, josh. I also see the value of focusing on the "bread-and-butter" aspects of MFA. Truth be told, the MFA staff recently made a commitment to overhaul the volunteer department, and doing so requires partial attention of all of MFA's current directors. And keep in mind that we're all already pushing ourselves. Throw the "field department" organizing of extra-curricular operations like "opt-out" would probably push us completely off track. Never mind the financial issues involved.
I think that the MFA volunteer system needs an overhaul. There are a lot of bugs that never got fixed during campaign 2004, and it's clear now that a more myspace-like model for volunteers -- where they get profiles which retain reputation over time
I can see the myspace-like volunteer system working great, actually. Networks based on city and state would be ideal. As soon as you create a profile, you could be forced into city or state's "friend network," where all your friends are people in your geographic area who have also volunteered for MFA shows. Bang, instant community! You've got names, faces... and a way to track down people you've met through MFA and network. This could be as simple as getting kids to enter their myspace profiles as they sign up and automatically assigning them to a myspace group. Or we could possibly benefit from creating a platform of our own. But myspace would be a great way to test this out.
Widgets and networks and old ideas
On a tactical note, I like Mark's idea of MySpace Groups or specific areas more than Josh's of building a profile system on the MFA site.
When we began, we had some pretty big ideas that MFA would allow unsigned and indie bands to break out and find new audiences, and bands would blog and have songs on our site . . . in short, we didn't realize it at the time, but we wanted MFA to be very much like what MySpace is today.
In 2003, there was no MySpace. There was barely Friendster. We had Yahoo Groups and the Dean Nation blog was one of the hottest political spots on the interwebs. Today there is MySpace, and if MFA goes the route of decentralization, it makes more sense to spend money building widgets and exploiting existing online social networks than it does spending money to create new ones (just like we did with piggy-backign shows and music communities instead of creating things whole-cloth).
While I don't endorse Mark's idea of dumping folks into MySpace groups when they sign up (everyone should get a friend invite and opt-in), I think he's right about using MySpace. I would take it a step further and say that the whole volunteer process (and possibly even some messaging) should be farmed out to MySpace as much as possible not just through involvement in a friend group based on genre and geography, but through widgets that display live volunteer opportunities right on MFA member's personal pages.
It makes much more sense to farm out the volunteer process through those networks than to try and pull people into a centralized site every day.
Clarify widgets
hey mike,
can you explain a little more about what you mean when you say:
widgets that display live volunteer opportunities right on MFA member's personal pages.
I wasn't aware myspace had that type of capability.
mark
You Need to Make It
It doesn't as far as I know. But I do know that its possible to make widgets for MySpace and Facebook. New ones come out all the time - music recommendation services, fundraising widgets, etc.
I was suggesting that instead of putting a ton of money into building a MySpace style profile system on the MFA website - which has already been tried in slightly different incarnations, and would needlessly replicate work that utilizing MySpace can already accomplish for you - that you sink that type of money into building MySpace widgets to aid in the volunteering process.
As for what the actual widget does? Think of it like an RSS feed for geographically and genre specific shows that people can post on their website. That way instead of just getting people who would stop by the MFA site to look at the volunteering opportunities, you get them and all their friends who stop by their MySpace page.
Does that make sense?
Oh, and here's an example of what doing messaging via social networkds might look like.
Response to Josh...
Man, J, you really cut straight to the big topics, don't you! I have about 10 posts in my head (and one very sizable chunk of my thesis that was meant to look at the nature of networked organizations, that I eventually scrapped, but might be good to revive at this point) that address this stuff. But, for now I've only got time to respond to a few of your points...
Okay, maybe these problems are part of the nature of what MFA is doing, but how do you know that? Just because something hasn't worked doesn't mean it cannot work, it could mean, as Joe implies here, that the people doing the work aren't suited to the task. But, this gives me an opportunity to bring up another big pet peeve of mine with MFA- the complete lack of real/realistic information regarding MFA's operations. The 70,000# that is used quite frequently, is IMO fairly useless on its own. So 70,000 people are on the e-mail list, great. But what exactly does that mean, besides the fact that we got 70,000 people to write their e-mail addresses on the signup sheet at shows? I'm not saying it doesn't mean anything, but I'm not sure that it means that much either.
Beyond that, there was/is no real data collecting of volunteer activities that could give anyone a realistic idea of what did or did not work, let alone why. I pestered Mike when he worked there, and then the rest of the staff before and after the election, to look towards gathering real data from shows, volunteers, etc. In the end there was one really big survey done after Mike left, but in my eyes there was a completely wrong reading of the data. Taking directions for an organization, rather than using it as an indication of how effective each part of the org. was operating, was a huge mistake, and IMO a misunderstanding of what the data collected meant/should be used for (I also thought that surveys used for politics should be administered to specifically encourage deliberation, which can also significantly increase participation). This was, again IMO, another indication of a lack of vision and leadership, but this could just be my jaded view. At any rate it's what made me realize, once and for all, that MFA was not the place for me.
As with Mike I disagree that the numbers are the biggest impediment to a more networked organization. Really, I think that the biggest problem with this model is the lack of coordination between the various organizations out there. Why, for example, is MFA plugging people into the League in, for example, Pittsburgh? Couldn't the Pitt person represent both MFA, the League as well as some other national outreach groups? The person could, in theory, be the on-the-ground person for all the groups, but only have additional responsibilities for their primary group. This would necessitate a trusted umbrella group, which is what I believe that America Votes was supposed to provide, as well as some push from the various group's funding sources, but I think that this would be the best model. It certainly isn't the only idea for how to have a real presence in some places.
I fully agree with you here, but this gets to the heart of my criticism for the "Gateway Drug" idea: if there really isn't something bigger and better to plug the kids into, then isn't this really a gateway drug to nothing?
Odds n Ends
Right now, it probably means very little. But when October rolls around, or August 2008, that's 70,000 people that are probably going to get interested in politics again, and, if MFA can get a decent operational model together, a base to build off of rather than starting from scratch. In political terms, that has value during "hot" periods.
Though I do agree that it will depend on MFA's abilit to get a significant portion of those people to do something other than volunteer for a show when crunch time comes.
FWIW, the surveys can be read here: 2005, 2006.
It's getting late and I'm too tired to go over thoroughly the moment. Maybe tomorrow. Though I will say that there is a pretty huge discrepency in the 2005 survey between what respondents said that they WOULD do for MFA vs. what they actually did. Maybe my head is fuzzy now, but wouldn't that mean that MFA needs to focus on lowering the gap between those numbers? For instance, 79% of respondents said they were willing to work a show, but only 23% actually did. What also strikes me is that when asked what they would like to see MFA do in the future, the top three answers are "Local activities," "Help direct messages and communications," and "build online communities" - the three things that are coming up most in our conversations here about what's missing with MFA in its current incarnation.
I can tell you that this was tried - specifically with the League in 2005 - and I was told that it was not possible to raise the funds to pay for a "joint" political/strategy position to help direct both the groups activities.
But I agree that a "commone structure" organization that lent its talents to multiple groups would indeed be valuable piece of infrastructure and could potentially help solve some of the problems facing these groups - coordination adn funding being the two most pressing and easily solved issues (assuming coordination between orgs is legal, which, in some cases, it is not).
America Votes was supposed to fullfill the coordination part of this equation, but that was a nightmare. I called into numerous meetings for the "Kid's Table" as the youth groups were called, and never in my life did I participate in a process that so lived up to the Camel = Horse designed by committee analogy. I could probably write a whole other post on the dysfunctions of that - clique-ishness and territorialism between "outsider groups" like MFA, Punk Voter and the League and the Young Voter Alliance/DC Insider types, lack of information flowing between groups, bad comprimises that squashed innovative ideas . . .
It seems that nowadays groups like Skyline (maybe?) or New Progressive Coalition might be attempting to fill small niches for multiple groups, particularly in fundraising, but these groups are less than transparent from the outside and its difficult to tell what is really happening. Even an open database of groups that you could go to for help in some of these areas would be great to have.
This is also an area where the Foundation model might actually provide useful. For instance, Ford (Foundation) very often give grants that are complementary to each other, funding work by multiple groups that slightly overlaps and can amplify the effects of one another. There are a few lessons that might be gleaned from the foundation world, though in some respects the model is flawed for other reasons.
Joint Personnel
I think having one person serve on-point for a number of groups is problematic for a lot of reasons.
First of all, if these groups are active, it will quickly become over-burdening.
Secondly, most of the groups have different cultural touchstones. While a good organizer and budding politician can interface with lots of different kinds of people effectively, this isn't a skill they teach you in school, and such people are few and far between.
Also, having one person means there's one point of failure, no accountability, etc. What if one of the sponsoring organizations feels that the point-person isn't serving their goals? What if they're just a lazy-ass faker?
Traction
Hey guys,
Lanya Shapiro here, from Traction. I think Josh is the only one on here who knows me even a little bit. However, I was very active in the Dean grassroots and these days I'm on Townhouse and NPC and went to that progressive innovations retreat in Estes Park, yada yada, so I'm probably no more than two degrees of separation from any of you, even without Josh.
I got to this discussion by way of Mike's diary on dkos (thanks, Mike!) and I've read only a fraction of what's posted here. At a glance, I'm impressed by the open discussion.
At the risk of coming across as self-serving, I believe Traction addresses some of the larger missing pieces that several of you have brought up, including what to graduate to, HOW to plug into "the wider ecosystem of organizations/opportunities," and that "stronger sense of mission, purpose, and agenda for the whole deal."
Here's something I posted on Townhouse a couple months back:
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We throw fun, issue-related events that draw in left-leaning folks who aren't particularly politically active -- yet. These potential activists (or Tractivists, as we like to call them) come to the weatherizing workshop to learn how to save money on their energy bill, but then learn about global warming. They come to watch Mexico v. Argentina in a taqueria, and learn about immigration policy. Our Drop Beats not Bombs dance party. Our dodgeball team (dodgeLEFT). Our Electile Dysfunction event about the Voting Rights Act. Our roadtrip to DC for the 9/05 peace march. They come to a bar where we're talking about Religion, Reproductive Rights and O.P.P. They come to hear about how U.S. economic policy has screwed 20- and 30-somethings, as Tamara Draut from Demos tells them that it's not just them!
All the while, they're building community and connecting with other young lefties, some of whom are ass-kicking activists, who become role models. It's about changing cultural norms around progressive activism. We like to say we're making it sexy to stop bitching and start a revolution.
The recent study on American's growing social isolation (see links) underscores the need for those of us on the left to put some energy into creating this kind of social network. The basic gist: Americans' social networks are shrinking -- dramatically validating Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone assertions -- which is bad for individuals, for society and for politics.
Lead researcher Lynn Smith-Lovin says: "This change indicates something that's not good for our society. Ties with a close network of people create a safety net. These ties also lead to civic engagement and local political action."
This is exactly why here at Traction we're using a social network model. And even though it's a long-term intervention, we're already seeing some dramatic results. We hope to have more results as we get funding (staff?? what's that?) and really ramp up.
Here's the American Sociological Association press release:
http://www.asanet.org/page.ww?section=Press&name=circle+of+friends
And the actual study:
http://www.asanet.org/galleries/default-file/June06ASRFeature.pdf
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We're piloting Traction in Durham, NC. The model draws on my professional background in behavior change and my passion for progressive grassroots politics. I used to design and implement large-scale behavior change programs and won national awards for it. Back then it was condom use, but behavior is behavior. It's a long-term intervention, but we're already seeing dramatic results, especially with single women. We've obviously really struck a chord. Lots of people you (probably) know and respect think Traction is exactly what we need to combat the right, especially the growing influence of the evangelicals.
There's lots more to say about Traction but it's late and I've got to be up in four hours. Email me and we'll set up a time to talk on the phone. Don't judge us by our website, which leaves a lot to be desired. (Give us a break, we've got no budget and besides, it's largely an offline organization.) You can also ask Josh -- he's been on the mailing list for several months (although I don't know if he's actually been reading the messages).
I will close by admitting that I am incredibly jealous of those of you who have gotten paid to do this work. We haven't gotten any big money yet and it's ROUGH to run an organization (programs, fundraising, board development, etc.) from the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy! But according to everyone, big money is right around the corner and soon we'll have to fight off the investors...
Wait, no, here's how I'll close...
From http://www.4x4abc.com/4WD101/definition_whytraction.html :
To get an object, a human, a car moving - we need some "foothold" for the energy to be transformed into movement. If our feet do not find a surface with good grip (traction), our legs and feet could not move us forward.
Traction: turning energy into progressive movement
Welcome to FM
Hi Lanya,
Thanks for dropping by FM and introducing us to Traction. It's good to know that someone reads my midnight diaries over at kos. Sadly, most of the kossacks don't seem to care much about this issue, so I try to lure those who are interested over to this site in the hopes that this can be the spot to discuss strategy and infrastructure for reaching millenials.
Traction sounds really interesting, and I've got tons of questions - do you have partnerships with other orgs set up or in the works? How are you going to measure your progress? Why North Carolina? (No offense to North Carolingians).
The whole thing sounds very interesting and I'd love to talk once I get a chance to read through those links you posted. Email me at mike dot connery at gmail dot com and I will set something up for all of us to get on a call.
Also - I didn't see a link for the Traction website. Am I missing it? Can you repost? I'm sure the site is fine. It's not like our digs here at FM are all that great at the moment . . . hopefully that will change soon too.
thanks for the welcome!
Hey Mike,
Thanks for your reply and for the welcome! I'll shoot you an email.
But first, to your questions:
Q. Do we have partnerships with other orgs set up or in the works?
A. Yes, out the wazoo. A key element of Traction's model is that we introduce folks to other organizations and help them plug in, as they're ready to take next steps as activists. (Behavior change is incremental.) It helps the orgs tremendously by putting them in front of young folks that they're dying to reach. I'm talking local partnerships. If you're asking about national orgs, some of them know and love us and want to adopt our model (or want to co-opt me), but there are no formal partnerships yet.
Q. How are we going to measure our progress?
A. Oh, my favorite question. I could talk your ear off about indicators. The problem is that getting at the really good shit and doing it in a rigorous and respectable way requires a serious commitment of time (longitudinal evaluation, over years) and of course resources. (Deborah & Andy? Peter & Jonathan? Lisa? Buehler?) Otherwise you're just counting what's easy to count. Happy to talk to you about this.
Q. Why North Carolina?
A. We're piloting Traction in Durham, North Carolina b/c that's where I am. But Durham also happens to be a perfect place to develop a city-based intervention that will eventually bleed blue out into a reddish state. I mean, really, we know that change takes place on a local level. So how many more organizations do we need in DC and the other usual places?
[Durham is also a phenomenal place to live. (I think someone else commented about Durham in this forum, maybe even in this thread.) I had no idea when I moved to Chapel Hill for grad school 11 years ago. If you're really curious, here's a section of readers' contributions from a recent all-Durham issue of our alt. weekly:
http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A31991.
Note: They printed something I wrote (NOT about Traction), and towards the bottom there's a sweet little love letter that IS about Traction.]
BTW, I didn't type out Traction's website in my actual comment but if you click my name it's linked there. And here it is now, in black and white (as opposed to that elusive blue hyperlink): www.getTraction.org
I'll email you!
missing dept
(by Joe Felice)
Hi guys. If anyone I don't know is reading this, I had the same job as Mike and Mark, in between them (2005).
I've been reading the preceding material and trying to think of how I could share my feelings without undermining the level of discourse you have established. A propos of that I strongly endorse Alex's points regarding leadership in his comment "Accountability Gap" at the bottom of this page.
With an eye toward the constructive and practical, I'll proceed with a smaller bite of the problem. The Field Department should not have been scrapped in November '05. Mark writes:
Field peaked in 2004, and subsequently crashed due to the failure of staffers to competently manage it. I'm one of them. After our mistakes, it was apparently decided that the failure lay not in the people running the system, but the work itself. This struck me as a betrayal of the proof and promise of Field 04. I wouldn't deify that time period though: you can do this now; the skills to create decentralised volunteer communities are transferrable within the industry. And forgive me for what this implies, but it's more important than website content.
Also, I'm all too familiar with the maxim of "plugging them in" to other organizations, and I bought in to it for a while, a long time ago. That speaks some to the glacial pace of innovation, and some to the cognitive dissonance between what the real organization is doing and your idea of what it does when you're working there.
I can recruit much more efficiently for the League by recruiting-directly-for-the-League, than by getting them on MFA's list and hoping some transformation will occur. There's gotta be more if you want to make the effort worthwhile.
Already there models and elaboration
Hey Joe (glad to see you here)
I wasn't around (or even paying that much attention in early '05), so I can't speak to what you did or didn't try at that time. But I do agree with your statement that there is a missing dept. And I have to disagree with Mark that field is not doable for fundraising or logistical reasons.
The League has state/city directors and - correct me if I'm wrong - they get paid! There is obviously money for this out there. Drinking Liberally has regional, state, and city coordinators - They don't get paid anything! There is obviously a way to do this on a volunteer basis. We tried a model in 2004 - yeah it wasn't perfect - in fact there was probably more that was wrong with it than was right, but that was due to our inexperience as managers, the people we hired (some of whom went AWOL), the ill-defined nature of the job, and the amount of work required for the amount we were paying people. But it was a fundamental part of the original idea behind the organization. That it hasn't worked yet doesn't mean it's unworkable, it just means the model needed to be rethought.
I'm curious to know what was tried in 2005, but it strikes me that if the volunteer/material delivery process is so streamlined now that it can function sans state coordinators, then you've just removed a huge amount of the workload and difficulty that coordinators faced in 2004. Getting someone to do the rest - stay on top of local issues and activism opportunities, organize some sort of regular meeting for local volunteers, maybe write a blog once a month - shouldn't be that costly. But it would require a national staffer dedicated to finding those local leaders and maintaining contact with them. In fact, I'd go so far to say that the workload is no more than a city leader in Drinking Liberally juggles monthly (maybe we should see if we could get Katrina or another DL organizer to come on and talk about this? Also, I don't really have any strong contacts in the League, but if someone could get one of their staffers to come on and comment on their State/City leadership model, that would be great.)
Can you elaborate on this:
I'm not sure I'm following you, but if I am, than I disagree. I'm sure what you say is correct aboutthe League, but I think it misses the point. If MFA had someone on the ground coordinating in Pittsburgh, and familiar with the repeat volunteers in that area, that person would be in a position to get them to start volunteering with the League. Or maybe tell someone who is interested in writing about scholarships with The Nation, or how they can get involved with Campus Progress at their college (or when they go to college), etc. This isn't in place of the League's own recruitment, it is complementary to it because it reaches people who would not otherwise have gotten involved. That was the whole point of MFA in the first place. Reach and involve people by touching them where they are - in their music communities.
I agree that this hasn't materialized, but I think its the missing piece. Figuring out this piece gives you the answer to Alex's question of where do you plug people into once you get them excited? I also think that it in part answer's Josh's bigger question:
This is a huge question, but I think its possible to take a sizeable bite out of it if you can better connect the existing groups - MFA, The League, Punk Voter, Hip Hip Political Convention, Campus Progress, Student Nation, Young People For. All these groups in some way tackle a piece of the problem and offer differnt types of ways into politics/the movement. If you could get them all to actually work together and create channels that help people move from one to the other (ie MFA to Campus Progress to an internship at The Nation or The American Prospect, or MFA to the League to the Young People For's fellowship program, or the League to the Hip Hop Convention to the Roosevelt Institution, or MFA to the League to DFA), then that starts to put together the structure that can move people into politics permanently at a lot of differnet levels - from Weekend Activist to professional.
Ok, this is really just scratching the surface - particularly on this last bit. I'm still digesting Josh's post, which is indeed a very different way to go. And while the hardest, perhaps the best way.
The other thing
Just one more thing...
The other problem here is that NONE OF THESE GROUPS HAVE ANY POLITICAL POWER, and none of them will until either:
a) Larger groups with clout give them some (haha... keep waiting)
b) They're able to individually or collectively make things happen
You're right that the first step is in coordinating and creating a better environment for action, but I think the question of goals is important. Professional development will always be a hamster-wheel because the question of "where do we graduate to" will be ever-present, and as you move up the (conventional) food chain there are fewer and fewer opportunities.
I think this only really works when there's an achievable external goal (e.g. it's not about "us" but rather about the country). Beating bush was a really good and well-defined goal, and it was powerful to organize around. At this point, there's no focus, which hurts us on every possible level.
Frankly my POV is that waiting for national organizations or the national political party to offer this focus or create these opportunities is a waste of time. I really think if we want this to mean anything we have to start pushing our own agenda, running our own candidates, building our own literal power.
Networking Existing Groups and This Hamster Wheel of Life
Agree that goals are important, but its important to build the structures to support the movement/message at the same time. You're not always (or even for much longer) goint to have a message of "Beat Bush" caliber and excites so many people. And when that day comes in January 2009, we'll still need the movement to be able to organize 24/7/365. You're not going to be able to get around drilling down into something local.
I also agree as to building our own power and running our own candidates. But I think your characterization of these groups as powerless is off.
You're right that these goups don't have political power in the sense that they can make shit happen for their constituencies. But hey, how many groups out there really do have that aside from interest groups (and I think we're all probably on the same page that their's is not a philosophy/model to mimic). But some of these groups are starting to make it happen on their own and in conjuction with similar new/insurgent forces.
As a model, I'll hold up this post that Matt Stoller made on MyDD about the work of the former HHSAN and "Vote or Die" political director who took over part of Lamont's field operation. That's tactics and people moving up from the Hip Hop groups into mainstream campaigning to support an insurgent. That's recognition within a developing movement. In a few years, I'm sure we'll see people from Campus Progress and The Nation Student Program popping up at newspapers just as Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias moved from the blogs to The American Prospect.
I think you're putting the bar too high too early in the game for these groups. That's not to be taken as an excuse for failure and missteps (as I'm sure some will see it and others will/have exploited it), rather its a recognition that this is, in fact, a long-term program.
As for the hamster wheel - that's true in some respects, but everyone gets off the hamster wheel at some point. The point of networking all these goups isn't strictly to find the next progressive version of Karl Rove and "move him up the ranks." The purpose is to get as many people as possible engaged in the progressive network, help them move as far up as they are able or would like to go, and make sure that their experience is positive. (Posivite here means two thigns: that dead-end burnout jobs with no way to move on or engage more deeply - like canvassing or currently working an MFA show - are not the only options for participation, or at least are less of a dead-end; that there are accomplishable goals set for the work and that some of them are achieved)
Some will work their way through the ranks and make it to the top - becoming Karl Rove or James Carville types. Hopefully many will end up working tech or writing or organizing jobs somewhere within "the movement." Some will leave to become CPAs and Lawyers (and end up as our equivalent of Rangers or Pioneers, or lifelong donors) Some will become active members the blogosphere, or DFA, or contribute to projects like the Sunlight Foundation Earmark Campaign. Some people will take their political experience and make "lateral moves" onto their local PTA boards or run for city council/trustee. Some will be the guy or girl whose friends all ask them for advice.
When we talk about this, we should bear in mind that we are shooting for ALL of those outcomes.
2005 like this
Joe Felice
Mike, to explain my quote about recruiting efficiency, I was referring to how I've felt working shows in 2006. I'm standing here, listbuilding for an organization that increasingly justifies itself as a conduit to other orgs, without programs of its own. Why am I pushing a middleman rather than an active organization? If MFA was active in the field, that feeling would go away.
You also asked about 2005:
My first mistake was taking a job who's description was to perform as Editorial and Field Director simultaneously. The work also turned out to include a fair amount of technology as well. But the plan was to hire a new Field Director in 2-3 months. So pursued my large job with an eye toward making each componant take the least amount of time, and with a higher priority on my permanent editorial position.
I created what I thought were some good documents that described the ways a remote volunteer could help and I made phone contact with serveral previous volunteers in a bunch of states. Molly (our boss) shared this work, and it seemed to be on track. But after a while it became pretty clear that there were no results.
My a posteriori diagnosis is that I incubated my volunteers poorly, mostly just trying to get yesses. I also placed too high an emphasis on their choice rather than providing guidance and asking for specifics. One doc I used outlined ten ways to volunteer and encouraged them to choose what they wanted. Most people chose five or six, and did zero. If I had been talking to them every other day rather than once a week, and if I had given them much smaller bites--let alone if I had been able to travel and actually meet these people--something would probably have come of this work.
Now I realized these errors after a while of course. But by March I had only become more immersed in the communications and technology work. I'd begun training Mark Ristaino, and learning from Johnny Cesario (tech), concurrent with expecting a Field Director in March.
But our new Field Director was hired in May and started on June 2nd. The long, sad interim was made up of the kind of incremental postponements and promises that discourage implementing change in a faulty system, because a hand-off is supposedly just around the next corner. Frankly, I should have known better too. I should have been more skeptical, and not taken the cover that being perpetually 2 weeks away from a Field Director offered me.
As for what followed, I think it proved that adding a dedicated staff member to a task will not always improve performance. I believe that were those involved to summarize the situation now, the main argument might be over whether the work product was inadequate or nonexistent. In six months the Board approved the end of the Field Department, and endorsed a different organizational paradigm.
I wasn't party to the decision, but I understand that the reasoning related to focusing on what MFA does well.
using existing structures vs creating them
I see a lot of merit in what Mike sez here actually, Joe. If you look at some of the most interesting parts of the MFA model, the part that sticks out is the part about MFA "tacking itself onto the existing structure of music communites." This is a lot cheaper, and the people you connect with become invested in MFA because they're ALREADY invested in the music community where they find MFA.
Field '04 (I'm talking about the state coordinators) was an attempt to build a piggyback infrastructure on top of the music community structure. You're immediately doubling (maybe tripling, quadrupling) your costs, when the beauty of the model was that you didn't have to build an infrastucture... It was there!
And if you're going to build an infrastructure, why start in music communities in the first place? Music fans aren't innately interested in politics or good at field organizing... In fact in many cases it's hard to turn them on. I don't get it.
If we look back to the DL model, which works because it slowly and organically grows bigger- none of these attempts at field infrastructure were created organically, except for Samuel's case, which was the one instance where MFA didn't pay the field organizer.
I'm guessing that the first people lost after the '04 transition were the state coordinators, so MFA local field people can't really be paid.
So I suppose the key to field is to create a model which works for someone entering the same way samuel did... someone into the mission, someone who gets it and wants to become more involved, someone willing to volunteer 10-15 hrs a week for college credit or for the good of the country.
BUT- the roles have to be clearly defined. There has to be money for at least 1 fulltime staffer to manage these people. And because the person will be young and transient, like Samuel, you have to be ready and able to lose them. So the success of the volunteer department can't depend on local field organizers being there all the time.
So from this point of view, killing field to focus on streamlining the volunteer module seems like a good choice.
But MFA also shouldn't look at local field people as an impossibility.
(ps this is mark)
Website vs Field
Just a quick point: website content can be gotten cheap/free and maintian high quality. Field, not so much. AFAIK the field budget for '04 exceeds the total org budget for '06.
Comparisons to the League and especially DL understate the difficulty/stress involved in managing getting volunteers to shows. It's an activity that MFA is fundimentally not in control of, and is subject to the whims of any number of low-caliber individuals, as well as to fate and happenstance. That's the price you pay to associate yourself with something with existing cultural value, but it creates a higher bar and burnout rate.
I think to really do the field thing requires a stable staff with experience. It's very much worth doing -- it's really the only work that matters -- but I reiterate my points above about costs and the need to build trusting relationships, and how that plays negatively against the drive to decentralize.
What is "Field?"
(I'm really just brainstorming here because I think the decentralized option is far more interesting, so take this with a grain of salt.)
I guess this gets us into the question of "what is field?" What are the job requirements and what are the goals?
No doubt the vast majority of field time in 04 was spent rounding up and shepherding volunteers or tracking down lost supplies. There's really not a lot anyone can do about that - even a full time staffer with 3+ years field experience. At some level, you're fucked and there is nothing you can do about it if the band loses the materials or the volunteers don't show. The best you can really do is upgrade the how volunteering gets organized via the website, and make sure that the staffers/interns in the national office in charge of coordinating the shipments and over-the-phone trainings are doing their jobs as well as they can.
With that in mind, wouldn't it be better if "field" had less to do with coordinating the shows and more to do with taking the folks who show up at the shows in a local area and actually doing something with them? If you're going to have field staff, and you are operating under a limited budget and manhours, why would you even try to focus your efforts on that area - where you can have minimal impact and the amount of return on your investment is negligable - instead of an area where your efforts might bear more fruit and fill a hole in the organization?
My point is, when you break it down like that, the bar for field and the expense of field probably lowers dramatically. At that point, you really can have something volunteer-oriented and organic grow up just as the Drinking Liberally Network did. You would just need 1 experienced field person on the National Staff to recruit and cultivate the volunteers.
I just stole your idea in my last comment
I'm looking at field the exact same way right now, Mike. If the offline connection is so important, that should be the main purpose of field. Not filling the shows or managing materials, (although they could certainly help in a bind) but being that face that gets you to come back to MFA. Maybe running a few small campaigns on local stuff.
Our member/board member Dan Lipski fills a similar role w/ MFA right now. He joined the group organically.
As board member he shares some big responsibilities, but beyond his board responsibilities we don't expect much from him besides being himself and working shows, and plugging MFA. He does a bang-up job, he does it because he likes to do it, and the result of his participation has made Chicago one of MFAs strongest communites.
(mark)
um, yeah. that last one was me.
Samuel and Dan Lipski - Programming and Leadership
I think that is generally right. Realizing that any revitalization of a "Field Dept." should be independent of the day to day booking and staffing of shows is a possible step forward, but there are still a lot of items that need to be worked out in such a model.
First of all, it speaks to Alex's question of data collection. This program would need a starting point, and how do you identify potential "leaders?" Once they are identified, they are going to need guidance from MFA about how to get things rolling. When someone wants to start a DL chapter, they have a lot of resources available - a guide to starting a chapter, forums to find out best practices from other chapters, direct contact with official "coordinators," etc. - MFA needs to know what it is asking of people adn needs to figure out how to help them get there. That's one reason why you need at least paid staffer with experience at the national level to do this right.
You're also going to run into the problem of niche social/music scenes. Do you need multiple people attached to each scene? Does that mean that all the punk kids might get an MFA "meet up" or whatever it turns out to be if they get a critical mass of people, but the hip hop kids or the jam band kids are shit out of luck? Though maybe MFA is skewing so hard core towards a particular demographic that this is a moot point.
Even as I think that the My Space/self organizing thing seems to be the way to go, I still I see some problems. Dumping everyone into a MySpace groups based on genre and location is great (though maybe a little lonely for some unlucky folks in out of the way places or underrepresented genres), and Josh is right that this will facilitate MFA folks in finding each other - at least much more so than now, where they are all just isolated names on an email list. At the very least, it will open the door to a lot more organic community growth.
But will that unfocused online community produce measurable results in local and national elections and/or help folks identify local opportunities and feed into the progressive movement? Just because they are talking online doesn't mean that talk will translate into anything tangible.
If you want to produce those other outcomes (election results and "feeding" the movement) you still need to arrange for offline meetings. You still need to identify "leaders" - maybe they're super volunteers, maybe they will self-identify within these MySpace communities. You still need a way to provide them with the assistance they need to make a local community work offline - ie a paid staffer with years of experience. And you need a good sense of why people will meet offline and what they are willing to do together offline.
Maybe Josh is right and just getting these "political newbies" talking to each other online and offline is enough. Maybe that plus working the shows is all MFA is capable of accomplishing and all it should be doing. Seems like a waste though if there is a way - within budgetary constraints that the real-life org faces - to take those conversations, communities, networks to the next level.
Maybe Samuel, having run the closest thing to what we are discussion in Minneapolis can shed more light on some of this. Or maybe Dan Lipski can speak to it (care to invite him to reply and post about his Chicago Activities?)
Integrating DL into our calendar
What do you think of the idea of creating weekly local MFA meetups that coincide with DL events? Obviously there's a problem with the under 21 crowd, but this would be a good way to connect MFA members, and help ease them into the greater scene of progressivism.
We'd still need some kind of "volunteer lead" position in cities around the country, but if the volunteer lead's main responsibility was to organize & coordinate with DL, and then agree to work or help recruit for shows, and maybe do some street team stuff... that wouldn't be a hell of a lot of work. Anyone could do it.
It could even be pretty rewarding. I've asked dan to check in, so expect something like that
Half Measures
It's really a half measure, with more problems than I think you are seeing. DL has over 100 meetings every week. Listing DL events or even "MFA Meetups" within DL events would quickly swamp your calendar, taking the Music out of Music for America. And each chapter of DL has a different vibe and cast of characters. Some might not be suited to MFA folks at all.
You've already labelled one of the other problems - DL is inaccesable to 50% of your members.
If you are going to go the route or alterting and trying to move members into opportunities that MFA cannot provide, then DL is only one of many such things you are going to need to be aware of and figure out ways that you can "move" members to w/o, as Alex said, turning them off to the whole proposition of deeper political engagement.
how about public concert teamwork
(i know summer is almost over, and as such most free summer series events are through... but still) something like this might work: what about if your scene leaders go to DL, meet the local DL coordinator and find public events that the DL chapter is going to be a part of (many are active out of the bars) if the schedule contains one, invite the local DL coordinator to call for a special DL at a public concert.
then you teach the DL coordinator how to best set up and man a booth. the DL booth could be a lemonade stand - laws about open containers and all. this way, both MFA and DL's strengths are brought to bear. the members meet each other and the MFA'ers see that there is a lifestyle that goes with progessivism.
many cities' special DL events bring out all of the members who are bloggers, dem club leaders, local candidates. having those folks talk to and work with MFAers could be great.
essentially, i wouldn't give up on the prospect of teamwork between DL and MFA.
One great idea - let's find 3 more
Don't get me wrong, I wasn't suggesting that MFA give up hope of collaborating with DL- far from it - its just that I think that MFA can't be putting all of its eggs in one baskett given the diversity of its membership in terms of musical tastes, age, and desired depth of involvement. DL should be one of many partnerships.
That said, this is a very good idea. There are more than enough such events - you don't have to limit it to Summer Stage to make this work year-round.
I can see a few bugs in it. I think that you're going to run into the "taste" issue - how many members will want to attend any given event, etc. - but that's sort of my point. No one thing is going to appeal to all MFA members. You're really going to need a variety.
Remembering what Alex said - "people come to MFA because they like its vibe" - points to the strenght of MFA and the difficulty of moving people into somethign else that's either non-MFA related or encompassing of all MFA members. The vibe at any given MFA show can vary wildly. Meeting MFA at a punk show or on the Warped Tour is very different from meeting MFA at a hip hop show. That initial point of contact is also heavily dependent, as we've noted before, on the person who makes that contact. It's those relationships that really comprise MFA (or at least did in 2004).
This makes MFA a very mercurial organization. And that's why, after all this, Samuel's model - "Scene Leaders" corresponding to different music genres - still seems to make the most sense to me. I like the idea of hiring/recruiting coordinators who have no responsibilities w/r/t concert staffing and booking, but rather focus their limited time and energy to offline community organizing.
Now, one of those offline organizing options should certainly be a partnership with DL along the lines you suggested. I really like the idea of MFA being able to teach DL folks their method or organizing, and DL can teach MFA members about "Living Liberally" and hopefully introduce them to more options for being involved in that lifestye (blogs, local action/organizing opportunities - everything that comes with a vibrant DL chapter).
That's one strong way that MFA can make connections to a larger progressive movement and I think open up to their membership a wealth of options for political engagement. Now I think we need to find 3 more such ideas.
agreed...
...but this is a pretty big question to bite off. I think if we work on a new "volunteer lead" model, basing it off the DL idea and some myspace development, that's a good start.
Something like this:
So you want to be an awesome MFA volunteer? Here's how you can help us out.
1. work as many shows as you can
2. create an MFA myspace page for your city/state and get all the other people who volunteer for MFA to be your friend
3. try and organize weekly MFA meeting according to your local DL chapter.
4. MFA street. Register with MFA as a volunteer lead and we'll send you a box full of materials so you can spread the word at your favorite venues/record stores
Waddaya think? We could play by ear if the kids are under 21- most places must have SOME type of weekly networking spot... some sort of event that meets regularly that could also serve as an MFA meetup place.
And of course... we'd have to hire a new field director.
semantic note re: Josh
(joe)
Filling shows was moved to the Music Dept. early in 2005. So when I've said "Field" it has not included this work, which is currently budgeted and functioning.
That changes everything
Sorry... this puts my responses off the mark in some respects.
Given that "field" is the non-concert offline organizing, the driving issue is "why?" Why the fuck should people spend one evening a month in a meeting? What does that do? What are they hoping to accomplish? Without a purpose that can be grasped and which inspires people to come together, this just won't happen.
This goes back to the lack of an organizational or movement-wide purpose/mission. I don't think "turning people on to politics" is going to get people organizing locally. I think you need to tap into nuts and bolts things: elections, ballot measures, and specific problems/opportunities within the community. The problem is that this is both hard work, and a legal morass; difficult to drive from the perspective of any national organization.
my... response... soon...
Just wanted to let you know that I am here, I'm listening and will be back tonight to comment more.
-mark
an old-guard volunteeer perspective
(by samuel)
hey gang.
i'm going to try to address a lot of points. i will probably fail.
i've been with mfa for, i think, just about as long as anybody. i first got shacked up with mfa in december of 03. i've watched a lot of stuff come and go. most of you in this discussion know this, and i say it only as a preface: i have a hard time dissecting my experiences into conlclusions about what should be done in youth organizing as a whole, so i'll stick mainly to the narrative of what's happened to me as an mfa volunteer, and hopefully you people with better heads for organizational models can provide some analysis.
field
i agree with joe that this is the missing limb. i worked under taya when she was minnesota's state coordinator, and there tried to implement a number of schemes, and also tried to scale them outwards. the scheme that showed the most promise, though it never went much of anywhere, was the scene leader / team leader scheme. at one of our monthly meetings (a thing that was at one point an intractble piece of the fabric of how mfa worked, and an imminently good idea, i think) we came up witht he idea of dividing up what mfa does into two categories: music and politics. each music scene was to have a liaison. the punks would get a rep, the hip hop heads another, the r and b folks would have someone - and these people would stay in touch with the bands in their scene, leaning heavily on the state coordinator for support, logistics, and know-how. team leaders would take on projects and areas of political activity - such as organizing coordinated efforts to get mayors out to mfa shows, getting letters to the editor published, endorsing candidates, and so on. scene and team leaders would meet with the state coordinator on a somewhat regular basis, give each other updates, and coordinate with one another. the state coordinator's job would be to fill in the holes and to develop volunteers into leaders.
so if it showed such promise, what happened?
when mark says
he's talking more or less about me and those ideas.
i tried to carve out an identity for mfa in the local ska and punk scene, and was failrly successful in that mfa became a staple part of the scene in spring 2004. i got friendly with a lot of local acts that regularly opened for bigger touring acts, and was present at an awful lot of shows. it got to the point that when the band would give a shoutout to the mfa booth, the crowd would cheer before the band could tell them who we were. i even got a humber of touring acts to give tentative yesses to having mfa on their tours (i'm not sure if any of them ever worked out though).
when i left, mfa left.
i thought this kind of decentralization was a good thing, and i tried to provide minnesota and mfa with a working model before i left - as i knew i would be doing soon. i offered a model whereby people would recruit their local bands to mfa, set them up with a contact to the music director, and off they go. this was met with a response whose benefits and detractions i'm still trying to work out: "just do it. get them the materials and you then become mfa. go to the shows, do your thing. you don't need us."
and in a sense that works. i was certainly able to go to a hell of a lot of shows in the spring of 04. but again, when i left, the whole thing went up in smoke. ideally i would have liked to have handed off my role to someone else, and i spent a good deal of time looking for someone to train into the position, but absent the promise of monetary comensation, nothing happened. that kind of decentralization and member ownership of the organization is i think highly desirable and can be quite effective, but absent a well-designed support structure, immediately falls apart.
as for my own contacts: because it was unclear who those relationships should be handed off to, they went to no one. i still have the spreadsheet of all of the local bands in minneapolis that said they'd love to have us at their shows. there hasn't been a local show in the tc on the mfa calendar for ages.
venues
allow me to fill us all in.
the transient nature of music communites makes what we do hard, and a stable home would go a long way towards creating bettter communities. we had for a while a "program" whereby you'd get a venue to agree to have you once a month at their shows, and you'd give them cocktail napkins, an mfa hand-stamp to use instead of ther own stamp for over 21ers, etc. you'd have a table, it'd be great. ultimately the idea was to implant yourself as a piece of the culture of that bar, that stage, that venue, thereby becoming a piece of the youth culture and building longer-lasting relationships between volunteers, and so on.
i got about five venues to agree to this in minneapolis (with varying degrees of enthusiam) - a significant piece of musical real estate in the twin cities. but they all fell through because nobody was keeping track of the logistics. nobody was following the calendars and requesting certain shows, nobody was checking up to see who had materials and who needed them, getting .png logos to the venues for links on websites, and so on. i couldn't do it because i was in college and just didn't have the time. in organizational model terms, this means asking too much of unpaid volunteers.
but because it was i who had recruited the venues, it was i that had the personal relationships, and mfa staff found it hard to deal with the venue