Leadership Development in Network Science

Strategic Technology; Technology Assistance

www.cbcpico.info

$10,000

CBC is requesting this grant to support a pilot project we have strategically prioritized for 2007. We will be working with the Department of Community Psychology at Vanderbilt University to teach our leaders how to map - visually - their actual constituencies. We already possess a software program that can do this. This grant would provide the resources for staff development in this innovative technology (which applies the science of social networks to grassroots organizing work), the time that would be required to train our leaders in this technology, and the outside technical assistance that would be required both for the staff development and the data collection that would be entailed.

The work to be done by Professor Speer of Vanderbilt will be done without cost to CBC. The portion of the budget going to outside services will go to creating the interactive website where leaders can input their data, Vanderbilt can update the maps, and leaders can then view them, with a quick turnaround time. The rest of the budget will go to staff time, both in training in the creation and use of this tool, and in teaching it as a core piece of the organizing work in Greeley beginning in early 2007.

Leaders trained in social network science with the abovementioned software technology will be able to create a map of their social networks that they will be able to literally see. The organizing goal is for leaders to increase their turnout capacity for public actions, thereby increasing their power. Training in this tool, and with the assistance of Professor Paul Speer of Vanderbilt, would aid the leaders in achieving this goal by strengthening the areas of: constituency development, time efficient polling/"testing" issues, and turnout increases. For example, let us say that person A has cultivated a constituency that includes person B and person C. By being able to enter their data into this software program to be managed by Professor Speer, this leader will be able to see over time not only with which of her constituents she spends the most time, but which of her constituents lead both to the most new members and the highest turnout for public actions. If the map shows that person B is more connected than person C, she can be more strategic in her conversations with that person around testing issues, recruiting new potential participants, and generating turnout for actions. Since our organizing model (as an affiliate of the PICO National Network) is based on leadership development and the development of relationship-based constituencies (social capital), the ability to do this more consciously and strategically builds on our core strength, which is really what our organization brings to the table: real people, actual stakeholders, in our local community issues.

CBC will work with Vanderbilt University to maintain a database and an evolving map of the social networks of this organization in Greeley. The results will be disseminated to the other organizing committees (in Fort Collins) so that they may decide if it is a tool worthy of pursuing. CBC organizing staff will be trained in the use of this technology, and will provide the ongoing training and strategic analysis of these social network maps to active leaders of each local organizing committee.

This pilot project in Greeley will be evaluated on four points: (1) leader proficiency and sophistication in use and understanding of the social networking tool; (2) leader ownership and excitement, i.e., that this not be staff-driven; (3) increases in individual leader constituencies, and the collective constituency of the test group; and (4)increases in action turnout from 600 (last action in Greeley) to 800 by the end of 2007.