Innovation and Integration Partnership Project

The Progressive Technology Project is announcing our newest capacity building initiative: the Innovation and Integration Partnership Project. The Partnership Project is a year-long intensive program designed to significantly increase organizational infrastructure and skills for long-term, large-scale work.

For community organizing groups, the spheres of organizing, communications, technology, voter engagement, and fundraising are increasingly becoming intertwined. At the heart of this intersection are the technology and organizational practices that support programmatic work.  The Progressive Technology Project’s Innovation and Integration Partnership program is designed to help groups bridge the gaps between communications, fundraising, organizing, voter engagement (i.e. integrating voter work and data with your organizational database and ongoing work), and technology and bring them together in a seamless unit that amplifies and extends the scope of its organizing efforts. 

Announcing PTP's 2011 Innovation and Integration Project Partners!

CASA de Maryland
Causa Justa::Just Cause
Center for Media Justice
Community Voices Heard
Families and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children
Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights
Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement
Kentuckians for the Commonwealth
Labor/Community Strategy Center
Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy
Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance
Nebraska Appleseed
Alliance for a Greater New York (formerly New York Jobs with Justice)
OneAmerica
POWER
PICO California
SouthWest Organizing Project
Voces de la Frontera 
VOCAL (formerly NY Aids Housing Network)

What is the Innovation and Integration Partnership Project?

PTP has created the year-long Partnership Project to increase organizational effectiveness by providing a range of consulting and technical assistance services, technology tools, and training. 

This program will be highly collaborative in nature. Each organization will receive a set of services that is designed with them and specifically for them. Groups will be able to select trainings that best meet their needs from a menu of training options.  We will also conduct a rigorous and extensive evaluation of this program, and we intend to disseminate the results widely.

Our innovation and integration partnership program will allow groups to participate in a range of options including:

• a technology assessment
• an organizational technology integration evaluation
• face to face and online trainings
• on-going consulting and technical assistance
• Powerbase – PTP’s database for organizers
• communications consulting

We view this as a collaborative project, and will work with the selected cohort of groups to design a program that best meets the needs of each participating organization.  Read on for information about how our selection process works. 

Organizations that were selected met the following criteria:

To be considered, groups had to apply demonstrating:

• a substantive project to work on in 2011 with clear goals – the project can be related to technology, communications, voter engagement, fundraising, organizing, or organizational integration
• serious interest in a year-long program of deep engagement with PTP
• recognition of the need for help in building organizational capacity
• commitment to working collaboratively
• willingness to experiment with changes in organizational culture and practice in the interest of building capacity and effectiveness

Preference was given to organizations that:

• have participated in PTP’s REVERB trainings
• designated a project manager who holds a senior decision-making position on the staff
• proposed an innovative project with the potential to build knowledge and skills that could be transferrable to other movement organizations
• are anchor groups in coalitions or networks
• have designated communications, fundraising, and/or technology staff members
• have the organizational capacity and enthusiasm to take on a year-long intensive partnership
• are open to experimentation

Application process:

The Progressive Technology Project is making a serious commitment to the organizations participating in the Innovation and Integration Partnership Project. We selected partner organizations carefully and we selected these groups based on their energy, commitment, and enthusiasm to engage in an intensive year-long program.

This program generated considerable interest in the organizing community, but we have resources for only a limited number of partners. PTP reviewed the nearly 90 submitted applications and chose the listed 19 organizations that most closely meet our criteria to participate in the 2011 program.