How to take the energy to the next level, and start acting locally to win nationally
“We need in every bay and community a group of angelic troublemakers.”
– Bayard Rustin
If you’re reading this, you’re may already be part of a local network of people who wants Australia to get out of coal and into clean energy — like a new ACF community group, a group on Facebook or even just a bunch of friends who care. This chapter is about how to take that energy to the next level, and start acting locally to win nationally.
There’s no need to reinvent the wheel — if an advocacy group or activist network is already operating in your local area on similar issues, just join them. Depending on the size of your local representative’s electorate, it may make sense to have more than one group.
You can look up your electorate to see how many suburbs it contains over here.
If you look around and can’t find a group working specifically on local action focused on your Members of Parliament in your area, just start doing it! It’s not rocket science. You really just need two things:
Here are some tips on starting a local group dedicated to making your local representatives aware of their constituents’ opposition to dirty energy.
Start where people are. If you’re in an existing group with lots of people who want to do this kind of thing, then start there; if you’re not, then look for people elsewhere. You could start a subgroup of an existing activist group or create a new group – it really depends on your circumstances. The most important thing is that this is a LOCAL group. Your band of heroes is focused on applying local pressure, which means you all need to be local.
Identify a few additional co-founders who are interested in participating and recruiting others. Ideally, these are people who have different social networks from you so that you can maximise your reach. Make an effort to ensure that leadership of the group reflects the diversity of opposition to dirty energy.
Email your contacts and post a message on your Facebook page or any local Facebook groups you’re a member of and/or other social media channels you use regularly. Say that you’re starting a group for people in your electorate dedicated to getting out of dirty coal and into clean energy, and ask people to email you to sign up.
Invite interested people to an in-person kickoff meeting. Use this meeting to agree on a name, principles for your group, roles for leadership, a way of communicating and a strategy for pressuring your local political representatives and businesses to get out of coal and into clean energy. You might not get through all this at your first meeting so if you need to, make another meeting to work out the strategy and tactics. Get people to commit to come – they’ll want to because so many people care.
Manage the meeting. Keep people focused on the ultimate core strategy: applying pressure to your MP to get out of coal and into clean energy. Other attendees may have other ideas and it’s important to affirm their concerns and feelings, but it’s also important to redirect that energy to make sure that the conversation stays focused on developing a group plan of action.
Agree on principles. This is your chance to decide what your group stands for. We recommend two guiding principles:
As explained in chapter two, we strongly recommend sticking to a simple strategy shared with other groups in the movement and focusing pressure on your your local political representatives and businesses rather than spreading yourself too thin.
Volunteer for roles. Figure out how to divide roles and responsibilities among your group. This can look very different depending on who’s in the room, but at a minimum, you probably want 1-2 people in charge of overall group coordination, 1-2 people in charge of communications including a designated media/social media contact, 1-2 people in charge of tracking your local representative’s office schedule and events and 1-2 people in charge of public event and action coordination. In addition to these roles, ask attendees how they want to contribute to advocacy efforts: attend events, record events, ask questions, make calls, host meetings, engage on social media, write op-eds for local papers, etc.
Adopt means of communication. You need a way of reaching everyone in your group in order to coordinate actions. This can be a Facebook group, a Google group, a Slack team — whatever people are most comfortable with. It may be wise to consider secure or encrypted platforms such as Signal and WhatsApp.
Set up a regular group meeting. It’s really important to keep the momentum going so people stay engaged and your group is consistently kicking goals. Set up a regular meeting – we suggest weekly or fortnightly. Discuss in your kickoff meeting which days / times work best for people and do your best to accommodate the majority. Be flexible and inclusive. If someone can only make it on Tuesdays but you’ve decided on Thursdays, perhaps alternating Tuesdays and Thursdays could work.
Expand! Enlist your members to recruit across their networks. Ask every member to send out the same outreach emails/posts that you did.
Recruit people to your email list — 100 or 200 is a great start.
Most people are moved to take action through individual conversations. Here are some tips for having successful conversations to inspire people to take action with your group.
Get the story. What issues does the other person care about? How would government and business resistance to shift away from dirty coal and into clean energy affect them, their communities, and their values?
Ask open-ended questions! People are more likely to take action when they articulate what they care about and can connect it to the action they are going to take. A good rule of thumb is to talk 30% of the time or less and listen at least 70% of the time.
Imagine what’s possible. How can your group change your community’s relationship with your MP and local businesses? How could your group, and others like it, protect our values?
Commitment and ownership. Ask a clear yes or no question: will you work with me to hold our representatives accountable? Then, get to specifics. Who else can they talk to about joining the group? What work needs to be done — planning a meeting, researching your local MP — that they can take on? When will you follow up?
A great way to build your networks is to hold a fun event and invite people in your community – a coal and clean energy trivia night at the pub, a reconnect with nature picnic or an Adani film screening are good examples. Make sure there is a link to the issues your group is connected to and a fun, social element so people have a good time.
Ask people to sign up to your email list on arrival. Follow up after the event and thank them for coming. Then invite them to your next regular group meeting, action or event.
Register your event on ACF’s directory of events so we can invite the ACF community in your area. Our volunteer team may be able to support you with materials and answer questions. Use the ‘host your own event’ button on the events page on our website.
There are four steps to register your event:
Then share the link and start recruiting! You'll get an email with instructions on where you can edit your event.
Report back
Talk to your ACF community organiser, jump on the ACF Slack Channel or send us an email at [email protected] and tell us how your event went. We can help you evaluate the meeting and apply your learnings to the next one.
If you are forming a group, we urge you to make a conscious effort to pursue diversity and solidarity at every stage in the process. Being inclusive and diverse might include recruiting members who can bridge language gaps, and finding ways to accommodate participation when people can’t attend due to work schedules, health issues or childcare needs.
We also encourage you to speak with and include where possible people who are most directly affected by government and business support for dirty energy. This could include both reaching out through your own networks and forming relationships with community groups that are already working with the most affected people.
ACF community is a network of independently organised Australian Conservation Foundation groups taking local action as part of ACF's national purpose and shared values. ACF community groups speak out, show up and act for a world where forests, rivers, people and wildlife thrive.
Individual action alone won’t work. To change things, we need collective action. When small groups connect into a much bigger whole, it’s powerful. ACF’s community is large, diverse, informed and skilled. If we can unleash the power of this community by growing connectivity between members, sharing strategies and skills, then we can create change faster.
We rely on volunteer teams to get the scale we need. ACF’s centralised staff is too small to give individual support to ACF community groups all across the country, but we will put our effort into creating systems that scale and allow groups to self organise, and to giving extra support to groups who are working in areas of high strategic impact. ACF can’t take on a hundred local campaigns as our effort would be stretched too thin. We have a responsibility to our members and supporters to stay focused on our biggest impact.
Find the ACF Community guidelines here.
If you agree with the ACF community principles, you are welcome to call yourself an ACF community group. You can launch your group by creating your first group meeting on our community website. Event hosts need to create a username and password, then login here and post all the event details on a simple form.
Group meetings and public actions can be posted on ACF’s website in the Events section. Event hosts log in and post event details. Write an engaging event description so people know what to expect and want to come. Write a line or two about your group. By posting an event, you’re agreeing to the ACF Community Principles.
Groups should plan to recruit people to your event. ACF volunteers will help to publicise your event to other ACF community members nearby, but we can’t guarantee personal support for every event!
Decide on a name: Good names include the geographic area of your group, so that it’s clear that you’re rooted in the community – e.g., “ACF Community Seaspray.” You are 100% welcome to pick up and run with the ACF Community name if you want (and you are prepared to abide by the ACF Community Principles), but we won’t be hurt if you don’t. Keep your name simple, and don’t feel like you need to come up with a clever slogan or acronym.
ACF Community groups are named after locations, such as cities, suburbs, neighborhoods, streets etc, and aim to serve that named community.
You may call your group “ACF Community - Location” eg “ACF Community – Newtown” or “ACF Community – Murray-Darling Basin.”
Or you may call yourself “ACF Community - Network”, eg “ACF Community - Buddhist Network” or “ACF Community - Creative Activism.”
Or you would prefer to choose a different name for your group, you are also welcome. You can still access our training and resources. For example, during the campaign to stop Adani’s polluting mine, #StopAdani groups are springing up everywhere. If you’re already part of an existing local group, you are also welcome to be part of the ACF community network using your existing name. ACF is part of an inclusive and powerful movement, from small local groups to large organisations.
You can say, “We’re part of a network of independently organised, volunteer-run groups in the Australian Conservation Foundation community, taking local action in Richmond.”
Or “ACF Community - Richmond is an independently organised, volunteer-run group that is part of the Australian Conservation Foundation community.”
Co-branding: We allow co-branding – connecting the ACF Community identity to the name of another community or not-for-profit group which also agrees with the ACF Community Principles. (For example, an event could be jointly hosted by ACF Community Richmond and Elders for Climate Change Action.) We don’t allow co-branding with businesses or political parties.
What if an ACF Community group wants to run a campaign or project not initiated by ACF?
If the campaign is aligned with ACF’s National Agenda, ACF Community groups are encouraged to run local campaigns, but ACF can’t support or resource these. If an ACF Community group wants to run a values-aligned community project – like a community garden or bulk solar purchase – you are welcome to do so, and link your efforts into stronger advocacy for the laws and policies that will create a systemic shift, but it is not ACF’s role to work on this type of project.
Can I fundraise?
Yes! You can fundraise for your group or for ACF. You need to make it clear if you are fundraising for your group OR for ACF.
If fundraising for your group, you can use a crowdfunding platform like Chuffed.org, mycause or Pozible. This is independent of ACF and you are responsible for promotion and follow up. Donations to your group will not go through ACF or receive a tax deductible gift receipt.
If you are fundraising for ACF, use the community fundraising platform Everyday Hero. ACF will receive donations directly, and tax receipts are sent to each donor.
If you’d like to use ACF Community group names and ACF’s community events platform, groups must act in a way that is congruent with the ACF Community Principles and the ACF National Agenda.