Challenge:
In the first 100 days of the new Obama Administration, the Energy Action Coalition—comprised of 50+ national and regional climate change and climate justice youth advocacy groups—wanted to bring 10,000 young people from across the country to Washington D.C. for four days, to make their voices heard on government accountability on climate change, green jobs, and clean energy policies. Plans for the PowerShift 2009 event included workshops, panels, guest speakers, advocacy trainings, and a Lobby Day on Capitol Hill. The Energy Action Coalition needed increased organizing capacity to recruit participants and sought a contractor to run logistics in the final three months before the conference.
Solution:
grassroots solutions coordinated the recruitment efforts of the Energy Action Coalition's 50+ partner organizations and designed a supplemental recruitment program to reach out to campuses and communities where existing partner relationships did not already exist. grassroots solutions’ staff worked with Coalition partners to hire and train a team of organizers who used both online and offline tactics to identify and persuade young people to participate in the PowerShift event, including outreach on social networks, tabling on campuses, class “raps,” phone calling to professors and leaders of student clubs and environmental organizations, etc. grassroots solutions also hired and oversaw the team that managed all of the logistics of the PowerShift event itself, including registration, set-up, troubleshooting, and teardown.
Results:
- Working with EAC partners, grassroots solutions’ recruitment efforts resulted in more than 12,000 young people attending the Power Shift 2009 conference.
- grassroots solutions was instrumental in smoothly executing a logistics plan that moved the 12,000 participants through four days of events, panels, workshops, and more.
- Executed the largest Lobby Day on climate change and climate justice in history!