2021 by the Numbers

Building Skills, Knowledge, and Community

Innovative trainings to maximize impact

• Deep canvassing training series: Deep canvassing offers the opportunity to move folks with different views toward progressive beliefs incrementally, through relational organizing. These trainings resonated with our Indivisible groups, especially those in rural areas who continue to reckon with emboldened white supremacy in their communities. In 2021, over 100 of our rural Indivisible members joined each Wednesday in June to learn skills in empathetic listening, reconciling conflict, and sharing personal narratives to shift viewpoints. Indivisible leaders then used their new Deep Canvassing skills by phone banking and in-person canvassing. Deep Canvassing is a great example of moving folks from skill-building to action. The sessions got great reviews—a group leader from rural Tennessee said it was the “best training he’s ever received.” Given the interest in deep canvassing from our network, we held another series for our Indivisibles in the South and Southwest, and over 500 folks registered!
• Racial equity and inclusion trainings: Our training team develops engaging and educational training sessions for Indivisible groups across the country, with racial equity and inclusion as a priority. In May, we held a training on tools for anti-racism and how to have difficult conversations with family and friends for groups in the South. Our training team decided to open the event up for a national audience, due to the prevalence of the topic. For this particular event, entitled “Tough Talk,” the training team welcomed Dr. David Campt of the Dialogue Company to facilitate the training. He offered expertise on how to impact “racism skeptics” and encourage folks within our spheres of influence to open their minds and shift their perspectives to adopt anti-racism principles.
  Debates surrounding critical race theory continue to threaten public education while propagating white supremacist rhetoric. In June 2021, our rural caucus call focused on best practices for handling anti-critical race theory campaigns in local communities. In Minnesota, our organizers provided one-on-one support and trainings for groups that are dealing with a surge of anti-critical race theory and anti-trans campaigns in their communities. Following our guidance in the state, one Indivisible group made so many calls into a venue in their community that the venue canceled an upcoming anti-critical race theory campaign event. These trainings focused on topics like intersectionality, the race-class narrative messaging, white supremacy culture and anti-trans hate, and how local groups can apply their learning in their day-to-day activism throughout 2022.
• Redistricting training: Redistricting and fair maps are essential to an inclusive democracy. In August, we launched a resource entitled Fighting Redistricting in the States which provides activists with step-by-step guidance on how to get involved in the fight for fair maps in their states. We also hosted a training for groups on how to effectively participate in redistricting hearings at the end of July. Leading up to the training, we consulted with our groups on the ground in multiple states, especially where activists have shown interest and involvement in redistricting work. Over 100 participants registered for the training, which focused on the importance of redistricting hearings and communities of interest in advocating for fair maps. Attendees learned how to locate their redistricting hearings, along with the different kinds of committees that exist in each state, and even wrote their own statements for public hearings. We continued to see local groups in states across the country take a stand for fair maps in their regions—for example, in Arizona Indivisible leaders sat on panel hearings and sent letters to the editor, and in Colorado group leaders held informational sessions with redistricting experts for their members.
  

  Image from Suffolk Progressives
  

• Policy working groups: This year, Indivisible launched policy working groups, which allowed Indivisible activists to opt-in to connecting with our policy experts on each of our five core policy issues: democracy, immigration, economic justice, climate, and healthcare. These working groups received regular policy updates from our national team about new opportunities to engage at the national and state levels on our core issues. In the late summer we gathered feedback from group members and Indivisible staff to evaluate the working group model’s effectiveness in furthering our policy work and identified areas for improvement. Ultimately we decided to shift our approach away from monthly issue-focused calls to instead focus on specific campaigns where we think targeted advocacy can make an impact. This working group model was especially useful for group leaders to connect with policy experts during the Build Back Better (BBB) fight. We organized advocacy working groups that were laser-focused on each committee that was weighing in and making decisions on BBB, and our organizers worked one-on-one with group leaders in target districts. On each of the issues we advocated for in BBB—climate investments, a clean energy standard, affordable childcare, Medicare expansion, lowering prescription drug prices, tax fairness, a pathway to citizenship, and more—we fought off threats in committee to make sure that the bill went to the floor as strong as possible. For example, when Representative Kathleen Rice from New York started wavering on the prescription drug section of BBB, we launched a massive campaign into her district with messaging around the campaign contributions she’s received from big pharma.
  

  Image from Indivisible Sedona
  

• Building community with centralized spaces and caucuses. Indivisible continued to support our groups through centralized spaces and monthly movement calls–including our Rural Caucus, our POC (People of Color) leadership caucus, and our National Activist Calls. In the spring, our organizers came together to hold an event for rural activists in New York and a rural summit in Colorado. In New York, the event focused on building relationships and tying local, rural issues to federal-level democracy reform. In Colorado, over 100 activists registered for the summit to build relationships with rural organizations across the state, learn tactics for organizing, and develop plans to take action for democracy reforms. And in September, rural activists from across Arizona came together for their first-ever statewide virtual summit. The summit was a hit, with 295 activists registered and 105 participants who stayed the entire 4 hours to learn about coalition building, voter registration and protection tactics, and messaging strategies for rural voters.
  

  Image from Indivisible Sedona and After the March Verde Valley
  

Direct Financial Support to Local Groups

Image from Indivisble Cayuga

• Distributed Fundraising Model & Match Money: Indivisible distributed over $100,000 in matching funds to over 200 Indivisible groups through our distributed fundraising program. Indivisible groups leveraged this platform to fundraise for their organizing efforts, including expenses like materials for rallies and actions, relationship building opportunities, and postcarding and GOTV efforts. For example, Indivisible group WeCAN in Connecticut used distributed funds to send out hundreds of postcards asking constituents to contact their state legislators to expand voting access and allow no-excuse absentee voting. And in May and June, Indivisible groups spent funds on materials and resources for the John Lewis Voting Rights Act votercade actions and Deadline for Democracy events.
• GROW Grants: Indivisible distributed over $55,000 to 168 local groups through our GROW Grants program in 2021. Grants went toward a wide range of activities including voter registration efforts, statewide organizing initiatives, research and action on voter suppression tactics in specific states, and racial equity and inclusion trainings for Indivisible members. For example, Washington Indivisible Network received a grant to support a series of 4 training sessions for groups across the state focused on helping leaders combat burnout among group members and maintain the energy of their movement. And in Texas, Indivisible TX Lege received a grant that supported an ongoing 18-month long, statewide coordinated project led by Indivisible TX Lege and other Texas groups to fight against voter suppression laws through their campaign known as “Don’t Mess with Texas Voters.”
• IndivisiGather: Through the IndivisiGather program, a new initiative to provide groups with direct support for community building events, we distributed over $100,000 in funds to over 135 groups to plan gatherings for their group members—for both in-person gatherings when safe to do so, and virtual community building events. After a year of organizing remotely and not being able to convene in-person, providing groups with resources to plan safe community building events for their members proved essential for relationship building, recruiting new members, and cultivating more sustainable groups. We solicited feedback from participants in the program and one leader from Indivisible Andover said: “After a long absence of large gatherings, it was really a wonderful way to get people together to show our appreciation for all the hard work our members have done over the past 5 years and to celebrate the caring friendships and strong sense of community that has resulted along the way.”

Organizing for Action

Image from SAWW

• In-turf support for Indivisible activists. Indivisible’s in-turf organizers provided critical one-on-one support for group leaders in their regions, who in turn empowered hundreds of group members in their communities to take action. Organizers built deep relationships with group leaders—providing specialized support and cultivating leadership development through trainings and events. For example, our organizer in Washington state worked directly with several groups across the state to identify their needs and then designed a series of leadership development seminars. Thanks to this intentional work to cultivate leadership development across the state, groups are now more coordinated with one another and frequently offer to mentor each other, sharing best practices for organizing.
• Statewide coordination: Statewide coordinating structures are crucial to building progressive power and coordination in states nationwide. In 2021, we maintained and built out statewide coordinating structures in 28 states across the country. Our organizers worked directly with group leaders to coordinate statewide calls, develop statewide trainings, and organize statewide actions. For example, organizers in Florida provided deep support to local Indivisible leaders to develop a new statewide coordinating structure called SWIFT, the Statewide Indivisible Florida Taskforce. which focuses on state issues like redistricting. Indivisible organizers continue to coordinate with SWIFT to host statewide calls focused on state legislative advocacy and resources for engaging in the fight for fair maps.
• Digital organizing: Indivisible continued to build out our expansive digital organizing infrastructure. We implemented intentional strategies for moving online volunteers up the ladder of engagement. This included a successful peer-to-peer texting program which allowed us to confirm participants for events and actions, plus share calls to action with instructions on how to contact their senators.