In the Spring of 2024 LittleSis launched a public research training program to meet the political moment: we began training organizers and activists in research skills to challenge corporate power structures that threaten our communities and environment. Through our training program, we demonstrate how using tangible evidence of corporate abuse enables us to build targeted strategic campaigns that mobilize frontline fighters and everyday people.
We call this program Research Tools for Organizers (RTFO). The first two years of the program reinforced what we already knew about what movements and organizers need to fuel their fights: strategies, evidence, frameworks, and partnerships. Through our public training program, LittleSis is building and training the next generation of grassroots researcher-organizers.
Our goals for this program are simple:
- to provide research skills to the thousands of researcher-organizers who show interest in our trainings;
- to empower and upskill campaigns and movements for long-haul fights against corporate power;
- to create a space where organizer-researchers can learn from one another and coordinate to build strategic campaigns against similar corporate targets;
- to advance a corporate analysis that believes that to affect material change, we must bring our fights directly to the bosses and boardrooms.
LittleSis developed the RTFO curriculum after a decade of working in collaboration with base-building organizations and grassroots collectives around the world. We have provided corporate research and research support to partners who are challenging some of the worst corporate actors of environmental destruction, housing injustice, labor exploitation, racial discrimination, war, immigrant detention, and more. While the fights and issues our partners face are distinct, we notice a common theme in their campaign trajectories: when grassroots organizers and activists use proven methodologies like power mapping to identify corporate antagonists and their networks, they can build strategic campaigns and plan effective actions that engage and multiply their base while materially challenging the status quo.
To meet this growing need, LittleSis wants to expand our RTFO trainings to more audiences and communities. Through this expansion, LittleSis will strengthen our movement’s collective analysis of corporate power, expand our powermapping database, and, most importantly, train hundreds more organizer-researchers in research tools and methods that can inform and shape campaigns that effectively chip away at the corporate power structure that is strangling us all. We also hope that by expanding our training program, we can help draw out connections between local fights against the same or similar corporate targets.
I joined the Research Tools for Organizers training to skill-up in conducting power research, especially with an eye towards applications for our MPP campaign. Having a robust analysis of the power dynamics of our state, as well as our state legislature will be essential to building a winning campaign. One of the most valuable takeaways for me was the set of corporate research tools introduced in session two, which is applicable to our MPP campaign as we investigate corporate influence in our state legislature. I particularly appreciated the live demo, digging into how to use publicly available information like SEC filings. I have also shared this series with our volunteers and staff, and I expect we will continue to use different parts of this training series across our campaigns moving forward!
I highly recommend LittleSis as the go-to resource for organizers looking to sharpen their power analysis skills, and apply them to build strategic, winning campaigns.
– Akiksha Chatterji, Campaigns Director at 350 Seattle
Attendees hailed from 43 states across the U.S., plus 5 Canadian provinces.
Since its launch in 2024, over 3,300 people have registered for RTFO. The people who joined the first two years of the program represent researcher-organizers working in a wide range of issue areas across our movements.
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Programs like this are critical for organizers who want to better understand the interconnected forces that are causing and benefiting from the suffering of our communities and it helps underscore an important truth that all of us are capable of and have a role to play in informing strategy.
Research and strategy are not tools to be wielded by special people abstracted from ongoing struggles but tools that work best in the service of and with working people in motion.”
– Zaina Alsous, Director, Build a Better Miami – WeCount!
This year, we were joined by 500 researcher-organizers from 11 different movement areas…
A unique aspect of RTFO is that it brings together a wide range of participants working across dozens of issue areas, campaigns, and geographies; in some sessions, we also feature activist-researchers with a wide set of existing skills and knowledge about researching and organizing to present on their particular issue area. This provides a space for rich cross-pollination and intersectional analysis that is crucial in our current political climate.
This year, we also collaborated with base-building organizations in our movement ecosystem around research and campaign strategies. Member-leaders and staff from WeCount!, New York Communities for Change (NYCC), and Campus Climate Network presented on the role that strategic power research plays in their popular education of members, campaign strategy, and narrative strategy. As seasoned campaigners attested to the power of research and how it informs deliberate actions, the RTFO proof-of-concept is evident.
After the series, participants said they used the tools we shared to…
- Research who is influencing their county commissioners.
- Find more information about private and public corporations.
- Identify donors to politicians who oppose fair wages and working conditions.
- Share with friends and colleagues who are organizing against warehouses and data centers.