Glossary
This glossary defines key terms used throughout the toolkit. These entries aren’t comprehensive. Some of these terms are complex (like power), while others are well-developed in movement spaces (like base building). We aim to keep the definitions succinct and accessible for a wide range of users.
Absorption
The process of drawing new individuals into ongoing organizing work in ways that deepen their commitment and increase their participation over time.
Base Building
The process of growing a group of committed, engaged community members who share values and take collective action together. Base building focuses on deep relationships, leadership development, and creating solidarity among the members of the base.1
Constituent Relationship Management (CRM)
A software platform used to track and manage interactions with people, such as members, volunteers, or donors. For base-building organizations, CRMs help to organize their base, map relationships, and coordinate outreach over time. In the for-profit sectors, CRMs are often called client or customer relationship management.
Data
The individual pieces of information that a base-building organization collects.
Metrics
Specific, quantifiable measures that track progress towards a base-building organization’s goals. They’re built from data, and help the organization manage the work, make strategic decisions, tell their story, and identify areas for improvement.
Data Infrastructure
The systems, tools, and processes that help collect, store, analyze, and share data and metrics.
Data Warehouse
This is where organizations store and organize large amounts of data. Data warehouse is where information from various tools are brought together, therefore unlocking deeper analyses and reporting.
Leadership Development
This is a strategy (or set of strategies) to identify, support, and grow the skills of people within a movement. For base-building organizations to scale their operations, they rely on identifying and training leaders, who can take on more responsibilities and organize their own followers.
Mobilization
The process of moving people to take action around a specific campaign, issue, or moment. Mobilization often draws on existing networks of people who already agree with your cause. It is about turning out those supporters to participate (by voting, signing a petition, joining a march, etc.). See the definition for Organizing as contrast.
Organizing
The long-term, relationship-based work of building collective power. Unlike mobilization (which focuses on turning people out for an action), organizing focuses on expanding the base by reaching and convincing people who are not yet supportive or involved, and empowering those communities to set their own agendas and take action to achieve them. Organizing and Mobilization are complementary strategies.2
Pipeline
An automated system that moves data from one source to another. As an example, an organization may need a pipeline to move their data from their CRM to a data warehouse (e.g. Google BigQuery).
Power
Power is the ability to act with purpose and to influence or change social, political, and economic systems that affect our lives. It can come in many forms (e.g. solidarity, military, economic, etc.). For a deeper discussion and citations, see the Overview section.
Sync
In data infrastructural work, a sync refers to a process of transferring, updating, and aligning data between systems.
Tool
Any software that helps an organization do its work more effectively.
For a deeper discussion of base building, check out chapters 6.1 and 6.2 in Practical Radicals.↩︎
If you want to dive deeper into this topic, check out Mark Engler and Paul Engler’s This Is An Uprising and Jane McAlevey’s No Shortcuts where they discuss the differences and interactions between organizing and mobilizing.↩︎