Activist Network Entrepreneurial Fund Projects

Activist Network Entrepreneurial Fund Projects

A.Principles and Criteria

“The funding from the Activist Network Support Team (ANST) will flow to projects of national scope, including new initiatives, regional work, rapid-response mid-year projects, and high-impact projects that otherwise might languish for lack of a small to moderate amount funding. Projects that are not of national scope but that have the potential to become significant in scope and impact may be selected for funding.”[1]

“Implementation teams will be funded through the annual budget process and will be responsible for allocating that budget. The funding for Issue Teams and Working Teams will be allocated by the Activist Network Support Team based on project proposals.” [2]

Projects will be reviewed by members of the AN Support Team who have a broad understanding of conservation issues, experience in different aspects of Club work, experience in running successful initiatives, and be able to evaluate projects, their measures of success, and deliverables. Issue teams will be able to consult with members of the AN Support Team in developing their proposals.

Projects are to be Sierra Club projects (not grants to outside organizations or sub-entities).

Projects can last up to one or two years.

Funds are for volunteer projects. (If funds are used for staff salaries or expenses the funds will be transferred to that staff department.)

Unused funds are returned to the Club treasury at the end of the project time frame or at any point when it is known that the funds are not going to be spent. Funds may not be transferred to another AN entity without the express permission of the AN Support Team.

AN Support Team members will refrain from voting on any funds for teams they are directly involved in.

AN funding is available for AN teams and issue committees only. While the AN encourages the formation of self organized teams, to apply for funding, these teams must be recognized by the Coordinating Pair. The team will need to complete a team charge (using the team charge template).

a.Administrative costs for teams and committees

Funds for conference call expenses for all AN teams will come from the main AN funding pool and need not be budgeted by team/committee. (“Budgets for team communication will be part of the overall support provided to activists and teams in the Network.”[3]) Responsible team use of this expensive Club resource is a mandate. The Club is still charged per person, per minute by the telecommunications vendor.

Costs for face to face meeting expenses and travel for committees/teams themselves will not be covered. Committees and teams are strongly encouraged to use conference calls, online tools such as gotomeeting or webex, video conferencing, etc. to avoid the environmental and financial costs of traveling. We strongly encourage local face to face meetings.

(We do anticipate that there will be assemblies of Club leaders, focused on taking action and in-person networking, as described in the Project Renewal proposal, page 16. However this is not funded by utilizing the Activist Network financial resources.)

b.Costs for attendance at external conferences, workshops, trainings, membership in other organizations, et cetera

These are determined on a case-by-case basis, since the expense can range from low to many thousands of dollars, and the AN funding pool is a finite fund with highly competitive allocations (meaning the larger the expense for the above types of requests, the less is available for other team’s basic work products).

Main criteria the Support Team will use in this determination are:

• Must be Sierra Club mission-critical for consideration.
• Must show imminent need to be able to accomplish the stated goals for the team.
• Must be a reasonable expense for the expected outcome.
• Must be considerate of the comprehensive needs of the remaining unfunded AN teams in that cycle.

1. Rapid response mid-year projects are projects which cannot be anticipated prior to the normal budget cycle and are also projects which require expedient actions. An example might be an accountability campaign directed at politicians planning to vote against community-right-to-know about toxic pollution. (This would be cases where we would not have be able to anticipate the need in the normal timeframe.) These would be the exception, not the rule.

B.Definitions of concepts for proposals:

Proposals should include goal, purpose, measurable outcomes/work products, timelines and strategies.

Goal(s) and purpose should be part of your team charge, or if they add to or modify the team charge, please attach or update the charge online.

Other questions to consider in describing the concept proposal:

• Is the outcome national or regional in scope?
• Is it a new initiative or does it deliver a key outcome to an existing project?
• Is it achievable in 1 to 2 years? (litigation outcomes may be longer but funding would not normally be.)
• Does it have a high impact?
• Does it allow for broad activist activity/involvement, or is it intentionally a core-team function?
• Will the team be using online tools to serve/coordinate offline activities, or is it only an online or offline project?
• Will the project engage more members (and how)?
• Will the project build new leaders (and how?)

Definitions - developed by Conservation Department

Goal and purpose: will normally come from the team charge.

Outcomes: A major achievement intermediate to reaching the goal(s). These normally come from the team deliverables, but may be a new outcome.

Benchmark: An objective put on a timeline.

Tactic: An activity carried out in order to achieve a specific objective. Inputs are activities we initiate, like volunteer phone banking; Outputs are the results of the inputs, for example, getting new volunteers from the phone bank.

Strategy: The way in which we will acquire the power to achieve the goal.*

Additional Explanation re Goals

•An Outcome: goals will be results of activities, events, or tasks—not the activities, events, or tasks themselves. An outcome is a change in the external world; a bad project is stopped by new volunteers.

•Measurable: defined such that we can objectively determine whether or not we succeeded or failed to achieve them. Some goals might resist quantitative measurement; we should, however, at least make a serious effort to identify quantitative measures.

•Realistic: capable of being achieved (though it should stretch us to the limit of what is possible).

•Precise: specific as to what will happen and when. This is necessary to ensure everyone involved in the campaign/program to achieve the goal has a common understanding about what is to be accomplished and when.

*Additional Explanation re Strategy

A strategy explains why we will win, i.e. why we will successfully achieve our goals. It answers the following question: “Why will we win? How is it that we will transform the power and resources we currently have into power sufficient to achieve our goals despite the power and resources arrayed against us?”

The following are examples of two different strategies one might adopt in pursuit of the goal of stopping the coal rush: “We will stop the coal rush by stopping each proposed coal site through a range of community organizing, legal and other means.” Alternatively, “We will stop the coal rush by using a range of organizing, legal and other means to scare energy capital away from coal investments and towards investments in clean energy.”

Note that it should take only one or at most a few concise sentences to describe a strategy. Strategies are not plans, though good plans embody the strategy and describe how the strategy will be carried out. Tactics are not strategies; they are particular activities through which strategies are carried out—e.g. media events, walks, lawsuits, online petitions, etc. Note that an aggregation of tactics does not in itself comprise a strategy; a good strategy ties all the tactics together into an integrated whole in which all the various activities of a campaign or program reinforce each other and add up to a whole greater than the sum of its parts, in pursuit of a common goal.

The following questions might be of help to us as we identify and define strategies:

• How are our opponents looking at this battle?
• How do we expect this battle to play out—not just in the next step, but multiple steps down the line?
• What is the fulcrum upon which we will leverage the power we already have in order to create the additional power (we don’t currently have) we need to win? In general the Club’s two greatest sources of power to leverage are its brand and its grassroots base.
• How are our opponents answering these same questions about us, and what can we do to undermine their inevitable attacks?

Trainings and workshop proposals should be coordinated with Chapter and Leader Support.

The intent of the one page concept proposal is to allow the Support Team to provide feedback on whether there is likely to be funding available or not before extensive time is put into developing a proposal.

(note: this document is derived from the team template, Project Renewal documents and the Conservation Department definitions developed by Greg Haegele.)

C.Timeline

For projects up to two years in duration (majority of projects funded in the AN)

Nov 30, 2008 Application deadline for first round of 2009 grants to issue teams
Dec. 1 - Jan 15 Period for back and forth dialog between ANST and applicants to refine proposals.
Jan 31, 2009 Deadline for issuing decisions on first round of grants.
Round two

March 2 , 2009: Application deadline for second round of 2009 grants to issue teams.

March 3 - Apr. 15, 2009: Period for back and forth dialog between Support Team and applicants to refine proposals.

May 1, 2009: Activist Network Support Team announces grants

D.Processes

Directory of who to call for more information:

Marilyn Wall 513-226-9235

John Barry 415-977-5584

Send proposals to or

Proposals can be submitted at any time but will be considered on the above schedule, except for rapid response proposals.

[1] Project Renewal proposal, p14

[2] Project Renewal proposal, p14

[3] Project Renewal proposal, p14