Context and program design

The Leading Change Network launched a Community Organizing Coaches Training Program pilot in Spring 2024. The program was developed in response to LCN’s interest in training more organizing coaches and to offering more advanced training alongside the Public Narrative Training Program that has been offered for the last two years. To evaluate the effectiveness of this pilot, a program evaluation was conducted which identified successes of the program and opportunities to improve for future cohorts. The process included collecting data from four sources: a pre-program survey for participants, a post-program survey for participants, interviews with five participants, and meta-coach team’s evaluation meeting and survey. This report offers key findings from the evaluation process.

The Community Organizing Coaches Training Program was a nine-week program that was implemented from May 15 to June 26, 2024, and focused on teaching organizing skills each week. Topics included facilitation skills, coaching skills, building relationships, strategy, and launching a leadership team. Participants attended a weekly two-hour session and were invited to join two weekend workshops to develop their content knowledge and skills. A team of three experienced “meta-coaches” supported participants by leading small groups of 7-8 participants during these weekly sessions where they taught key concepts, modeled best practices, and provided feedback. Participants also completed two homework assignments during the course. Meta-coaches provided feedback during practice sessions and on homework.

Curriculum design and innovation

This course curriculum design was led by three senior trainers from the network: Abel Cano, Benedict Hugusson, and Mais Irqsusi. The process of co-designing and developing the curriculum was collaborative and engaged several senior trainers in the network who shared their own innovations, coaches’ prep agendas, and insights on what it takes to build a strong organizing coach. Salma Sameh from the LCN network pulled together information from senior coaches and then coordinated several design sessions amongst the three lead trainers to develop the curriculum. Then learning exercises were tested with meta coaches to refine the content and ensure the curriculum met the learning objectives. Two main new innovations emerged from this process: 1) a new evolved coaching guide and 2) the development of the Metrics and Snowflake module as a continuation to the strategy modules. The intention of this design process wasn’t just to graduate facilitators from an organizing workshop but to evolve coaching skills of those working in campaigns to better enable them to win and support others to productively contribute to campaigns or enable others to do so.

Table of Contents of the Evaluation Report

• Context and program design
• Curriculum design and innovation
• Cohort demographic information
• Cohort experience and background
• Participant growth- leadership and understanding of community organizing practices
• Participant growth- coaching skills
• Plans to apply community organizing skills
• Satisfaction with the program
• Opportunities moving forward
• Meta-coach perspective
• Conclusion