Breaking news: Wellstone Action will take over the role of the New Organizing Institute. More on this development as we learn the implications, but at least Rootscamp will happen in time to help train people for the 2016 election cycle.
I’m sad to see NOI will be going away, though this development isn’t a surprise after NOI’s recent troubles. Lefties can hope that this new development means its mission to train progressive grassroots and digital staff and activists will continue. Official statement copied below, and note that they have a survey for NOI fans to fill out. The statement:
New Organizing Institute Passes Torch to Wellstone Action
Wellstone to continue NOI’s work developing the next generation of progressive digital and data strategists
Today, Wellstone Action (Wellstone) and New Organizing Institute (NOI) announced that Wellstone will partner with NOI’s community of digital and data practitioners to carry forward its essential training programs. Wellstone is honored to continue the work of the organization that blazed the trail over the past decade for organizers, advocates, and political campaigners looking to leverage technology to make social change.
“NOI has been a critical movement utility and important partner for more than ten years. As new frontiers have exploded in the areas of data and digital, NOI has been at the leading edge, equipping emerging and established organizers with the skills and tools they need to win,” says Ben Goldfarb, Wellstone’s Executive Director. “The NOI community has so much to be proud of. We’re humbled by the opportunity to integrate this work into Wellstone’s programs for progressive leaders and organizations across the country and build on the foundation that NOI created.”
“I, along with my colleagues on the board of NOI, agree that bringing NOI’s programs under Wellstone’s leadership, with its reputation for excellence and management, is an exciting moment for our movement,” says NOI co-founder Judith Freeman. “Tens of thousands of progressive leaders already look to Wellstone for the skills and strategies they need to make big change. This move will further strengthen Wellstone and ensure that NOI’s work developing the next generation of data and digital strategists will continue for years to come. I’m grateful for everything the NOI community has done and built together. While NOI as an organization is ending, I’m excited about this new chapter, and thrilled that Wellstone will continue this important work.”
Founded in 2003 to carry on the legacy of the late Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN), Wellstone is the progressive movement’s largest and most trusted center for training and leadership development with 75,000 alumni and 350 partner organizations in all 50 states.
Wellstone will provide a home for NOI’s broad community of practitioners and power key elements of NOI’s core programs, such as intensive, cohort-based skills training for emerging digital organizers and data managers looking to start careers in the field (known as Data and Digital BootCamps); shorter-form skills trainings that have been effective in helping established practitioners take their work to the next level; and events like RootsCamp, an “unconference” that provides key networking, best-practice sharing, and skills development for the progressive data and digital communities.
Wellstone will be engaging the NOI community and stakeholders over the coming months to set priorities and relaunch programming in early 2016,including setting a new date for RootsCamp which was originally scheduled for December 2015 but will take place during the first quarter of 2016.
“For more than a dozen years, Wellstone has invested deeply in the people and organizations fighting for a more just future,” says Goldfarb. “We are fired up to take that work to an even greater scale by building on NOI’s incredible legacy, supporting even more leaders who share Paul Wellstone’s core belief that ‘we all do better when we all do better’.