Demystifying the Political Process
Standing Up for Wildlife Briefing
April 10, 2025
With a new presidential administration and many newly elected representatives in both Congress and at the state level, there is much at stake for people and wildlife in 2025. This briefing is a conversation with our experts on upcoming legislative and administrative priorities—and how you can take action and have an impact! From protecting our wild public lands and at-risk wildlife species to calling for climate action, you play a key role in advancing legislation and policies that can foster a healthier future for people and wildlife.
Administrative Rulemaking Training
March 29, 2023
Oftentimes we send out action alerts, or ask grassroots and grasstops activists to comment on rulemakings without fully explaining why it is important, or how these impact the administrative process. This training was designed to help demystify this process, and show how administrative action is used as an important avenue for environmental action and civic engagement.
Additional Trainings
Protecting Our Waters in a Post-Sackett World: A Discussion of Impacts and Lanes of Response (October 15, 2024)
Outreach and Organizing
Entering the Community (Part 1)
When developing any campaign, it is important to first understand the people that have an interest in or will be impacted by your campaign. This training is intended to help you understand the importance of thinking critically and carefully on how to enter a community when developing your campaign plan. It is during this period that an organizer can align campaign goals with community needs and begin to build key relationships that are essential to campaign success.
Community Relationship Building Training (Part 2)
This training serves as a part two to the ‘Entering the Community Training’ and draws from a collaborative project conducted last year to gather first-hand organizing experiences and lessons from across the Federation. This session will be a mixture of sharing lessons and principles gathered in the document and a group discussion where others can share their experiences so that we can grow our collective knowledge.
PDF of Slides
This version is “view only” so please make a copy to utilize it on your own campaigns.
Additional Resources
Campaign Planning
The National Wildlife Federation has a Campaign Planning Toolkit that we use as a helpful framework to guide our campaign planning. It was created through a collaboration of staff and affiliate leaders in 2018 and has been updated regularly to continue to improve upon our methodology. This 3-part training series is aimed at those who are asked to build out a campaign strategy - this means program or campaign managers or leaders. However, it is useful to understand this framework for anyone that engages with organizing or advocacy!
View our campaign planning trainings for a full breakdown on how to use the Campaign Planning Toolkit and resources.
Campaign Planning Tools
Campaign Planning I Training
March 29, 2023
This training was focused on the first worksheet of the Campaign Planning Toolkit. The first half of the training went over concepts like Goals, Strategies, Targets, and Milestones. The second half of the training dove deeper into a targeting exercise to provide examples and practice in how to target.
Campaign Planning II Training
April 19, 2023
This training was focused on the second worksheet of the Campaign Planning Toolkit. The first half of the training went over concepts like Power-Mapping (at a high-level), Asset Mapping, Identifying Challenges and Obstacles, and Tactics. The second half of the training dove deeper into tactics selection and the factors to consider.
Campaign Planning III Training
April 26, 2023
This training was focused on the third worksheet of the Campaign Planning Toolkit. The first half of the training focused on ground-truthing your campaign plan. The second half dove deeper on Power-Mapping.
Communications & Media
Campaign Planning: Message Training
August 30, 2023
This is a deep dive into the Messaging section of the Campaign Planning Toolkit with an opportunity to practice using real-life campaigns.
Social Media Advocacy Landscape
November 15, 2023
It can be so difficult to determine how best to allocate resources and invest in social media for advocacy. Which platforms make the most sense for my audience or my goals at any given moment? What type of investment does it take to have an impact in these spaces? National Wildlife Federation digital advocacy expert Meg Morris shared her knowledge about the current state of play and what you need in order to set your organization up for success for each of the major social media platforms.
(resources broken down by state)
Language of Conservation Memo
