People build power through relationships, leadership, and action.
RAD NH’s organizing model helps people move from concern and isolation into connection, collective action, and lasting leadership. We build local teams that can organize around immediate needs while developing the power to shape New Hampshire’s future.
Our measure of success is not only what we win, but how many people become leaders and bring others into the movement.
Relationships create the foundation for leadership and action.
People enter organizing through different doors. Our job is to meet them where they are, help them build confidence and skills, and create clear opportunities to take greater responsibility over time.
Start with people, not programs.
We listen to people’s experiences, values, concerns, and hopes. Through one-to-one conversations and shared activity, people begin to build trust with one another and with the organization.
Help people grow through practice.
Leadership develops when people take meaningful responsibility: making an ask, telling their story, facilitating a meeting, recruiting others, leading an action, or training a new volunteer.
Move together around shared goals.
People deepen their commitment by acting together. Campaigns, trainings, organizing teams, elections, and public actions give people opportunities to practice power and win change.
RAD NH’s ladder of engagement
The ladder is not a judgment of a person’s worth or experience. It helps staff and member leaders identify the next meaningful opportunity for someone to participate, build skills, take responsibility, and bring others into the work.
Every level offers a meaningful way to participate.
People move through the ladder by building relationships, practicing skills, taking responsibility, and bringing others into the work.
Beginning a relationship
A person has connected with RAD NH or expressed interest in an issue, event, campaign, or community concern.
- Completes a survey
- Attends an event
- Has an organizing conversation
Taking a first action
A person participates in a concrete activity and begins building a stronger relationship with the organization.
- Signs or delivers a petition
- Contacts a decision-maker
- Joins a public action
Contributing time and skills
A person participates regularly and takes responsibility for helping the work move forward.
- Canvasses or phonebanks
- Supports an event
- Helps with outreach or communications
Making an ongoing commitment
A person identifies with RAD NH, participates consistently, and helps shape the organization’s priorities and direction.
- Joins an organizing team
- Participates in trainings
- Recruits others into action
Developing other people
A person leads shared work, develops new leaders, and helps expand the organization’s capacity and reach.
- Facilitates meetings
- Leads teams or campaigns
- Trains, mentors, and recruits others
Leadership becomes durable when people organize together.
Organizing teams are the local foundation of RAD NH. They give people a place to build relationships, develop shared strategy, practice leadership, and take sustained action around the issues affecting their communities.
A team is a group of people who take responsibility for building power together.
Teams are not simply places to receive information or complete tasks assigned by staff. Members help identify priorities, make decisions, recruit others, divide responsibility, and evaluate what they are learning.
Staff organizers support the team’s growth, while team priorities and public work remain coordinated with RAD NH’s broader strategy and responsibilities.
Build relationships
Members learn one another’s stories, values, skills, interests, and reasons for being in the work.
Choose priorities
Teams identify issues and opportunities in coordination with RAD NH’s shared strategy and current work.
Share responsibility
Members take roles in outreach, turnout, facilitation, storytelling, training, communications, and campaign leadership.
Develop new leaders
Teams create repeated opportunities for people to practice skills, take ownership, and support others into leadership.
People become leaders by doing meaningful work with support.
Training matters, but leadership is built through repeated practice: taking responsibility, receiving coaching, reflecting, and trying again.
Build shared knowledge.
Trainings introduce organizing concepts, practical tools, political analysis, and examples people can adapt.
Take on a real role.
People apply what they are learning by making asks, leading conversations, facilitating meetings, recruiting others, or helping run an action.
Debrief with honesty.
Organizers and member leaders review what worked, what felt difficult, and what the experience revealed about people and power.
Take greater responsibility.
With support and repetition, people move from participating in the work to shaping it, leading others, and developing new leaders.
Leadership can grow through many different skills and roles.
- One-to-one organizing conversations
- Canvassing and phonebanking
- Storytelling and public testimony
- Meeting and team facilitation
- Relational organizing and recruitment
- Power mapping and campaign strategy
- Training and mentoring others
- Digital organizing and communications
Every campaign should strengthen the movement.
RAD NH organizes to win concrete improvements while creating opportunities to meet new people, develop leaders, deepen political understanding, and build durable capacity.
We measure both what changes in public policy and what grows in our organization.
A campaign can win a policy, stop a harmful proposal, move an elected official, or shift the public conversation.
It should also leave behind stronger relationships, more skilled leaders, deeper teams, and greater capacity for the next fight.
Recruit new people
Campaigns give people a clear reason to take a first action and begin a relationship with RAD NH.
Develop leaders
Members practice outreach, storytelling, facilitation, strategy, public action, and team leadership.
Expose power
Campaigns help people see who makes decisions, who benefits, and what organized pressure can change.
Build durable capacity
Teams retain relationships, skills, data, experience, and confidence that carry into future campaigns.
We track what we win and what we build.
A strong organizing program improves people’s lives while developing the relationships, leadership, teams, and capacity needed for future victories.
Changes in policy, power, and public decisions
- Policies passed, improved, protected, or defeated
- Decision-makers moved through organized public pressure
- Resources redirected toward community needs
- Public narratives shifted toward shared responsibility and root causes
- Aligned candidates elected and commitments carried into governing
Growth in people, leadership, and organizational capacity
- New people entering relationships with RAD NH
- People moving into deeper levels of participation
- Members recruiting and developing others
- Organizing teams growing stronger and more capable
- More people practicing strategy, facilitation, outreach, and public leadership
The most important question is not only, “How many actions did we complete?” It is also, “How many people became more powerful through the work?”
Leadership begins with one meaningful next step.
Join an organizing team, attend a training, or become a RAD NH member. Wherever you begin, we will help you build relationships, practice new skills, and find a role that matches your interests, experience, and capacity.
You do not need prior organizing experience. Curiosity, care for your community, and a willingness to learn are enough to begin.