Happy Birthday, Action Network Toolset!
This month, as we celebrate the fourth birthday of the Action Network toolset, we wanted to take some time to reflect on the hard work, pivotal moments, and organizational allies that made Action Network the digital mobilization toolset of the progressive movement. We owe our success to hundreds of partners, from AFL-CIO, NEA, and SEIU to Daily Kos, Women’s March, Malala Fund, Working Families Party, United We Dream, and many, many more. This is our story, and it would not have been possible without you.
Corporate Action Network, as it was then known, launched in 2012 with a mission to level the playing field between corporations and people. The associated Corporate Action Network Action Center focused on building technology to meet the challenges of building campaigns in the 21st century, aiming to facilitate campaigns at a scale not possible before. We were trying to solve a key problem: how can we get technology in more hands, and how can we make it a lot easier for those folks to work together. Collaboration was at the heart of what we were after. We wanted to make it possible for groups to collaborate in all new ways, breaking apart the traditional ownership structures of campaigns to foster new mobilizations with each group or activist able to really own their piece of the event.
In November 2012, we partnered with the UFCW and Making Change at Walmart to build a big day of action targeting Walmart and supporting Walmart workers who were going out on strike. The Black Friday Walmart Strikes, held nationwide at hundreds of Walmart stores, demonstrated the unique power of our toolset in creating large, distributed events. The event combined the power of an established campaign, the reach of a coalition of allies, and the energy of grassroots activism. It was the largest labor protest in decades and was a forerunner to many distributed days of action since, from Keystone Pipeline and #NoDAPL protests to the Women’s March.
This showed us the power in our model of building technology as a non-profit dedicated to the needs of the progressive movement. But we also saw the need to do more, to build a full suite of tools that progressive organizations could use for all of their activities, while maintaining the focus on empowerment and collaboration that was our founding principles. So we set out to build a whole new toolset and changed our name to Action Network.
The Action Network toolset launched in September 2013 with a focus on building progressive power. But it was more than just a toolset; it was a new way to build technology for the movement. Great tools are good, but we wanted to make those tools sustainable, something progressives could depend on for years to come. So we built on our non-profit model, creating a new model of collaborative development. We develop in partnership with progressive organizations and are always focused on building power for the movement instead of profit for investors (since we have none).
We believed that was the right thing to do, and it has turned out to be a very powerful way to build technology. By working directly with partners to build our development roadmap, we stay focused always on the changing needs of the movement. Key partners like Daily Kos, the NEA, and the AFL-CIO help us make the tools accessible and affordable for grassroots organizations around the world, including tens of thousands of groups and individuals who used our free toolset to build power for the movement.
Since the historic Walmart protests, Action Network went on to empower worldwide protests against the Keystone XL Pipeline and the Dakota Access Pipeline, the Women’s March, the People’s Climate March, and countless other mass mobilizations. And we are the core digital mobilization toolset for progressive organizations here in the United States and, increasingly, around the world.
Meanwhile, in collaboration with our partners, we continued to develop innovative, advanced advocacy tools, from Letter Campaigns, packed with preloaded legislative targets, to Ladders, which brings automated email campaigns to advocacy for the first time, and many more. Today, the Action Network family is made up of hundreds of partners ranging from community groups to international labor organizations and everything in between.
Our tech roadmap for the rest of 2017 and beyond promises to further our mission of building progressive power by developing collaborative, innovative tools that our partners need. Stay tuned for huge announcements from us in the coming months.
On behalf of the entire Action Network team, thank you for being a part of Action Network’s success. Happy birthday to our toolset (we’re proud of you!), and here’s to many more!
