HOW TO ORGANIZE

So, you want to kick off your campaign to get your university or college to stop supporting sweatshops. It's going to take a grassroots student movement to do it. Here are some suggestions on getting started. This page is reproduced from USAS's Guide to Campus Organizing, available in our Resources section in Microsoft Word Format or by clicking here.

Quick Index:

1. Outreach - Building the Movement One Student at a Time.
2. Direct Action - Sit-ins to Knit-ins and Beyond.
3. Strategy versus Tactics - There's a Big Difference!
4. Researching Your University's Licensing and Purchasing Structure.
5. Relations of Power and the Tactics of the Campus Administration.

Outreach - Building the movement one student at a time.

You may be forming a USAS chapter, a subcommittee of an already existing labor solidarity or human rights group, or a coalition. Use existing campus networks to draw more students into the campaign. Put out some initial information over email listserves or progressive groups. Plan an information session or a mini teach-in.

Personal contact is the most basic and probably the best way to recruit people to a movement. Nothing replaces meeting someone, answering their questions, and spending time personally investing them in the campaign. When new students show interest, for example, by attending a meeting, call them afterward to see where theyíre at, why theyíre interested, and what they want to do to help the campaign. You can give them ideas of what they can do as well.

Contact USAS at (202) NO-SWEAT, or email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it to see if anyone else near your campus has expressed interest in the sweatshop campaign or labor rights in general.

Don't Forget To:

1. Listen to the people you are trying to organize, let them tell you what their interests are, and how you can interest them in this campaign. There's a different hook for each person who gets involved, so relate.
2. Be persistent. Some people who aren't interested or are "too busy" will become active if you keep talking to them (but stop short of the level of harassment - that just pisses people off.)
3. Get committments from people to actually do things, either while you talk to them or soon after. It gets them involved and hopefully interested in the campaign. It also gives them some sense that it's their thing too, and gives you a good reason to talk to them again as follow-up. Meet people where they're at and where their schedule's at as well.

Grassroots Education and Publicity: The keys for recruitment and building your campaign.

1. Visibility: people should know about your campaign even if they're completely oblivious to everything else happening on campus. Keep your message short and simple.
2. Language: avoid jargon.
3. Positivity: Do not just emphasize the horrors of sweatshops. Tell students what can and is being done about them.
4. Creativity: Colorful, visual, interactive, eye-catching publicity is more effective as long as it doesn't obscure your message.
5. Repetition: Use multiple means multiple times.
6. Reputation: Don't forget to include your organization's name on all your material and contact information.
7. Pride: To appeal to a broader student base, use school pride and spirit. (The university should be a leader on and off the field.)
8. Focus: Keep your message focused on your campaign target. If you are beyond the general education part of the campaign, stay focused on your school's administration and their power/obligation to stop sweatshops.

Post flyers, set up information tables, leaflet in high-traffic areas, write guest editorials letters to the editor, op-eds, or put ads in your campus newspaper. Don't forget to include the meeting times of your groups in the campus calendar. Check out local radio stations for call-in shows. You can also do 'midnight redecorating,' late night or early morning, where you can use disapproved-of methods for education (spraypaint, wheatpasting, pervasive stickers/labels). Wear symbols of support like armbands, ribbons, or buttons, and distribute them to people so they can show their support.

Coalitions: Building support for the anti-sweatshop campaign.

Involving groups through coalitions is key to building the grassroots movement necessary to get university administrators and corporations to agree to the demands of the campaign. Here are three models of coalitions:

1. The paper tiger model: a list of endorsers is built to lend credibility and breadth to the campaign. The endorsing group may do little beyond adding their names to the list of supporters. You may ask them to help turn out people to events.
2. The associate model: Groups and leaders are encouraged to play an active role in the campaign (collecting signatures, letters, etc.) but decision-making still rests with the anti-sweat group.
3. The partner model: All groups share in decision-making and active participation.

Think about what model works best for your campus. If you are going to build a coalition based on the associate or partner model, member groups should be involved at the earliest stages of the campaign (i.e. the strategy to kick off the campaign and approach the administration).

The earlier you involve people and the more power is shared, the more folks will feel invested in the campaignís success.

When approaching other groups for support, here are some things to think about:

1. Why should the group care? Sweatshops are an issue that are caused from a number of interrelating issues. In asking for support, approach the issue from any of these perspectives to make it relevant to the group.
2. What can the group do? Depending on where you are with the campaign, and what sort of coalition youíre forming, you can ask the group to sign on to a letter or write their own to the administration (in support of disclosure for example). You could prepare a resolution and ask people to endorse the campaign by passing the resolution. The content of the resolution can serve as an educational tool as well. The contact is also a chance to expand your core membership. Encourage anyone interested to come to your meetings and get more involved. You could also ask the group if they would appoint a representative or liaison to you campaign.

Making the Move. Groups, individuals, and organizations to approach include:

1. Women's and Feminist Organizations: Be sure to contact these groups early (as with ethnic organizations), thereís an obvious link here to the mostly female sweatshop workforce.
2. Queer Student Organizations: Include all identity-based student organizations in your strategy and planning. Students in LGBT groups as well as feminist and ethnic organizations can become strong and powerful allies and create powerful campus coalitions.
3. Ethnic organizations: It is especially important to contact these groups early, both as a matter of consideration and experience (at some campuses they already may be the group raising the sweatshop issue), and because their membership includes people in many of the other groups you'll want to approach. Latino and Asian organizations (the ethnic groups most employed in US and offshore garment factories), African-American, Jewish, and Native America organizations are important agents and allies in the campaign.
4. Religious organizations: These groups can provide moral arguments and high ground and are especially important at Catholic and other religious schools. Talk to clergy about mentioning the issue at a sermon. Put leaflets at the exit of mass and services. Make announcements at services.
5. Community service organizations: Many organizations can offer volunteer support for events and actions, key links to other community related groups, and ideas on recruitment and volunteer retention.
6. Alumni, individuals and groups: Alumni often have more power than the current students because of the money they can give. Try drawing on alumni of progressive student groups on campus. Look through old yearbooks. Famous alum supporters are especially valuable.
7. Fraternities/sororities: The Greeks, in their community service mode, can be helpful allies with plenty of resources, including philanthropy departments. On occasion they can help turn people out to events and actions. Ethnically based Greek groups may be the most approachable.
8. PIRGs (Public Interest Research Groups): PIRGS are especially important for statewide efforts, especially in state school systems. They can be a resource on organizing strategies, recruitment ideas, etc.
9. Resident Assistants: RAs can provide slots for people to present the campaign at hall meetings. They sometimes have access to funds from a Resident Hall Association.
10. Athletic Teams and Athletes: The students most directly connected to licensing issues would be very important and influential allies, especially as teams or star players. There is a lot working against you though: athletic scholarships and other perks as well as coaches influence (who often have lucrative contracts with Nike or others). Take on the challenge! High-profile athlete involvement could take your campaign to a whole new level.
11. Student Government: Resolutions passed by student government have important symbolic value, can bring press attention, and boost the profile of your campaign. A good source of resources in many cases, but be forewarned, many student governments are populist and will only support your campaign after you gain a lot of support from other campus groups.
12. Graduate student unions: Teaching assistants' unions are quite engaged with university policy already, and are generally progressive. Many of them are organizing and winning some very powerful campaigns throughout the country; it is imperative that we work with them.
13. Faculty and staff unions: Faculty unions, like teaching assistants' union, can be very helpful. Faculty who supported the 1980s anti-apartheid divestment campaigns, and anti-war movement veterans, and veterans from other past campus political struggles, are natural allies in many ways.
14. The American Studies, Area Studies, Ethnic Studies, Labor Studies, Sociology, Religion, Women's Studies, Political Science, Environmental Studies and Urban Studies departments often harbor potential supporters. But, don't doubt other departments, either.
    Faculty supporters can give you an opportunity to speak at a class, allow you to do campaign research for credit, co-sponsor speakers or screenings, require or promote attendance at events, make public statements of support and add legitimacy to your arguments, give you tips on who to talk to in the administration, sponsor a support resolution in Faculty Council (or equivalent faculty organization), and help your strategize on how to achieve your campaign goals for those that have organizing experience.
15. Service workers unions and associations: Alliances with service workers on campus are important to building the sweatshop campaign and making the local connection, (e.g. living wage at home and abroad).
16. Chaplains and campus ministries: These folks can be very helpful. They can provide moral support and high ground, avenues into the administrations, and are especially important at Catholic and other religious/faith-based schools.
17. Union locals and Central Labor Councils: Local workers' unions are an excellent coalition-builder. They need support just as you do, so make sure to offer that their support for you will build their constituency as well. Given that the anti-sweat campaign is fundamentally based in institutionalizing improvements for workers, it is essential you support and work with your local unions as much as possible.

Stepping up the pressure!

The power of the pen: Sign-on letters and petitions are a good basic tool. Mass emailing is also effective. Students on some campuses have set up computers in a central area and had students passing by send emails on the spot to their university president or prominent sweatshop abuser.

Events and direct action: Both events and direct action can be used to build support for your campaign and educate the public. Direct actions differ from standard events in that they creatively disrupt public space. They are often technically illegal and sometimes confrontational.

Examples of events:
Benefit concert
Panel or forum with workers, community leaders, anti-sweatshop activists/experts, labor history professors, etc.
Candlelight vigils or homilies

Direct Action: Sit-ins to knit-ins and beyond!

From the Montgomery Bus Boycott to the Guerilla Girls, direct action and social change go hand in hand. Think creatively about your action. How will you get people's attention? Direct action signifies an escalation of your campaign so think about the timing, your demand, and the level of support you have on campus. There is a lot of planning that goes into a successful direct action.

Some questions to consider:

• Who is your target?
• What do you hope to accomplish?
• Can you turn out the number of people needed to make the event a success? (You can leaflet with three people, but donít have a rally with less than several dozen!)
• Do you have energetic speakers or an interesting performance planned?
• Do you have something for people who attend to do to engage themselves in the campaign?
• Is your message clear and simple?
• Have you notified the press?
• Is the timing and location of the event good to reach a lot of people?
• Do you have all your facts straight?

Surveying some tactics fun, creative actions.

Pickets
Pickets can be used as a one-time show of protest or can be weekly events to build the campaign. At the University of North Carolina, students began weekly pickets outside the administrative building demanding to know where their clothes were made. The pickets grew in size and volume. Use instruments like drums and prepare a chant sheet.

Clothesline
You can hang up school apparel or clothes made in other countries ñ attach pictures of conditions in countries where they are made, statistics about wages, or scrawl abuses garment workers commonly suffer on the apparel. For a more dramatic effect, you can splatter a blood-like substance on the clothes. Place in a prominent, hard-to-reach location.

Guerrilla or Street Theater
Design hangtags and put them on clothes in the bookstore or another retailer you are protesting. The hangtags can have pictures of the workers who make the clothes, or a quotation about working in a sweatshop. You can make a similar leaflet and put them in the pockets of the clothes.

Student Strikes
This isn't a common tactic in the US (anymore) but has been used in Europe, Indonesia, and Mexico recently. It really only has positive effects when it is campus-wide; the idea is to shut down the campus with a student strike.

Sweatshop Fashion Show
A mock fashion show has worked well on campus across the country to educate and interest students. The event is a great visual and can be very funny despite its serious theme. It does not take many people to pull this off: 4-5 models and 1-2 announcers. You can have an announcer describing the clothes and another announcing the workers' working conditions as a model walks the runway. Do this in a central part of campus, and don't forget to call the media.

Strategy versus tactics: There's a big difference!

This comes from a small part of the Midwest Academy's Organizing for Social Change manual and the Grassroots Organizing Weekend (GROW) trainings that are available for you to bring to your campus (call (202) NO-SWEAT or email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ).

Administrators do not make decisions based on how moral or well-researched you are on the subject of sweatshops. This is important, but when we've been articulating the same arguments over and over, for years, the only route to go is organizing.

Administrators make decisions based on their power and self-interest. They will put you off until you all exercise enough power over them where it is in their self-interest (for fundraising for the school, PR, or the future of their career) to do what was previously not in their self-interest. In short, you need to scare them.

Colleges and universities are really very undemocratic, despite appearances. Alone, we are relatively powerless, because the president of the university is not accountable to an individual. Fundamentally, students should have more governing power at their institutions, but that's another whole issue in itself.

You are aware that we win victories when we organize effectively and gain power over our targets. So how do we most effectively build power?

Too often, activists think in terms of tactics, and not strategy. Tactics should be tools that are grounded in your overall strategy for building power over your target. They are nothing more than figuring out the most effective and creative way to carry out that strategy.

There are various sorts of power we have as students. Understanding how the power of students and workers in the university relates to that of the administration is one of the most essential facets of winning campaigns. You can try to impact the fundraising ability of the president, public embarrassment, interfering with the careers of administrators, or creating situations where the administration loses their normal level of control over the campus and isn't able to function normally. This is all based on whatever strategy you decide to use. There can be more than one strategy in a campaign and, in fact, many effective campaigns use more than one.

Tactics are most effective when they are outside the experience of the target and within the experience of the students involved in your campaign. At some places, a letter-writing campaign could be enough. At others, where there are four rallies a week on campus, you won't be noticed without a large base of public support.

Every campaign doesn't have to end with a sit-in, although many have and need to get to that point. There are thousands of other ways to exercise power. Tactics are many and varied: from low-level like the presentation of thousands of petition signatures, or editorials in the student newspaper, to high-level tactics like sit-ins, hunger strikes, or lock outs.

One tactic is never enough. That's why you need to start thinking about strategy first.

To start thinking strategically, consider who your target is. Who will give you what you want? Who is close to him or her? Who has more influence over his or her decisions than you do, and how can you influence them to say what you want?

Consider your constituents and allies. Your constituents are the people you're trying to organize to build power. Allies can be found in unlikely places, for instance, at San Francisco State University, students said some of their strongest allies were in the Department of Fashion and Design. Think of the all of the groups mentioned above and what kind of support they could provide.

We also need to be conscious of our opponents so think ahead! Don't let opponents distract you, just be aware of what they're doing and if needed, organize responses to their strikes at your campaign.

Think about your resources. Do you have a gathering place, an office, or a budget? Do you have contacts in the press? How about phone lists? Phones to phone-bank? Thinking about this will give you a greater sense of what you need to do and what you need to do it.

Finally, note that your victory is never final. Student pressure needs to be continual, especially if we're going to enforce our manufacturing Codes of Conduct and the Worker Rights Consortium's power to make change in garment factories. We need to make sure our student groups continue to exist after we're gone.

Research Your University's Licensing and Purchasing Structures

Research is an essential tool for activists. Research can expose what's happening behind closed doors, provide us with information to arm ourselves with useful facts, and speak authoritatively about how we can change this system that upholds sweatshop labor. Research for the Sweat-Free Campus Campaign is very targeted and is different at each school. For example, students at a large school that makes a tremendous amount of money by licensing their name and logo to huge, well-known manufacturers will direct their research very differently from those at a small school that doesnít even license its name and purchases just enough merchandise to stock the shelves of its bookstore. In any case, it is helpful to understand the structure of the collegiate licensing and purchasing industry and to know how to direct your research about your particular schoolís role in this industry.

How do I start researching a university's licensing or procurement policy?

Who to look for: The people who can best answer questions about licensing or purchasing systems and policies are the low/mid-level administrators who do the day-to-day work of licensing and buying apparel. These are, typically, the licensing officer or licensing contact, in charge of the school's licensing program, or the bookstore manager at smaller schools that don't license. These administrators are not easy to reach, sometimes they are hidden in the athletic department or the bookstore, but they can be tracked down. The first step is to find their names, phone numbers, email addresses, and other contact information.

How to find them: The faculty/staff directory is a good source in general, and is probably the best place to start if you're on campus or can get hold of one easily. The school website, however, may be more helpful and is easier to find when you are not at school. These websites often have pages devoted to the licensing operating of the school, often listing the Licensing Officer and Buyers' names and phone number as well as providing policy overviews and sometimes lists of licensees.

Where to look: Licensing is often done in a "licensing office," which may be in any number of departments.

Try:

• Administrative Service
• Bookstore
• Business and Finance
• Campus Services
• Chancellor's Office
• Communications
• Development
• Executive VPs office
• General Council's Office
• Procurement
• Provost's Office
• Public Affairs
• Purchasing
• Trademarks and Licensing

These are all possibilities worth checking if you can't find a "Licensing Office." At schools where athletics are particularly important, licensing tends to be done through the athletic department, at small schools the bookstore is more likely.

What questions should I ask these folks?

If you are just beginning the Sweat-Free Campus Campaign, there is some basic information that would be helpful to know as you get started. The following questions will give you a good idea of who has the power over this stuff at your school and will help you figure out how to focus the energy of your campaigns. Keep in mind, that sometimes gathering this information will raise suspicion among administrators and you may want to invent some sort of cover story for this initial gathering of information. Business students doing research for a class, for example, invariably encounter more cooperation. However, as you campaign becomes public, cover stories are probably not the best strategy.

Questions regarding licensing policy:

1. Does the university license its name directly or does it go through an agent company?
2. Who at the university manages existing licensing deals and makes the day-to-day business decisions about new licensees, and new products? Do these decisions require approval by higher-level administrators, trustees, etc.?
3. How many licensees are there? How many are apparel companies? Who are they? What are the biggest licensees? Are the companies involved mainly in large national/international companies (Nike, Reebok?) or local operations?
4. Are retailers as well as manufacturers licensed? Does the university charge a royalty on retail sales? Does the university sell licensed goods directly (e.g. through university-owned campus store)?
5. How much money does the university earn from licensing its logo? Does this income go into a general fund or is it earmarked for a specific purpose (scholarships, athletic department, etc.)? How significant is this?
6. Is the university a member of the Collegiate Licensing Consortium (CLC) or the Fair Labor Association (FLA)?

Relations of power and the tactics of campus administrations

Institutions reflect the interests of those who hold power. In most places, because of this, government and the economy become games for elites, and barring significant organizing and struggle, the voices of ordinary folks get left out. Our college campuses aren't very different. Universities are supposed to be based upon the pretense of cultivating democracy in the weakest sense of the word, of producing a generation of future leaders who can debate issues and, consequently, make well-informed decisions. However, in practice our universities are hardly democratic.

Of course, they look democratic. There are student governments, faculty senates, academic staff assemblies (rarely, you may notice, are classified staff - janitors, food service workers, secretaries - included in the governance processes of the university), and committees upon committees who can debate issues for years on end. But how much influence do students and workers on campus have within these structures? The answer is, generally, very little.

The folks who really make final decisions about university policy are the college president, his or her administration, and the board of trustees. When was the last time students and campus workers elected anyone to these positions? Despite all of their attempts to create the appearance of campus democracy, in day-to-day decision-making they are hardly ever truly accountable to the will of the campus community. And it is those to whom they are really accountable and those who have more access to them - increasingly corporations and individual donors who subsidize university profit - are the ones who get the most influence over how those decisions are made.

So, the decisions of our universities become a function of who holds power. And when we don't organize, we don't have any. This brings us to a fundamental point of direct action organizing:

Decision-makers always act in their self-interest. By organizing, we can change what that self-interest is, by making the costs of making a decision against the will of the campus community greater than they usually are. By challenging this, we begin to change the balance of power on campus. In order to do this, however, we've got to organize where we have power. The private sphere is where administrators hold their greatest power. The public sphere is where we do.

The campus runs more smoothly when we don't question what is going on and try to organize to have our interests heard. It is in the interest of the campus administration to try to keep the student body off of their backs, to not be swayed by our conviction, to maintain business as usual. And, believe it or not, administrators have tactics for dealing with troublemakers like you. We've compiled a list of expected moves by the administration when you begin to develop momentum on campus based on our own practical experiences, along with some suggestions for overcoming them. Read carefully, study, and struggle! 1. Try to ride the protest out and hope the students go away.

• >They refuse to meet with your group.
• >They circulate students among low-level administrators.
• They refuse to give a definitive answer or date by which they will make a decision.
• They give small, meaningless concessions
• They send the issue to a committee dominated by administrative interests, study the issue to death, and drown it in a complicated bureaucracy.

Perhaps the most standard administrative response to the demands of the campus communities in this campaign has been to set up a committee or a task force to study the issue and, at some faraway date, come back to the president with a recommendation. This sidesteps the real issue - that the administration should be accountable to the university community as a whole - and it takes student organizing from the public sphere, where we hold power, to the private boardroom discussions, on their turf. As mentioned before, these committees are almost always set up to be more accountable to the interests of the administration than the campus community. and often they are filled wit decision-makers who have little background on the issues.

Some tips:

Make your demands clear and public, and if the administration doesn't respond to you, bring the issue to them. Direct action is making the administration respond to students' demands and be held publicly accountable for their response.

In meetings, demand a date by which the administration will give you a clear decision. If they don't set a date, don't be afraid to set one for them. Make sure the public is aware of that deadline.

Be very clear about your demands and what administrative decisions constitute meeting those demands. Be clear within your group about how much you are willing to compromise, and evaluate administrative concessions with your group on the basis of those demands.

Never, never stop organizing in public, no matter if there is a committee or not. If you have a committee, demand that it not discuss the issue to death, demand that it have clear deadlines by which to come to a recommendation. If the committee is controlled by administrative appointments, make sure that information is public. And remember that a committee recommendation constitutes only one part of the administration's decision. Continue to press the committee to make the correct recommendation, but don't make it the only part of your strategy. In the end, the decision is still your president's.

2. Bully students with the administration's supposed academic superiority.

• They say student demands are impossible to meet.
• They try to delegitimize student arguments.
• In a meeting, they talk about anything but the issue you are bringing to their attention or confuse the issue with a series of unrelated matters.

So, what do they say on the other side? Well, the Wall Street Journal accuses us of not taking Economics 101 or we would really understand that corporate power actually helps people's lives.

Similarly, they'll say that what we're demanding is impossible. Nike and other corporations spent so much time saying that publicly disclosing their factory locations would be letting go of their trade secrets, that they would sooner pull out of the collegiate licensing business than do such a thing. They dismissed all counterarguments, but after students organized to pressure their universities to make selling their garments contingent upon public disclosure, Nike has begun releasing their collegiate factory locations and ran this advertisement in five college newspapers: As a school that carries officially licensed Nike merchandise on campus, you, more than anyone else, have a right to know where those products are made.

Some tips:

Know your arguments. Even though we don't win campaigns on this basis, they do give us legitimacy and ground our allies in the fight.

Bring professors and other allies who can help give legitimacy to your arguments.

Stay on message! If you are in meetings and sense that administrators are going to take the argument off into an irrelevant direction, be firm and consistently bring it back to its fundamental message.

3. Divide and conquer the student movement.

Administrators like to divide and conquer the student movement. They can do this in many ways: by isolating the leaders from the rest of the group, or by creating a phantom opposition, their 'silent majority.'

Some tips:

If you work to have diverse representation in the pubic sphere, it's much harder for the administration to go for the leader, especially when you are all leaders of the movement.

Make the administration provide proof of their phantom dissenters. Are they really from the university community, or are they from companies?

Communicate and keep everyone in your group on the same page. If new issues come up, or people in the group think there should be a switch in strategy, address those concerns, go over the various alternatives and the big picture, and try to build common understanding.

4. Convince students that, really, we're all on the same side.

The headline of an article than ran on USAS in the Boston Globe a few years ago read Sweatshop Concerns United Two Sides: Students, administrators agree on protests. Administrators have responded to this movement publicly by saying how excited that they are that students are taking over buildings demanding respect for workers rights, that it is a wonderful switch from their traditionally inactive student bodies. They know that they can't look like they are in favor of the university exploiting sweatshop labor, and they know that they can't attack the students for our demands, so they'll just say that really, we have the same ends, just different methods for getting there.

Action means more than words. The worker-friendly rhetoric that is pushed by the administration is meant to drown out the student movement, and much more is needed in terms of increasing and sustaining this movement.

Some tips:

Clarify the differences, and make sure that your target, your group, your allies, the media, and the public understand them.

Make sure that the public focus remains on how much they care about the issue.

5. Other thoughts on combating administrative methods:

• Put administrators on the spot
• Take them outside of their experience
• Bring clear proposals, demand timelines and accountability
• Have students watching
• Challenge their authority, directly
• Have demands, fallback, etc., set out ahead of time
• Know people's roles in the meeting
• Rehearse, rehearse, and rehearse!
• Go public! Take action!

In the end, it's not that any of your administrators are bad people (though some may be) who want to watch workers suffer. It's that they are not accountable to you. When we organize, we challenge the way things work, the way day to day decisions are made. That's more the inconvenience; it's a threat to the status quo. You are demanding that not only will companies be publicly accountable but also that university decisions be made out in the open with accountability, not behind closed doors. This practice of fundamentally challenging the way in which decisions are made, reshaping the balance of power in the decision-making process, and sustaining the grip on holding decision makers accountable will not only help us win more campaigns, but in the end, be one of the longest lasting impacts of your efforts.