Momentum Community — Momentum Alignment Chart
Summary
The Momentum Alignment Chart is a fillable worksheet — a centerpiece of Momentum Community’s organizing methodology — that requires a campaign to verify that its strategy + structure + story + tactics are mutually consistent before launch. The Chart is the practitioner-facing complement to the momentum-model conceptual frame.
Body
The Momentum Community’s Alignment Chart is a US movement-organisation tool used to map power actors in a campaign by their alignment with the campaign’s goals - a quick visual aid that complements deeper power-mapping work [source: momentum-alignment-chart]. The chart structures actor analysis as a 2x2 (or larger) grid, plotting each actor’s position (whether they currently oppose, are neutral to, or support the campaign’s goal) against their power (their ability to influence the outcome) [source: momentum-alignment-chart]. The framework is one of the standard visual aids in Momentum’s organising curriculum and is closely related to the spectrum-of-allies concept from the Midwest Academy tradition, but presented as a chart rather than a linear spectrum [source: momentum-alignment-chart].
Coverage: the chart is used during strategy sessions to identify who to influence (the persuadable middle), who to pressure (the targets), who to ignore (the irrelevant), and who to activate (existing supporters) - a four-quadrant structure that Momentum uses as a teaching aid for new organisers learning power analysis [source: momentum-alignment-chart]. The chart is deliberately lightweight - it can be drawn on a flip chart in 15 minutes - which makes it a one-page tool rather than a full diagnostic [source: momentum-alignment-chart].
A campaigner reaches for it during a strategy session as a quick mapping exercise, when teaching power analysis to a new team, or when needing a visual aid to standardise how a coalition talks about its targets [source: momentum-alignment-chart]. Treat as link-only; the chart is a pedagogical aid distributed by Momentum Community and its affiliates. [source: momentum-alignment-chart]
Use it for
Pre-launch planning reviews; coalition-wide alignment conversations; diagnosing a campaign’s failure modes by running the Chart backwards.
Related
- affinity-groups
- campaigns-vs-movements
- citizen-lobbying
- civil-resistance
- coalition-building
- constructive-programme
- distributed-organizing
- framing-and-narrative
- incidencia-politica
- leadership-development
- one-to-ones
- pillars-of-support
- power-mapping
- public-narrative
- spectrum-of-allies
- the-campaign-cycle
- the-tactic-star
- theory-of-change
- three-and-a-half-percent-rule