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Coalition

You’re building power across organisations — allied groups, uneasy partners, and the passive supporters you need to activate. Your craft is the spectrum of allies in practice: moving each group one step, and holding a shared line without a shared boss.

Start here

  1. Spectrum of allies — the core map: whom to move, in which direction, one step at a time.
  2. Broad-based organizing — build durable power from many member organisations, not a mailing list.
  3. Coalition building — form, structure, and maintain a working alliance.
  4. Organizing — the underlying discipline of turning supporters into a base that acts.
  5. Affinity groups — the small-unit structure that lets a large coalition act in a coordinated way.

Core path

Map your allies, decide who you’re trying to move and how far, then build the structures — shared demands, decision rules, division of labour — that let independent organisations act as one without pretending to be one. The index below gathers the organising and alliance craft.

Adjacent modes

  • Strategist — when the coalition needs a shared theory of change.
  • Manager — when the alliance needs shared budgets, roles, and decisions.
  • Comms — when many partners must stay on one message.

When you’re stuck

If the coalition keeps fracturing, the usual causes are an unclear shared demand (→ campaign planning), no agreed decision rule (→ governance), or partners you mapped as allies but never moved (→ spectrum of allies).

Basics

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