Editing Strategizing (section)

=== Step 3: What is the goal? ===
[[File:Mountaintop.png|thumb]]
Every organizing campaign should have a clear strategic goal. Choosing a strategic goal is often the most important choice we make in designing a campaign.

No one strategic goal can solve everything. In order to put our resources to work solving our problems, we have to decide where to focus. We must ask ourselves: what goal can we work toward that may not solve the whole problem, but will get us tangibly closer to solving the problem? Unless we choose a goal to focus on, we’ll risk wasting our resources in ways that just won’t add up.

Strategy is nested; our campaign’s ultimate goal, or the “mountain top” goal, is likely not achievable in one attempt. Instead of chasing after the mountain top goal all the time, we can set smaller, nested strategic goals that help measure incremental progress throughout the campaign. Nested goals may take place over time (e.g. a local campaign for a municipal living wage policy may start with electing supportive council candidates before moving on to pushing for an actual bylaw), or over a geographic area (e.g. an election campaign will have a nested goal for each of the ridings in needs to win in order to win the election).

Each time we accomplish a nested goal, we have moved a step closer to achieving or mountaintop goal, while also having built the power of our community, making it easier for us to achieve our next nested goal.

An effective strategic goal:

# Creates a measurable change in the world, often by tangibly improving the lives of the people who are organizing.
# Focuses resources on a single strategic outcome.
# Builds the capacity of our community.
# Uses a point of leverage: our community’s strength or our opposition’s weakness.
# Focuses on a motivational issue that is visible and significant to our community.

A effective strategic goal is not:

# Solely about raising awareness without another outcome.
# Implementing a tactic such as a rally (we’ll cover this in more depth in the next section).