Linda Stout is the author of four books, numerous articles and a variety of other resources. Please browse below to see a selection of Linda’s best resources. All Spirit in Action publications are free to download from the Spirit in Action website as long as proper credit and acknowledgement of source is made in that use. This right does not extend to Bridging the Class Divide and Other Lessons For Grassroots Organizing by Linda Stout or Collective Visioning: How Groups Can Work Together for a Just and Sustainable Future by Linda Stout.
Building Power to Win – A Civic Engagement Manual for Organizers
The TAKE 10 model of Civic Engagement (VR/GOTV) is an internationally acclaimed training program for non-partisan organizations, leaders, staff and volunteers. It focuses on issue-based organizing and how to keep volunteers motivated, engaged and active for the long-haul. Linda Stout’s four decades of experience with Spirit in Action and other groups guides organizers in a step-by-step way, providing trainings that develop your skills to build vision, power and a base of informed, low- and middle-income, multi-racial activists that will impact generation after generation of organizing.
To purchase a copy of Building Power to Win Manual, please visit here. (Spanish Edition coming soon.)
Please share this manual with others.
Download the Building Power to Win manual here.
El modelo de TAKE 10 de Participación Cívica (VR/GOTV/Impulsar el voto) es un programa de capacitación con reconocimiento internacional para organizaciones, líderes, empleados y voluntarios no partidistas. Se centra en el trabajo organizativo basado en las problemáticas y cómo mantener involucrados a los voluntarios a largo plazo. Las cuatro décadas de experiencia de Linda Stout con Spirit in Action y otros grupos guían a los organizadores paso a paso, brindando capacitaciones que desarrollan sus habilidades para desarrollar visión, poder y una base de activistas multirraciales informados, de bajos y medianos ingresos que tendrán un impacto sobre varias generaciones que hacen trabajo organizativo.
Para comprar una copia impresa del Construyendo Nuestro Poder Para Ganar, visite aquí.
Por favor, comparta el Construyendo Nuestro Poder Para Ganar con otros.
Descargue el Construyendo Nuestro Poder Para Ganar aquí.
Take 10 Workbook
In 2021, we completed this 52-page TAKE 10 Workbook to use in conjunction with our trainings. The workbook highlights 11 exercises to deepen and strengthen a group’s civic engagement, issue-based work and leadership. The exercises are designed to help groups think more deeply about their organizing and how to build leadership with an engaged and committed group of volunteers.
In it, we share strategies for strengthening a group’s organizing work around issues that affect their community. From goals to messaging to avoiding burn-out, we discuss the challenges they face. Throughout our training and coaching process and now with this workbook, we support them to find leaders and volunteers so they can win on the issues they care about most.
Please feel free to share this workbook with others.
To purchase a print copy of the TAKE 10 Workbook, please visit here.
Please share this workbook with others.
Download the Take 10 Workbook here.
El Libro de Trabajo TAKE 10
El libro de trabajo TAKE 10 está diseñado para ayudarle a pensar más profundamente y creativamente en su trabajo para justicia social. Ofrecemos once ejercicios detallados para fortalecer su trabajo organizativo y el liderazgo. Los ejercicios muestran cómo construir un grupo de voluntarios involucrados y compremetidos que puedan movilizarse en torno a problemas que afectan a su comunidad. Desde las metas hasta los mensajes y evitar el agotamiento, analizamos los desafíos a que los activistas se pueden enfrentar y discutimos cómo apoyarlos para ganar en los temas que más les importan.
Para comprar una copia impresa del libro de trabajo TAKE 10, visite aquí.
Por favor, comparta este libro de trabajo con otros.
Descargue el libro de trabajo Take 10 aquí.
Collective Visioning
LINDA STOUT • MAY 2011
In far too many organizational meetings, equal speaking opportunity seldom results in equal say. Factors such as race, class, and personal history too often inhibit open dialogue within and among groups, which can lead to a sense of disenfranchisement within the organization, and subsequently, disillusionment with the movement.
Collective Visioning is the first visioning method to address these hurdles in the organizing process and to fully enable members to share their opinions without hesitation. Linda Stout uses her background and her own personal experience of marginalization within the organizing community to show how trainers can be more mindful of the diversity of their members as they strive toward a common goal.
Collective Visioning Exercises – Updated for On-line Use
From Linda Stout’s 2011 book Collective Visioning, How Groups Can Work Together for a Just and Sustainable Future comes six exercises you may use for your online visioning work. Updated for use in an on-line environment and available free to use, with proper credit and acknowledgement of source, for your work in creating a just and sustainable world. Click here for the exercises.
Bridging The Class Divide
LINDA STOUT • FEBRUARY 1997
Again and again social change movements – on matters from the environment to women’s rights – have been run by middle-class leaders. But in order to make real progress toward economic and social change, poor people – those most affected by social problems – must be the ones to speak up and lead.
Bridging The Class Divide tells the inspiring story of Linda Stout’s life as the daughter of a tenant farmer, as a self-taught activist, and as a leader in the progressive movement. It also gives practical lessons on how to build real working relationships between people of different income levels, races, and genders. This book will inspire and enrich anyone who works for change in our society.
How Rural Organizing Can Build Power
Two weeks, 1,600 miles, 11 hotel stays, 13 organizations.
In June 2021, Bethsaida Ruiz (a Spirit in Action trainer and board member) and Linda Stout took a road trip to eastern North Carolina, meeting with folks who have been part of our TAKE 10 trainings whom we’d only seen on Zoom. Over the last year and a half, Blueprint NC, a partnership of organizations committed to building independent power for an anti-racist, inclusive democracy, had asked us to provide these groups with training and coaching in organizing and civic engagement. We were then asked to make a deep assessment of the region’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, using in-person interviews with their partners and stakeholders who had been part of TAKE 10.
Our assessment resulted in this final report, “How Rural Organizing Can Build Power.” The report contains many important recommendations that, we hope, will improve our state’s ability to engage with and support rural organizing in eastern North Carolina and serve as a model for other states.
This was a journey of discovery for Spirit in Action as well as Blueprint NC. We hope it will be as inspiring for you as it was for us. Download and read the entire report here.
Spirit in Action’s Guide to Working in Diverse Groups
This small yet powerful tool is a guide to holding and nurturing the spaces that generate movement in us and those around us. Please use this as a reflection tool or as a basis for instruction in your organizing and movement building work. To get a free copy of our Guide to Working in Diverse Groups please download here.
Guía Para Trabajar en Grupose Diversos de Spirit in Action
Esta pequeña pero poderosa herramienta es una guía para sostener y nutrir los espacios que generan movimiento en nosotros y en quienes nos rodean. Utilice esto como una herramienta de reflexión o como base para la instrucción en su trabajo de organización y construcción de movimientos. Para obtener una copia gratuita de nuestra Guía para trabajar en grupos diversos, descárguela aquí.
Occupy the Present, Change the Future: A Collective Visioning Guide
We invite all people who are dedicated to social transformation to join us in a process of Collective Visioning. This process involves intentionally bringing people together across social divides and generating a positive vision that is long-term, expansive and solutions-driven. Our process is outlined below and detailed in our downloadable Collective Visioning Guide. We encourage folks to meet in diverse, small groups (ideally 20-40 participants) and spend at least three hours moving through the process together. To get a free copy of our Collective Visioning Guide please download here.
Spirit in Action’s Facilitating Circles of Change Curriculum Guide
The collective wisdom gathered from the Circles of Change formed the foundation for the Spirit in Action Facilitating Circles of Change Curriculum Guide, published in 2005. The four main sections of the Circles of Change curriculum guide embodied the understanding of the core strategies for building a broad-based movement that achieves transformational social change. These core strategies continue to evolve from the insights and understandings of those who are using them. Please download the guide here.
