Playbooks and Tools

Why reinvent the wheel each time you plan an outreach campaign or organize a presentation or festival? They’ve been done and we have learned from those experiences: what worked, and what didn’t, and why. In collaboration with our large Community of Practice, which gathers decades of organizers’ experience, MassEnergize continually develops playbooks and toolkits that provide best practices for organization, promotion, execution, and follow up, supplemented by up-to-date collateral infographics, slideshows and handouts, surveys to share, and more. Even the seasoned community organizer can learn new tricks and up their game!

Click on any of the titles and you will be asked to fill in a simple form. We'll then send you an email with a link. Our playbooks are available as read-only Google Docs with internal links to associated collateral and be viewed in any web browser.

Playbooks for organizing events

• Festivals and Big Events organizing. This Playbook covers organizing general events that are not restricted to one topic, like Earth Day festivals and fairs. It covers so-called “Big Tent” events (where a large event is consolidated in one location) but focuses mostly on how to organize “All Over Town” events, spread throughout the town among several “hosts”. Contains best practices, case studies (Concord, Natick, Wayland, Newton, and Lexington) and critiques of those case studies, as well as a supporting materials.
• Green Heating and Cooling Events An extensive and detailed guide to planning alive or virtual event to promote heating electrification with heat pumps. This Playbook is based on experience we gained from organizing several Green Heating and Cooling events, and includes planning templates, checklists and example collateral.

Outreach tools

• Outreach Planner. Simple and easy to use, this outreach planner allows you to create a dynamic overview of all the possible outreach channels in your community: community organizations, media, influential individuals, businesses, and government channels. It also allows you to plan and map out outreach campaigns (social media postings, getting the word into the channels’ newsletters, etc.). Contains Playbook, blank template, and an example of a full campaign.
• Social Media Playbook. This is a toolkit for creating, using, managing, and enjoying three of the most popular social media platforms in 2022: Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. It covers why you should use these, and best practices. Contains a short summary for each online media platform on how to create each account and how to set it up and maintain it.
• Bulk email guide. Want to move beyond sending emails from an individual account? This guide covers MailChimp, Constant Contact, and other bulk-email platforms, and their benefits for your outreach efforts.
• (In development). Survey your Community Playbook. On climate, community members are all over the map, and if we are to change their behavior, we must first of all listen to how they think and feel about climate action, what their obstacles are, what they have already done, etc. Surveys can be powerful tools for this, but there is a real art to surveying. This Playbook, based on the latest research, will offer suggestions for language, survey design, and collecting and interpreting the data.
• (In development). Youth Toolkit. A Playbook on how to engage youth in your community, featuring Actions for your site that youth can take, and tips on how to reach youth through schools and social media.

Tools for facilitating signups and taking action on your MassEnergize platform

• Actionar/Sign Up Session Playbook. This Playbook, developed by Energize Lexington, describes a webinar or virtual meeting in which participants are guided to take a climate action and sign up on the platform. (Contains Playbook and Lexington example)
• Annual Action Update Playbook. This playbook lays out  an annual re-engagement campaign encouraging members of your community who may already, or may not yet, have created accounts, to check in all of their action progress done in the course of a year, to join teams, etc. Developed in collaboration with Sustainable Medfield. (Contains playbook, examples, timeline/spreadsheet, and links to editable materials, facebook posts, etc.)
• (In development). Congregations (and other Groups) Signups. A Playbook focusing on  groups that already have strong community cohesion and buy-in and how their members can sign in up for the platform and for teams. 

Instructions for administration and presentation of your MassEnergize community website

• Best Practices for your MassEnergize Web Platform. A playbook with suggestions on how to make your community website as amazing as it can be with some tips and tricks learned from a survey of each MassEnergize community platform, with strategies that can be implemented from when you are first building your site until where it is now if it just needs a bit of an update.