Leadership and Capacity Support for Labor, Community, and Electoral Organizations
Base Building for Power provides leadership capacity support, organizing training, and volunteer recruitment strategies for labor, community, and electoral organizations. We have a long track record of providing this support to community, labor, and voter mobilization organizations throughout the United States and beyond. For a sense of our perspective, see our video on Top 10 Key Elements to Winning Campaigns.
Our diverse team of 30+ trainers have a wide array of experience leading field campaigns, canvassing operations/door-knocking, phone banks, union organizing drives, volunteer recruitment, and other base building programs. The team is led by Executive and Training Director Harley Augustino, who has spent more than 25 years training organizers in labor, tenant, community, and electoral organizations. Trained by United Farm Worker (UFW) co-founder Dolores Huerta in base building techniques used by the UFW, Harley led union campaigns for over 15 years at UNITE HERE and SEIU before starting Base Building for Power in 2021.
Base Building for Power was instrumental in building a grassroots volunteer mobilization campaign with only 1 paid staff and 500 volunteers that flipped a longtime Republican-held seat in WA-3 for Democrats in 2022 - called “the flip of the cycle” by FiveThirtyEight. We also volunteered with the Mamdani campaign in 2025 running up to his historic win.
Our team has extensive experience organizing for or with campaigns in swing races across the nation, and many are comfortable training in English and Spanish. We are prioritizing contracts with organizations who are fighting back against attacks on working people and want to win big at the ballot box in 2026. We specialize in training on engaging disaffected voters, non-voters, and disaffected Trump voters.
Our training team has experienced first hand the challenges that organizations are facing right now, including training capacity, filling leadership and entry level organizer positions, unpredictable funding, data tracking/quality control, volunteer recruitment/retention, and the need to scale up on short timelines. Unpredictable funding often forces organizations to hire and set up robust field operations with very little lead time. While many of these challenges are common, each campaign or organization has unique strengths and challenges. Our leadership support is always customized to each organization and the communities they serve..
Base Building for Power is also a network of more than 700 organizers that we have trained over the past 5 years. Organizations that we work with often tap into our network of organizers (at all levels) for help with critical staffing needs.
Core Organizing Training Services
We provide training for organizations of all sizes through several flexible formats:
Interactive Online Trainings
1-2 hour sessions focusing on specific skills including: identifying issues, agitation, vision, direct asks, follow-up, inoculation, goal setting, status reporting, relationship building, and grassroots fundraising.
1-1 Coaching
1-1 Coaching: Personalized leadership support for all levels of leadership
Field Support
We will roll up our sleeves with you to talk (virtually or in-person) with your members and leaders, as you decide.1-1 Coaching: Personalized leadership support for all levels of leadership
3-5-Week Base Building Training
A highly interactive field program to help build a robust volunteer base through a multi-week field campaign.
Group Support
Facilitated peer groups for staff to discuss challenges, role play practice, and group status reports and goal setting. A highly interactive field program to help build a robust volunteer base through a multi-week field campaign.
Interim and Vacation Support
Our experienced training team can help fill leadership capacity gaps during vacations and hiring processes. Facilitated peer groups for staff to discuss challenges, role play practice, and group status reports and goal setting.A highly interactive field program to help build a robust volunteer base through a multi-week field campaign.
Administrative Support
We understand strong movement organizations need a strong administrative backbone. We offer support from expert non-profit professionals in the areas of finance and operations, development and marketing, operational assessment, and human resources.
While we can provide these strategies of support individually, we will typically combine several of these approaches in a custom-built package to help organizations transform themselves over several weeks or months of ongoing work with us. However, we prefer to start with a small project to find our feet in working with your organization.
To get a sense of topics we typically train on, you can check out our Base Building for Power YouTube Channel
Or check out our following YouTube Playlists:
You can also check out some Testimonials from Movement Leaders, and Testimonies from Organizers we Trained.
We also have a number of trainers with particular experience organizing in rural communities. Past and current clients include United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), San Francisco Labor Council, Central Coast United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE), Blue Future, San Francisco Rising, Ontario Nurses Union, National Educational Union, OPSEU, Speak About It, References are available.