When everything's uncertain, build teams that learn

A Sunrise Movement case study in distributed organizing

In 2020, US-based youth organization the Sunrise Movement had an ambitious goal—to elect progressives to Congress who would champion a Green New Deal in upset primaries across the country. But the COVID pandemic meant they would need to totally rethink how they would reach voters.

Since only one staffer could support the program, they built a team of fifty young volunteers on eight sub-teams that organized thousands of others to make 6.2 million dials and send over 1 million postcards in less than a year.

Watch the video to discover ways of:

- Structuring and coordinating a team of teams

- Giving away real responsibility over outcomes, and

- Building a culture of learning

Resources mentioned in the video

• Post-phonebank debrief script

• Report card to evaluate a team using the six conditions for team effectiveness

• Team charter template

• Role description template

• Agenda for Before and After Action Review debriefs (pages 5-9)

This presentation was recorded in March 2026.

Presenter

Sophia Zaia is an associate consultant at PowerLabs, where she provides coaching and training for organizers. Before joining the team at PowerLabs, she led distributed and electoral programs and organizational leadership teams at the Sunrise Movement.