#HenryFarrell on #HahrietHan https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/what-the-left-can-learn-from-evangelical :

... why some organizations can change the world around them, while others are less successful... the difference between "transactional mobilizing,” and “transformational organizing.” Lots of organizations focus on lowering the transaction costs of doing things - pressing a button to send an email expressing outrage to a politician. However, it is the ones that get people involved in deeper ways and build relationships that can forge enduring communities. Organizations do this less often than they might, because building such relationships is messy, difficult and hard.

... how organizations win people over and provide them with opportunities to do things.

... people organized into small groups if each person belonged to only one. They generally ranged from six to ten people...

Small groups created honeycombs of intimacy, connection, and loyalty in those churches. As French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “In democratic countries knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge.” Because people do not naturally possess the skills and inclinations for working with one another, they need venues for learning. Small groups taught people through concrete experience how to act together.

Small groups provide a kind of social glue then, allowing people with different interests or problems to come together, and perhaps support each other. They explain why... so attractive to... movement, as a kind of social substrate to provide it with energy and volunteers. But they also help explain why people are attracted to these... in the first place... provide a community where different people with different interests and problems can find others like them, provided those interests are compatible with the overall mission... That broader mission isn’t set in stone, and is sometimes contested. Arguments over what the mission... ->