What smart approaches to tech innovation are helping NGOs use mobile devices, apps and SMS to create people power? In conversations with a wide-ranging set of creative campaigners and developers, Nithin Coca identifies four takeaways for any group looking to get started with creating empowering apps and tech tools.

Fight for $15 is a tightly run campaign to raise America’s minimum wage. It is also, Tom Liacas writes for MobLab, a strong example of directed-network campaigning that demonstrates how leaders can let go of a campaign, open up to a wider grassroots audience, and build the kind of long-lasting power that creates widespread policy change at different levels of government.

Collaborative action by unions from the Global South and North is opening up capacity to become a positive force in climate change campaigns. Danny Chivers talks to Anabella Rosemberg of the International Trade Union Confederation about putting climate change on the labour movement’s agenda.

A lack of creativity is stifling social change as campaigners and NGOs have grown reliant on a common set of tech tools that set the parameters for how campaigns operate. Matt Holland and MobLab’s Michael Silberman write in Stanford Social Innovation Review that “the real magic of innovative, cutting-edge campaigns is not any specific tactic; it’s the spirit and ability to continually evolve.”

Many observers may see #NoDAPL and the Dakota Access pipeline protests in North Dakota as an almost overnight happening fueled by social media. But actions in North Dakota are years in the making, writes Nick Englefried in a Waging Nonviolence article describing ways in which indigenous communities have been building a movement.

People power meets the high price of pharmaceuticals in a Mashable story about social media outrage following news that drug maker Mylan increased the price of EpiPen, a lifesaving anaphylactic shock treatment. Consumer and health advocacy groups seemed absent from the conversation as citizens and celebrities set up petitions and made the issue a national focus.

People power action guides for your colleagues! Share the new CSO Action Guides with your favorite board member, CEO, HR Director and others in your org that need a helping hand understanding why people power is more than organising and how it changes their work. The guides are a product of the Digital Accountability Working Group – we’re glad to be a collaborator.

In 2015 and the political power of the personal, Matt Price looks at how digital organising engaged and empowered people during the most recent Canadian federal election. The campaign, Price writes, was “part of a broader reinvention of campaigns of all kinds, driven not just by data but by the rediscovery of something more fundamental: people.”

Let’s Learn

Join an incredible mix of social change campaigners and activists from around the world for a technology and activism skillshare this October. At CampaignCon, we’ll share expertise, build networks and capacity, learn from one another, and develop the plans and strategies needed to take technology-supported networked campaigning to the next level. Hope to see you in Catalonia!

In London next Monday? This looks like a can’t miss event: Mapping the Future: Activating Creative Change Post-Referendum. Hosted by the UnSchool of Disruptive Design, organisers are bringing together creatives and social innovation types for collaboration, network building and knowledge sharing in a post-Brexit Europe.

Inclusive teams are stronger teams. Campaigners and colleagues Kaytee Ray-Riek and Jill Raney are offering their Step in with Confidence training via webinar on Sep 20 and 22 to help managers better address discriminatory and oppressive behaviors that can hold back even the best workgroups.

The Re.imagining Activism Toolkit from Smart CSOs Lab extends last year’s Re-imagining activism guidebook with training tools and workshop modules. The toolkit includes campaign examples from campaigns and guides to rethinking strategy and organisational development.

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Curation and writing via Ted Fickes and Tom Liacas. Have digital and people powered campaign news to share? We want to hear about it! Send your news to @MobilisationLab and spread the word.