CCL Community Release - October 5, 2021

What's a release?

New Features

• Tracking Your Trainings and Fifth Lever Expansion!
  • As CCL grows and learns more about volunteer engagement, we are expanding our fifth lever of political will to encompass "Chapter and Volunteer Development."  Why? Since last year’s launch of the CCL Action Tracker, the second-most requested update has been to provide a way for volunteers to log CCL trainings they've taken. Since training is an act of developing oneself as a CCL volunteer, you’ll notice these changes across CCL Community, the Action Tracker, and on our main website starting today.
  • To log your trainings (more info here in the CCL Community FAQs), you can either go directly to the bottom of any individual training page and click the green button (see below) to have that training automatically be logged in the Action Tracker. You can also go to the Action Tracker, click on the "Chapter and Volunteer Development" category > then "Trainings" > then select each training from a dropdown menu along with the date (estimated) you took it.

• There are many benefits, including: 
  • Providing volunteers the chance to log their own trainings and gamify their learning by providing badges for their accomplishments!
  • Deepening our overall understanding of volunteer engagement.
  • Providing our Education Team with insights into how to continue to improve CCL’s training program.
• The ability to log training offered by CCL national as an action is the first step, followed by a roadmap for future additional updates including plans to:
  • Provide CCL leaders and staff with more insight into their volunteer's interests and trainings they’ve taken. 
  • Log volunteer's attendance on the live Informational Session, Climate Advocate Training and other interactive trainings previously recorded.
• Note: Additional suggestions and ideas requested here. If you have ideas or want to upvote other's suggestions for future training improvements, share here.
  • Training opportunities that are offered by local chapters, Action Teams or other organizations should be logged within the "Chapter and Volunteer Development" category, then clicking on the "Other" option.
  • Questions? Email brett@citizensclimate.org.

• Action Tracker Goals. In response to the U.S. Senate and House campaigns, IT launched goals and goal cards in July. Now when CCL sets a national or state goal, there's a way for you to see how we're progressing towards meeting that goal.
  • US Member of Congress (district) view. Since the Action Tracker's launch, users could view actions by action type for individuals in your chapter and total actions for your chapter, state, region, and country. And now, users can view aggregate actions for contacts with members of Congress by congressional district. A couple of notes about district view:
  • To access the district view (see below), go to the Action Tracker dashboard, click on the "Member of Congress Contacts" tab, and select a district from the selector.
  • A chapter member can select and view any district that's associated with their chapter.
  • A state is also considered a senate "district," so users can now see a breakdown of each state senator's contacts. For example, TXSR is Senator John Cornyn.
  • The new district view includes actions taken by non-CCL members via one of our online action tools, except for the Monthly Calling Campaign tool. You will not see the names or actions of non-CCL members displayed in the Recent Chapter Actions list because they are not CCL members, and we don't have permission to display their names.
  • 
• Finally, volunteers can now see totals for important U.S. campaigns or actions that are not technically goals -- no starting or end date or number goal -- as a banner on the Action Tracker dashboard pages. The current campaign to send emails to President Biden is shown below.
  

• Updated Training Topics Design and Layout. To improve the volunteer experience on CCL Community's Training Topic pages, substantial updates have been made to the page design and layout including:
  • Bringing the left-sidebar menu to the topic level to improve ease of navigation between training topics
  • Updated descriptions, photos, and groupings to make each topic more intuitively related
  • Hover-over text to indicate the level and format for each individual training page
  • Recommended related trainings to consider exploring
  • Clearer guidance on how to take action with related teams, tools, and logging actions in the Action Tracker.
  • For additional details and more information see the CCL Training FAQ.
    • 
• Updated language around CCL's third lever of political will to include the importance of service in our grassroots outreach. 
  • Focuses on the general public in our communities. Through this outreach we build support for climate action and carbon pricing, we make ourselves and our work known in our communities, we find new members and we build relationships in the places where we live. We invite and educate the public on climate solutions, citizen advocacy and how to participate with one’s government.  We value service as a way to empower our volunteers and build important connections within our community. For more information, see this training update.

Bug Fixes

• Group Events
  • Hero images can now be added to individual group events. Group events default as the cover photo within their category (local chapter, action team, etc.) 
  • Group home pages now display upcoming an event list view and a short description for the two nearest upcoming evenings.
• Email
  • Resolved several intermittent CCL Community email communication outages due to our vendor's internal programming.
• Forums
  • Resolved an issue where link previews were not displaying for forum topics on iOS mobile devices.
  • Updated the rich text editor for discussion forums.
• Files
  • Users can now move files into a subcategory within their group files.
• 

New & Updated Content

Trainings:

• Budget Reconciliation Actions - New Training Topic page
• Core Volunteer Trainings (all updated)
• Social Media Actions to Support Reconciliation
• Budget Reconciliation Q&A w/ Tony Sirna 
• Getting New Volunteers Engaged
• Reviewing CCL's Transformational Organizing Guide
• Introduction To Using Tiktok For Grassroots Outreach
• Texting Your Group Recommendations
• En-ROADS Update & Hosting Climate Simulations
• Grassroots Outreach Updates: COVID and Service
• How To Use CCL's Branded Resources In Your Outreach
• The Power of Republican State Legislator Support For Carbon Pricing
• Climate Central's Tools: Making It Local, Making It Real
• Big Tent Climate Talks w/ Nature For Justice, DSM North America, Niskanen Center, Hannon Armstrong, Evangelical Environmental Network
• June 2021 Lobby Training #2: Final Prep 
• June 2021 Lobby Training #1: Primary & Supporting Asks
• Motivational Interviewing - Introductory Workshop
• Messaging For The Energy Innovation Act Training
• Climate Change Science & Public Health AMA with Dr. Drew Shindell
• CCL's International Work - Updates From Around the World
• Understanding Border Carbon Adjustments
• How To Host Online Zoom Meetings
• Countering Scientific Misinformation AMA with Dr. John Cook
• Economic Benefits of CFD Series
• Diversity & Inclusion Education and Roundtable Discussion Series

Resources:

• Editorial Packets (updated October 5th)
• Social Media Toolkits: Ten Reconciliation Actions & Carbon Pricing is Popular (updated September 30th)
• Conservative Outreach Materials (updated Sept. 30th)
• Responding To Negative Press (added September 30th)
• Local Press Release Templates (updated September 29th)
• Meeting Plan Template (updated September 23rd)
• LTE Topics (updated September 23rd)
• Op-Ed Templates (updated September 22nd)
• Carbon Price Action Campaign Flyers (updated September 14th)
• Videos (updated September 1st)
• Annual Report (August 20th)
• Volunteer Inventory Form (added Google Form and Slides - August 1st)
• Volunteer Accomplishments Fact Sheet (updated July 1st)
• Climate Central's Tools (June 25th)
• Carbon Pricing Bills In Congress (June 25th)
• Energy Innovation & Carbon Dividend Act Dataset (May 27th)

Tools:

• "Carbon Pricing" endorsements can now be added in the Grasstops Engagement Tracker (GET) on behalf of your endorser in the same way that you entered CFD and Climate Action endorsements (June 12th)