If you’ve been in a lot of organizing spaces you may have heard of the phrase “leadership ladder” or “engagement ladder” to help map out how to bring folks into your work with gradually increasing their involvement. We know with our base of farmers, ranchers, land stewards, and supporters that you all are busy and that increasing your work with us on a steady ladder may be challenging or downright impossible while farming.

We choose to represent all the ways to build leadership skills with us and be a leader in our Coalition as a map to encourage you to hang out, move around different pathways, always feel like you can step up and back as you have capacity, and embrace curiosity to explore new ways of engaging.

We hope to build skills for as many farmers as we can in higher levels of the ladder to prepare you to be leaders in agricultural and policy spaces beyond our Coalition, but this map is designed to also be sustainable and intentional in that investment. We seek to prioritize building long-term capacity and sustainable engagement with our base rather than short-term skill growth with a steep drop off after one really big event or leadership moment. We hope you’ll learn as many skills as you can with us while always feeling welcome and encouraged to hang out in lighter lift opportunities in between.

Advocacy and structural change is a slow game with many ups, downs, and lateral strategy shifts. Embodying the idea of a map rather than a ladder can help us build healthy and sustainable organizing energy in our national community.