How to Host a DUHC Workshop

We don't do "canned" workshops.

We are available for support in strategic planning to challenge corporate power, community organizing, and training. We can help your organization identify opportunities for collaboration with other groups, as well as choose issues to mobilize your community.

Democracy Unlimited is committed to anti-oppressive, popular education and strategic action. We strive to model feminist, anti-racist practices and to encourage leadership in everyone who attends our trainings. Our education methods are participatory, democratic, and engaging.

We seek to facilitate participants towards their own goals, providing context and a strategic perspective that empower you to take action.

Contact us to find out more or to initiate a custom-designed workshop for your community or group.

General Logistics

Here’s some basic introductory info about what you need to know and to do to bring us to your community for a workshop or presentation. The following is meant to give you an idea of what kind of preparation is needed to bring a good workshop to your community – but we are pretty flexible about it all. Please contact us and we will make it work!

Workshop Options

We suggest you hire us to give a public talk on a previous evening (usually Friday) for as big a local crowd as you can muster, and then a day-long workshop following (usually on a Saturday). The workshop needs to be a full day and it is often helpful to have another meeting the next day for those interested in really running with it (see below). We like to call the talk, “Why Do Corporations Have More Rights Than You Do?” If your community has a bad corporate problem locally or regionally (who doesn’t?!), and people are already aware it’s a problem, we tend to name the corporation in the talk title: “Why does (XXX) Corporation have more rights than you do?”

If you would like to get together a group of local citizens interested in working on corporate rule in your locality in an ongoing way, we suggest that you also set up another meeting for the morning after the workshop (10am-1pm for example), and you invite interested workshop participants to come to that. That way we can be there for your first meeting to help you talk strategy. Everyone will have the analysis and perspective fresh in their minds from the day before. We will help you to think through what project or campaign you might like to undertake and to assist with resources, advice and our own experience. We are also happy to provide ongoing advice, consultation and help once we leave your community.

Our Fee Structure

All rates are sliding scale.

Workshops & Strategy Sessions (3 hours or more)
Rates: $50-$100/hour for first 8 hours of presentation, afterwards $40-$90/hour (note: each hour is for 2 people’s time).

All workshops must include: 4 hours prep time and 2 hours post-event, plus time spent during workshop (does not include travel time or non-presentation time). We make every effort to have a team of gender-balanced facilitators at each workshop. We strongly discourage against bringing only one person to cut costs.

For example: a Saturday workshop from 9am-5pm (8 hours) + a Sunday strategy session from 10am-2pm (4 hours), at the bottom end of the sliding scale: $400 (8 x $50) + $160 (4 x $40) + $300 (6 x $50) = $860 TOTAL (+ travel & meal cost)

Honorariums for Speaking Engagements & Presentations (up to 2.5 hours)
★ Institution rate: $500-$1000 sliding scale
★ Community group rate: $250-$700 sliding scale

Note: if a Community Group arranges a talk at an institution to help offset costs for a workshop they’re also organizing, we only charge our hourly rate above, but the group is encouraged to try to arrange for as high an honorarium as possible from the institution to offset costs.

Travel & Accommodations
Driving: $.35/mile round-trip or the cost of a rental car + gas (we decide which option).
Accommodations: bed (not a couch) and all meals while in Community. Host can elect to pay for hotel room as well as restaurant meals, or provide food and lodging. Additional cost of $25/day for meals on travel days, per person.

Please do not let our fees deter you from contacting us about hosting a workshop.

Venues

We prefer the workshop take place in a large comfortable living room away from loud urban noises or roads, with good outside air for break time. It tends to be a nicer aesthetic and more physically comfortable than a church or other institutional setting. Though most churches do have carpeted smaller rooms with comfortable chairs that are more than adequate, as do many colleges and universities.

Workshop Schedule

If the workshop is scheduled as a full day, we suggest timing of 10:30am to 5:30pm, with a lunch break and stretch breaks. People should be encouraged to bring a sack lunch so we can mingle together informally. If it’s a 2-day workshop, we suggest 10:30am to 5:30pm for day one, and 10:30am to 1pm for day two. The host should try to have hot and cold drinks (plus snacks) for all at lunch and breaks. It is also pretty easy to get food donations from local grocery stores and restaurants and if you do this it will help keep the snack and meal costs low.

Participant Fees

We urge workshop organizers to offer a broad sliding scale fee structure so that everyone feels invited.

Depending on how much you decide to pay us we suggest you charge participants somewhere in the range between $20 to $60, and $50 to $150. And if you can afford it, you can also say “No one turned away” or “scholarships available” on the flyers. We strongly recommend that you do offer some way for folks of lower income to participate – we want our work to be as accessible as possible. At the same time though, it’s not unusual for full-day workshops to cost each participant hundreds of dollars, so our workshops are quite affordably priced.

Workshop Size

An ideal size is 10 to 16 people, with a minimum of 6 participants and a maximum of 20 participants. There always tend to be 2 to 5 no-shows, unless people pay in advance. It’s important that participants attend the full event, not drop in late, or leave early. When we do a workshop locally we always make sure to ask participants to pre-register so we have a sense of how many people are coming – we suggest that you do the same.

Outreach and Publicity

Where and how you publicize depends on who you want to attend the workshop. If your group or organization is going to provide participants from your membership, you might not need to do public outreach. If this is the case, we suggest you remember to call folks who you want to attend because email announcements alone seldom get much response. And don’t forget to send out reminders!

If you want to invite the public you will need to do more outreach. We suggest making a flyer (we can provide examples) that you can distribute to local restaurants, coffee shops, bookstores, grocery stores, colleges, laundromats, community venues and bulletin boards.

We also suggest sending out a press release (we can provide examples) to local radio and television stations as well as newspapers. We are always happy to do radio interviews with your local media by telephone before we get there and it is often easy to set those up by following up on press releases and requesting time on radio programs dedicated to local and/or political events. It is best to schedule these 3-5 days before the event.

You should also ask your local radio, TV and newspapers to include the event in their community calendars. You can also sometimes get the event announced through calendars that local community groups send out to their members. Try to be as creative and extensive with outreach as possible!

Please contact us if you would like to host a workshop in your community. We are happy to help you with organizing the event.