Training


Click the dates below to register
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email training@midwestacademy.com to be added to any waitlists!

Organizing for Justice

Supervising Organizers

Organizing for Justice, pt. 2

We cap trainings at 25 people.

Organizing for Justice: Essential Skills (4 days) – updated sample agenda here!
Supervising Organizers: Essential Skills (3 days) – updated sample agenda here!

Virtual training days are 11:30 am – 4:30 pm Eastern time, including a lunch break, and multi-day trainings have optional coffee and happy hours for informal conversation and questions.
Virtual trainings are still 100% interactive, with exercises and discussion throughout.

In person training days are 10 am – 5 pm local time, including lunch break. Trainers may offer additional opportunities to gather in an informal space, depending on location and availability.

Registration pages explain cost and other details!  We are pricing these on a sliding scale based on your organization’s budget. 
Due to the sliding scale instead of a flat fee, we are NOT offering scholarships right now.

For our history of in-person trainings, keep reading:

From its founding in 1973, Midwest Academy has been the go-to training school for organizers across the progressive movement.  Its trainers have distilled decades of experience in social justice organizing into practical lessons for social justice organizers.  Organizers in labor, women’s rights, the environment, racial justice, immigrant rights, corporate accountability, and many more issues have found value in Midwest Academy’s skills-based approach to organizing.

We offer three different courses:

Organizing for Justice: (formerly “Organizing for Social Change”) Hone concrete skills that enable you to win issue campaigns and build a strong, lasting organizations.

Advanced Strategy Retreat: Develop or refine your organizations current issue campaign strategy through a combination of presentations and individualized work time.

Supervising Organizers Workshop: Evaluate and sharpen your supervisory skills to develop effective strategic and relational organizers.

Lessons from trainees:

“It meant so much to be in the company of so many positive organizers in such a tense and dangerous time in America’s history.  So many smart, experienced people made me sharper.”

IMPORTANT: our trainings consistently hit capacity and often move to a waitlist. Because of that, we ask that ALL participants commit to the entirety of the training they register for.
If your schedule changes, please reach out immediately to transfer to a future training. We can offer your spot to someone else if we have enough lead time.

Refund/Credit Policies
In the event you cannot make the training you registered for, please reach out to us as soon as you know. This helps us accurately plan and keeps our waitlist from growing unnecessarily.
Our policies differ based on in-person or virtual trainings:

Refund/Credit policy for virtual trainings:
This policy reflects the reality of recruiting new participants from the waitlist on short notice. 

  • If you let us know more than 4 weeks from the first day of the training, you will receive a full refund or credit for future training.
  • If you let us know between 2-4 weeks from the first day of the training, you will receive a 75% refund or credit for a future training.
  • If you let us know between 1-2 weeks from the first day of the training, you will receive a 50% refund or credit for a future training.
  • Less than 1 week notice -or- not showing up on the first day of the training, no refunds are available, and credits are at the discretion of administration.

Refund/Credit policy for in-person trainings:
This policy reflects our belief that it will be increasingly difficult to recruit new participants the closer we get to the start of the training, especially given health concerns and travel costs.

  • If you let us know more than 6 weeks from the first day of the training, you will receive a full refund or credit for future training.
  • If you let us know between 4-6 weeks from the first day of the training, you will receive a 50% refund or credit for future training.
  • If you let us know less than 4 weeks from the first day of the training, you will not receive a refund or credit for future training.

If you do NOT show up and have given no notice, we cannot provide a refund or credit.

Registration for the session may be transferred to another individual at any point.
Please reach out to training@midwestacademy.com with any questions!