Get FIT Know-How Guides: Step-by-Step Projects for You and Your Congregation

Do you put your turkey in the oven ten minutes before Thanksgiving dinner? Of course not!

Do you plant your tomatoes in July? Not in Texas!

Do you fill out your tax forms on April 15? (Okay, you don’t have to answer that.)

Whatever activity you’re doing, how do you know when to get started?

Either you’ve had some sad, raw-turkey/dead-tomato learning experiences in your life, or else someone told you how much time your project would take, and you worked backward to figure out when to start. You looked at the baking time, the growing time, the drying time, the running time…and you made a plan.

Get FIT Know-How Guides are your recipes for successful citizenship events and activities, for yourself and for your congregation or group. We’ve listed the ingredients, instructions and timetables you’ll need to plan, promote and publicize events and plug into opportunities for action.

Who are the guides for?

Some of the Know-How Guides are for group projects like forums or voter registration drives. Others are for individual activities like writing letters to the editor.

How should I use the guides?

Each Know-How Guide includes complete information for one project. The guides for events planning include helpful backup documents for you to print and use such as sign-in sheets, sample advertisements and bulletin inserts, and even thank-you notes you can send speakers.

You can choose to use all the information just as it is, or you can use it as a starting point to develop your own event or project. The most important thing is to do your project in a way that makes sense in your community, given the resources you have available.

Download the Know-How Guides below. To order hard copies, call 512.472.3903 or email justice@texasimpact.com.

Download the Guides

The guides are available in PDF currently--HTML versions are coming soon, along with more topics.

On Time for Democracy [PDF]

It’s been said that government belongs to the people who show up…and it’s true. The people that show up. Not the richest people or the loudest, or even the very smartest.

Effective citizenship isn’t rocket science. It just takes understanding the cyclical nature of politics and policy, the ebb and flow of important dates.

This planner will help you plan projects and events so they will have the most impact, and allow everyone in your community to be ready on time for democracy.

Write a Great Letter to the Editor [PDF]

Letters to the editor are great public policy advocacy tools! They help to shape public opinion, and they inform legislators about constituent concerns.

Letters to the editor are more than just the statement of one individual. For every letter that gets printed, there are many other, similar letters that didn’t get printed, and many other individuals who share your feelings but didn’t submit a letter.

Letters to the editor are tangible, transferable and permanent. Texas elected officials and others collect and share letters to the editor from all over the state to track opinions and issues of importance.

You should hope and assume that people you don’t know will clip your letter and use it as part of a body of information, so it’s worth making sure you say exactly what you mean. It’s also worth using tried and true strategies to increase your chances of publication.

Voter Registration Drives [PDF]

The narrow margins in scores of races throughout the US over the past several election cycles illustrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that every  vote counts. Yet nationally, voter turnout among people of faith is fifty percent or less; here in Texas, only about 41 percent of those eligible bother to cast a ballot.

Becoming a registered voter—and showing up at the polls on election day—is the bedrock of responsible citizenship. Make sure the people in your congregation and in the larger community have a voice in the next election: host a voter-registration drive.