The Chamberlain Network

At the Chamberlain Network, our mission is to mobilize and empower veterans to protect democracy through organizing, education, and community engagement.  We build state and local networks of veterans dedicated to promoting democratic values, countering rising authoritarianism, and combating polarization.

The Chamberlain Network formally started in August 2024, but was built off a much longer foundation of veteran and civil society organizing. Our three founding team members met and worked together for several years, organizing around the relocation and resettlement of Afghan allies. In 2024, our team saw a gap in the democracy protection field for a non-partisan veteran organization. We started The Chamberlain Network as a way to use our

shared organizing experience to leverage the trusted veteran voice for our democracy. Since our start last year – with three team members and about a dozen members on an inaugural advocacy trip to DC – we’ve grown to a digital network of nearly 7,000 veterans, military family members, and allies.  Our activities contribute to healthier democratic institutions and promote democracy through: (1) Community engagement for and by veteran leaders; (2) Public education on democracy defense; (3) Democracy and human rights advocacy guided by veteran voices.

Situation

One of our core strategic challenges is determining how to allocate our limited capacity between national campaigns and local infrastructure. We know both are important—but we need help defining the right balance, sequencing our efforts, and identifying a model that lets us do both effectively without overextending. Much of our work in the last year has been a rapid response – to the deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles, to real-time threats to overseas voters, to veterans and other federal workers. We would love to work with the ACT team to develop an actionable, pragmatic strategic plan that would allow us to more clearly articulate our long-term goals and facilitate prioritization of our time and resources.

Project

The Chamberlain Network is seeking ACT’s support to co-develop a strategic plan that will:

1. Identify and prioritize our core programmatic focus areas 
2. Develop decision-making criteria for evaluating new opportunities 
3. Balance our national and local organizing efforts 
4. Establish internal KPIs that match our current capacity and goals