Tag taxonomy: how you'll actually find people later

Tags in Action Network are your index card system. Without a taxonomy, your list is a pile.

Tags are flat, free-form labels you apply to subscribers. They are powerful because you can build emails, events, and reports targeted to any combination. They are dangerous because, with no convention, you end up with 200 tags no one understands six months later.

Use a simple prefix taxonomy. Every tag starts with a category prefix and a colon: source: how they joined; geo: where they live; ladder: their current rung (see Module 5); skill: things they've said they can do; constituency: which constituency they identify with.

Examples: source: opt-in form public, source: house meeting Tasha 2026-04, geo: Atlanta district 4, geo: Fulton county, ladder: signer, ladder: 1:1 done, ladder: host, skill: facilitator, skill: spanish, constituency: renter, constituency: faith.

Two rules: (1) any tag you create, you must define in a shared doc with one sentence of what it means and who applies it; (2) every member of the base gets exactly one ladder: tag at a time — when someone moves up, you remove the old one and add the new one (Module 5 makes this concrete).

Set up the first ten tags now. You will refine the taxonomy over the first year, but the prefix discipline saves you from a wreckage.