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The
Community Organizing Toolbox
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LEADERSHIP AND PARTICIPATION: HOW CO GROUPS WORK
| It was women going door-to-door, speaking with their neighbors, meeting in voter-registration classes together, Organizing through their churches that gave the vital momentum and energy to the movement, that made it a mass movement.27 |
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- Andrew Young
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CO places its faith in the value of people working together for common ends, and in what they can do if given appropriate guidance and opportunity. In CO, the people lead. Without them there is nothing that can properly be called CO.
Organizers call the work they do to involve people "base-building." It is continuous and challenging, whether done through religious institutions, as in the faith-based approach to CO, or directly with individuals and families in direct membership CO groups. Base building is recruiting and engaging new people, keeping current members motivated and involved, and deepening member participation.
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Group's View of Base-Building
The French American Charitable Trust (FACT), a national, family foundation based in San Francisco, is among those funders that have prioritized base-building organizations in their grantmaking. In its first five-year report issued in April 2000, the foundation stated: "The belief that base-building organizations are critical to achieving lasting social change is central to everything we do. We are convinced that societal changes come about most often through the involvement, instigation, and commitment of many people. Furthermore, history has shown us that it requires vigilance on the part of the public to implement and maintain good social policy. We think that base-building organizations are a key mechanism for educating and involving the public in decision-making processes and for maintaining people's involvement over the years."28 |
Foundation Support for Base-Building. Base-building is not a "project" that can easily fit into narrowly defined grantmaking categories. Its effectiveness is hard to measure but critical. A strong and successful CO organization's base must have qualities like heart, hope, persistence, resilience and energy. It must be truly representative of and accountable to the community, continuously making room for new people and adapting to new circumstances.
Funders often invest in CO because they believe in the way CO reaches out to and involves people who have not been well served by societal institutions, who aren't voting or don't believe that their voices count. The funders want to see hard results - changes in policies, new jobs in the community, reductions in health hazards and more. But they know that the work of change that is responsive to and "owned" by the community takes long-term base-building efforts.
The Importance of Developing Community Leaders. Any business, governmental unit, nonprofit organization, or foundation rises or falls with the quality of its leadership. For CO groups, the importance of identifying and developing responsive and effective leadership from the community cannot be understated.
In CO, "the goal of encouraging people to feel and be more powerful is typically as important as achieving substantive change. Hence, leadership development is critical. ... Every member is encouraged to take leadership roles. Members and leaders make all organizational decisions, from bylaws to slogans. Members raise and select organizational issues based on the self-interests of the group, and broad agreement among members is necessary before the organization will pursue an issue. Most grassroots organizations work on many issues at once. Decisions regarding strategy, tactics, and targets are made by leaders and members, using staff consultation. ... Pressure activities are implemented and evaluated by members. Leaders speak to the press and negotiate with targets."29
27 Andrew Young, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, as quoted in Charles M. Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle, Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1995, p. 265.
28 FACT's Five Year Report, 1995 - 1999, SF, Fact Services Company, Inc., 2000, p. 8.
29 Jacqueline B. Mondros and Scott M. Wilson, Organizing for Power and Empowerment, New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.