THE CHALLENGE AND THE OPPORTUNITY

Funders with a long history of involvement with CO groups and strategies agree that CO has not maximized its potential for building citizen power, developing community leaders and transforming communities. One significant barrier to maximizing CO's potential is the organized opposition to empowered communities by those who resist changes sought by CO groups. Another is inadequate resources. Now funders are shifting funding toward CO. For example, in 2000 the Ford Foundation launched a new multi-year CO initiative. As many funders have found, supporting CO groups and other organizations can lead to the development of effective strategies for community change.

How CO Builds Community. Achieving CO's goals for building a community - in accordance with the vision of the people it organizes and trains to take leadership - requires widespread and meaningful participation by many key sectors of the community. Often, there is resistance to CO's community-building efforts and a power struggle results. Seeking to change the status quo is never an easy exercise.

Bringing CO's Results to Scale. While some CO groups are tied exclusively to their neighborhoods, most are working with others in city, metropolitan, regional, state and national strategies. CO groups are tackling major issues and breaking ground in dealing with them in promising new ways. They are building strong and informed constituencies whose self-interest is more and more defined for themselves - through training and in their experiences of leading CO in action - as demanding they work in the public interest.

There are many examples of CO efforts moving to scale - efforts that have strong neighborhood and community roots, are driven from the bottom-up, and are addressing large issues in strategies that bring many CO groups together with other organizations.

A few include IAF's Alliance Schools strategy in Texas; ACORN's living wage work in numerous cities; PICO's statewide legislative victories in California; the national policy impact of the Transportation Equity Network; and, of course, CO's leadership and enormous influence over the years in helping to pass and implement the Home Mortgage Disclosure and Community Reinvestment Acts.

CO and Traditional Advocacy Work. CO strategies are aided by funders who distinguish CO efforts from traditional policy advocacy, which some of them also support. In traditional advocacy, "an individual or small group of individuals speaks on behalf of another individual or group."⁷⁷ Advocacy often involves mobilizing people to take part.

For its public policy work, CO groups require something very different, more difficult and essential. Advocacy, in their view, needs to be informed and carried out as much as possible by the people for whom the benefits are sought. Rather than mobilizing people to back efforts designed by the few for what they perceive as the common good, CO organizes people to design and work for the policies that they believe are best.

Some CO funders are trying to bring CO groups together with advocacy groups on state and national levels for collaboration - to ensure that policies reflect the views of organized constituencies, to deepen the constituencies for policy reform and to help groups be more effective in policy debates. A $5.3 million, multi-year national project that seeks to bridge the work of CO and advocacy and involves numerous CO groups as grantees was funded by the Ford Foundation in 1998. Called the Devolution Initiative, it provides funds for core support and coalition building in eleven states

In May 2000, the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Security was launched as an outgrowth of a two-year organizing process initiated by the Center for Community Change. The Campaign's founding members include all of the key organizing networks, who are working together to combine grassroots organizing power with policy expertise and advocacy at the local, state and national levels.

This Toolbox encourages funders interested in CO grantmaking to move from thought, to action, to results. It also urges funders already funding CO to consider new ways of thinking about your work and collaborating with your colleagues. The Toolbox is an in-depth guide for your work in developing and refining CO grantmaking. We urge you to study this material carefully. Early on, follow-up with colleagues in other foundations that are funding CO, particularly those with foundations mentioned in the Toolbox, and draw on their advice. Also, be certain to contact NFG's staff, who can direct you to other individuals within philanthropy and in the CO field who can be of assistance.