Our Method

Purpose:

• To assist community organizing groups in communicating the impact of organizing effectively.
• To get a wider range of donors and funders to fund organizing.

Strengthening the Case for Community Organizing

Research

A) Conducted over 150 in person interviews with donors and donor advisors to discern how they feel about organizing and how community organizers approach them. The findings were developed into a workshop. Collaborating with the Spin Project to turn the findings into a report to be distributed in the spring of ‘08. Download the Report>>

B) Surveyed, with the assistance of Spitfire Strategies, approximately 1,000 donors online from January 9 to March 16, 2007. Collected data from 189 individual donors. The findings reported are based on 108 completed surveys. The key findings offer a series of insights for community organizers and donors.

Overall, the survey indicates that community organizing has grown up and come of age in the nonprofit sector, shedding many of its contentious stereotypes from the past and attracting considerable financial support. These donors are overwhelmingly supportive of community organizing, but feel that it is difficult to measure its impact. They also don’t seem to be seeing the big-picture outcomes that they feel it could achieve.

C) Mapped Organizing.  Collaborated with the Organizing unit of CCC to develop a dynamic and comprehensive map that portrays the reach of community organizing and highlights several success stories and leaders throughout the country.

Training/Consulting

A) Provide organizations with workshops on how to communicate the power of organizing to high end donors. Signature workshop entitled “Can you hear me now?”  Offered workshops and consultations to national organizing networks such as ACORN, Gamaliel and FIRM as well local groups such as Iowa CCI, The Homeless Project (Tennessee) Make the Road by Walking, Highlander Center, The New York Thruway Alliance and Sunflower Community Action.

B) Working with GIFT (Grassroots Institute for Fundraising Training) to develop new workshops including overcoming barriers of race and class when engaged in major donor fundraising.

Donor Outreach and Education

A) Community Foundations: This Initiative aims to help community foundations engage their donors in supporting local community organizing and social justice efforts. In the first year planning phase will work with 6-8 community foundations in four states (California, Ohio, upstate New York and Tennessee) to develop “giving circle” models that incorporate donor education and a hands-on approach to grantmaking to connect donors to social justice funding. The model for this approach was developed by the California based Ventura County Community Foundation.

B) Democracy Alliance (DA):  Initiated collaboration with the DA social justice committee to try engaging partners unfamiliar with community organizing thorough site visits to organizing efforts near DA national conferences. October 31st event postponed.  Now working on April meeting.

C) Organizing Money Working Group: Coordinating efforts with NFG, Needmor, Changemakers, FACT, and the Daphne Fund to produce workshops, panel presentations, and informal roundtable discussions on community organizing at funder conferences where attention to organizing has been spotty or non-existent.  Attention is particularly given to collecting names and providing follow-up with those who are new to organizing such as the Association of Small Foundations, Family Foundation and Community Foundation conferences

Materials for Funders

A) Producing a book on Social Justice Grantmaking: This is a part of a Ford Foundation initiative to increase the percentage of philanthropic dollars being spent on social justice and peace.  The book will support the larger initiative by providing those working in foundations with examples of effective grantmaking in support of social justice.  The book will a) showcase foundations (including public, family and faith based grantmakers) that have undertaken a structural analysis of injustice; b) show how these funders have developed high impact funding strategies for changing these structures; and c) give readers ideas for immediate actions to support a social justice agenda.

B) Grantcraft: Initiated successful discussions with Grantcraft, an online grant givers’ resource that offers the tools and skills to be an effective funder, to develop a guide on funding organizing.  Other Grantcraft guides include Funding Advocacy and Funding with a Racial Justice Lens.