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Building Organized Communities
Community organizing can be transforming. When people come together to identify and take action on mutual concerns, they become more engaged in public life, and they redefine their relationships with one another and with those who hold positions of formal power. In the process, they build the capacity and will to take on additional, frequently more complex, issues. This organizing also can contribute to knowledge and experience from which other communities can benefit.
Funding priorities for Building Infrastructure
For more than 20 years nationally, we have supported a small group of nonprofits, known as "Intermediary Support Organizations" (ISOs), that provide financial and technical assistance to local community-building efforts. "Organizing networks" are the next step in the evolution of grassroots civic involvement.
These networks are not only starting and providing resources to emerging organizations, but also are developing long-term relationships with the local groups. They may assist with fundraising and general development, but their primary aim is to build a powerful, multi-issue organization by developing tiered leadership within the network.
Our grantmaking seeks to strengthen community organizations in low-income communities in three ways.
First, grant support aims to increase the capacity and stability of organizing networks. We are especially interested in networks with a significant geographic reach, an expressed social analysis of how to build power in low-income communities and an established methodology for organizing their base.
Our second grantmaking strategy focuses on redesigning the ISO program, to ensure that it continues to seed and strengthen emerging local organizations effectively. (Participation in ISO program by invitation only.)
Our third grantmaking strategy is strengthening the overall organizing field. Specifically we are interested in initiatives that:
- provide outreach to organizing practitioners and leaders through technical assistance, training and research;
- promote effective communication within the field, as well as to the broader public via the media;
- bring more financial resources under the democratic control of low-income communities for organizing; or
- create mechanisms or institutions that will move more financial resources into the field of community organizing on a regular basis.
Click here to view the 10 most recent grants for this program area.
We strongly suggest that organizations seeking funding from this program carefully review all program guidelines in this section and our application procedures.