Funding Community Organizing: Social Change through Civic Participation
Resource type: News
In this guide by GrantCraft, U.S. funders and organisers discuss what makes community organising effective, how to manage grantee relationships over time, understanding the value of process, and the grantmaker’s special role in fostering change.
Grantmakers who fund community organizing say it’s the best option when you want to promote civic engagement and support lasting solutions to a community’s problems. Yet many funders, concerned about the ability to measure its impact and effectiveness, hesitate to take up community organizing as a strategy. In this guide, Funding Community Organizing: Social Change through Civic Participation, funders and organizers discuss what makes community organizing unique and uniquely effective, how to manage grantee relationships over time, understanding the value of process, and the grantmaker’s special role in fostering change.
HIGHLIGHTS
- The benefits and methods of community organizing
- Points of entry for grantmakers
- Mapping resources and power
- When a grantee is under attack
COMMUNITY ORGANIZING RESOURCES
While developing this guide, grantmakers offered a wide range of resources in several areas of community organizing. We’ve compiled a web-only list that includes books, films, articles, research reports, toolkits, and more.
SAMPLE QUOTES
“By putting regular people squarely in the middle of the action about how to effect positive social change, it says you’re an actor who can make a difference, not a victim, not someone just acted upon.”— A contributor to the guide on what distinguishes community organizing from other tactics
“The program officer is a bridge builder between the community and the board room, and nowhere is this possibly more true than in the funding of organizing.” — A former funder on the grantmaker’s role as “translator”
“[There’s] as much to gain from growth in leadership abilities, self-confidence, and civic participation as from seemingly hard outcomes like changes in the crime rate, school test scores, or access to health care.” — A grantmaker on evaluating process as much as “hard” outcomes in organizing
Click here to learn more and order print copies of the guide.