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The Organizing Networks & Other Organizations

There are community, church-based and broad-based organizations in over 300 cities of the United States and in pivotal cities throughout the world.  Most local and citywide organizations are members of one of the networks listed below.  Also included are some groups which are involved in or advocating community organizing.
 

ACORN

(Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now)

ACORN is unique among all organizing networks in that it is the only network to build its power around individual membership rather than institutional membership (except for Servant Partners, each of the other networks is an “organization of organizations” such as churches, religious institutions, schools, unions and community groups).  ACORN organizes low- and moderate-income families in 850 neighborhood chapters in 75 cities in the US, Canada, the Dominican Republic and Peru.  It has steadily grown from a small group of welfare mothers who began the organization in Little Rock back in 1970.

Two other features distinguish ACORN – an absolute commitment to organizing the poor plus a constant willingness and ability to break new ground.  From the beginning, when it brought together black and white, welfare and working poor, ACORN defied expectations of what a community organization could be.  It pioneered multi-racial and multi-issue organizing, led the way in electoral organizing and branched into innovative housing development, community media and labor organizing.

For 35 years, ACORN has built grassroots organizations from the bottom up.  The same principles that guided the first neighborhood groups in Arkansas still guide the organization today.  ACORN members are active members who participate in local meetings and issue campaigns.  Each person takes the initiative to join ACORN and plays an active role.

ACORN is committed to organizational democracy and grassroots leadership.  Members, not staff, speak for and lead the organization.  They elect leaders from within their communities to serve on city, state and national boards that set policy for the organization.

Finally, ACORN is committed to the principle of financial self-sufficiency.  Members pay dues and organize a wide array of grassroots fundraising events which today accounts for 75 percent of the entire organization’s budget.

ACORN’s agenda includes affordable housing, tenant unions, community reinvestment, bank and insurance red-lining, jobs and income, union organizing, schools, voter registration and electoral politics.

(Material taken from “ACORN: The People United, 1970-1995 and from its website) 

DART

Direct Action and Research Training Center, Inc.. 

DART is a midsize network, primary doing institutional organizing in southern states and in the Midwest USA.  It tends to organize in midsize cities (e.g., Dayton, Columbus, Louisville, Jacksonville), organizing exclusively through local churches.  It was founded in 1982 on the basis of a commitment to democratic principles and Judeo-Christian values of justice and fairness.  It grew out of two organizing experiences in south Florida.  One was a coalition of Senior Citizen groups addressing issues of concern to low-moderate income seniors.  The second was an organization of African-Americans that was developed after the 1980 riots in Miami.  The leadership and staff of both organizations, in addition to national church leaders, were convinced that the organizing experiences of these two groups were transferable to other communities.

DART has now grown into a training and consulting network of more than 20 grassroots organizations.  Seven of these congregation-based community organizations are in Florida, and the remainder is in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan and Ohio.  DART’s primary goal is to promote justice and equality of opportunity through the empowerment of low-moderate income people.

The fundamental problem addressed in all of DART’s work is the disparity of power faced by persons in low-moderate income communities where the absence of democratic community organizations denies the opportunity of taking successful action to solve problems.  The systemic issues facing most communities are the pervasiveness of low-wage, non-benefit jobs, disparities in health care, public education and safety, and the persistent ineffectiveness on the part of public and private structures in delivering services equitably to low-income people.

DART’s vision is strongly rooted in an understanding that religious congregations have a prophetic role to play in holding society’s political and economic systems accountable for acting fairly.  With this as a framework, DART offers the following four types of services:

1.      Building new congregation-based community organizations where there is interest and the potential for long-term, self-sustaining organizations.

2.      Providing consulting and training for existing organizations in the DART Network on an ongoing basic.

3.      Providing workshops on organizing skills for religious institutions and community groups, and

4.      Recruiting and training organizers, particularly minorities and women.

Because it is an organization of congregations, DART has a very strong biblical training component that includes introductory training in how to read and use the Bible to do social analysis and to work for corporate and social reform in cities through community organizing.  Its annual Clergy Conference is a continuing means for honing biblical interpretation and organizing skills of its pastors and church leaders.

(Material provided by DART) 

The Gamaliel Foundation

The Gamaliel Foundation was originally established in 1968 to support the Contract Buyers League, an African American organization fighting to protect homeowners on Chicago’s Westside.  In 1986, the Foundation was reorganized as an organizing institute providing resources to community leaders in their efforts to build and maintain empowerment organizations in low-income communities.

The Gamaliel Foundation has grown to more than forty affiliates in twelve states, and in nearly every major metropolitan area in the Midwest.  Increasingly, the Foundation is called upon to assist in building power organizations abroad.  In 1998, the foundation established its first international project by creating the Natal Organizing Project in the Republic of South Africa.

The Gamaliel Foundation brings an array of resources to groups committed to creating powerful citizens organizations.  It provides its affiliates with the tools needed to train and develop leaders and staff.  These tools include extensive leadership training, strategic planning, issues development, staff recruitment, staff development and fund raising expertise.  The goal is to build powerful, effective, local and metropolitan organizations that become vehicles for leaders to participate in making decisions affecting their communities.  Through their connection to the Gamaliel national network, local organizations are able to effect change at ever-broader levels of power – local, state, regional and national.

The Gamaliel Foundation builds on grass-roots empowerment and uses the tools of community organizing to advance progressive social transformation rooted in the faith values of its membership.  This is evidenced in the National Leadership Assembly of the Gamaliel Foundation, an annual gathering of hundreds of delegates from Gamaliel affiliates which shapes and guides the mission and direction of the Gamaliel Foundation.  In the Gamaliel National Clergy Caucus, it offers theological training, resources and representation for its approximately one thousand clergy.

Increasingly, political and economic decisions are made at a regional, national and global level rather than at a local or even citywide level.  The Gamaliel Foundation is responding to this shift by assisting in the creation of a national network of metropolitan-wide organizations.  Regional organizing is essential to address the root problems facing neighborhoods.  Such organizing creates the opportunity to counteract parochialism and bridges race and class divisions and political boundaries by building coalitions of diverse groups acting together on their collective self-interest.

(Material provided by the Gamaliel Foundation) 

IAF

The Industrial Areas Foundation

The IAF is the oldest and largest of the organizing networks in the USA, as well as doing organizing in Great Britain, Germany and South Africa.  It was founded in 1940 by Saul Alinsky, who first practiced and articulated the essential principles which community organizing uses today.  It still continues that organizing task through four regional organizations working in 78 cities.  Those cities tend to be the largest of USA cities (e.g., New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Dallas, etc.).  Organizing is broad-based and includes middle-class suburbs as well as inner cities.

Over the past sixty years, the IAF has attempted to positively impact the economic, social, political and cultural pressures on families and communities through the organizing of congregations and institutions to engage in public life.  This has been accomplished by creating board-based, multi-issue, diverse “power” organizations that identify, train and develop indigenous leadership.  The building and operation of these organizations is guided by Judeo-Christian values and the experience of the American democratic experiment.

The training and calling forth of leaders (a leader being one who has a following and can deliver that following) is based on the IAF’s iron rule:  “Never do for others what they can do for themselves.”  Thus, it teaches the skills of public life – engagement, debate, negotiation, compromise – to ordinary people who want to organize and exercise power on behalf of their families, congregations, schools, neighborhoods and institutions.

In the IAF culture, organizing is defined as “constant disorganizing and re-organizing”, as organizations and people seek to adapt to a constantly changing world.  Consequently, during its 60 years, organizing under the IAF has moved through three distinct phases.  The earliest organizing was neighborhood organizing (e.g., the “Back of the Yards” or the Woodlawn communities, both in Chicago) because power at the time was primarily local.  A second phase of organizing by IAF was congregation-based organizing as city neighborhoods decayed leaving religious institutions as the only effectively organized institutions.  Today, faced with the reality that power is no longer local or even vested finally in cities but is increasingly exercised regionally and nationally, IAF has moved into broad-based organizing.

Broad-based organizing seeks to organize around a “relational” culture – i.e., institutions with the capacity to act effectively by listening to, understanding and powerfully connecting the individual and collective stories of its members, their histories and experiences.  Such organizing, to be effective, must be regional in scope (e.g., the Los Angeles metropolis is an area 150 miles by 95 miles, and with nearly 130 distinct political entities).  Although religious institutions are a primary base of such organization, public and parochial schools, organized labor, civic organizations, social service groups and non-profit agencies encompassing the middle and working classes are a part of the constituency organized.  Building on the premise that power precedes program, a region-wide, broad-based constituency of relational power is built before it can be mobilized on behalf of its negotiated, collective, public interests on a scale necessary to bring about change.

 (Material provided by the IAF) 

NTIC

National Training and Information Center

Neighborhood residents are the experts on the needs of their own neighborhoods.  That’s the radical idea that led to the formation of the National Training and Information Center in 1972.  Understanding this led to a core belief: to be effective, NTIC has to be a catalyst, bringing into partnership the key players who determine the viability of our nation’s neighborhoods.

Today, a group of about 15 organizers, researches and other staff at NTIC carry out that vision.  They offer ideas and tools to “everyday” people from all walks of life who are committed to improving their communities, in three basic ways:

Training - NTIC trains community organizers and key neighborhood leaders from on average 125 local organizations each year.  Training is offered at a low cost to the local organizations, since NTIC’s experience is that groups most needing assistance can least afford it.

Research - Neighborhood organizations frequently find themselves embroiled in policy debates with representatives from the business and public sector; they need specific, useful information to document the problems in their communities.  In many cases, NTIC can provide that information.

Technical assistance and consulting - Organizing staff logs thousands of hours on the phone and travel thousands of miles every year to provide technical assistance, answering questions that usually begin “How do I . . .?”  NTIC has also produced several dozen manuals on the “nuts and bolts” of community organizing and specific issues over the years and has published Disclosure, a bi-monthly newspaper that covers neighborhood organizations around the country.

The philosophy NTIC has long espoused is issue-based community organizing.  It is the process of listening to neighborhood residents identify problems they wish to solve and bringing them together to pursue solutions, then helping to bring together neighborhood residents and representatives with power to solve those problems.  The end result is neighborhood gains, as people who previously were isolated begin to build power and a means to improve their communities – and in the larger picture, the towns, regions, states and eventually the country of which they are a part.

“Of the best victories,” an organizer’s catchphrase runs, “the people will say, ‘We did it ourselves’.”  The victories for neighborhoods are the victories of the many NTIC-trained community organizers who have made neighborhood organizations succeed over the years.

(Material provided by the NTIC)

PICO

People Improving Communities through Organizing

People Improving Communities through Organizing serves a national network of congregation-based community organizations.  PICO’s mission is to build community organizations with the power to improve the quality of life of families and neighborhoods.

Through the PICO network, people learn to participate in and influence our political system and democratic institutions.  Those who were previously ignored, excluded or apathetic become involved.  People’s stake in our society is made real.  Family life is strengthened.  The once-torn fabric of neighborhoods is rewoven.  At the very heart of this mission is the process of helping people to help themselves.

Congregations of all denominations are the building blocks of a locally affiliated PICO community organization.  The members of a local congregation and those living in the neighborhood join together in a powerful expression of unity that transcends racial, ethnic and income differences.  PICO seeks to involve all elements of a community based on the following principles:

·        Respect for human dignity

·        Creation of a just society

·        Development of the whole person.

PICO carries out its mission in three ways.  First, PICO builds new community organizations and provides technical support to existing organizations.  For new projects, PICO raises seed money, assists in creating a sponsoring committee, oversees the initial organizing effort, recruits the organizer, and helps establish a secure local funding base.  Once a local organization is built, PICO provides continuing consultation and technical assistant.

Beginning with one affiliated organization in 1972, the PICO Network today has projects in eight states and 45 cities, which includes over 325 local congregations containing approximately 275,000 families.  Hispanics make up 38% of all PICO families, Anglos 33%, Blacks 21% and Asians 7%.  Twenty-four religious denominations are represented.

Second, PICO Trains leaders.  PICO sponsors joint training for leaders drawn from all of its Network organizations.  This is done at the National Leadership Development Seminar that is held twice each year.  This seminar provides leaders with theory and practice of congregation-based organizing.

Third, PICO recruits and develops community organizers.  There are 39 professional organizers in the PICO Network and 7 staff and consultants working directly for PICO.  Their recruitment and development is a critical function of PICO and a key to its success. 

 (Material provided by PICO) 

RCNO

Regional Congregations and Neighborhood Organizations

Regional Congregations and Neighborhood Organizations is centered in organizing small- to medium-sized African American congregations.  Historically, three institutions have transmitted common values and culture in African American communities: the family, schools and churches.  Families are on the verge of collapse.  Parents have lost control of public schools.  Consequently, the church must act as a primary force in reversing deterioration. 

We are witnessing the end of the “Second Reconstruction” in America.  The United States is shifting from an industrial-base to an information and technological-based society.  As the economy continues to reconstruct itself many of the cultural and economic assumptions under which African American families and institutions have operated are becoming obsolete.  States rights, welfare reform and the dismantling of the Federal “safety net” is pushing more people permanently into the ranks of poverty.  More poverty equates to greater despair, an increase in dysfunctional families and continuing deterioration in public education.

Important lessons from the “First Reconstruction” can inform those concerned about contemporary circumstances.  Concepts of compassion and concern for the poor will take a back seat to the acquisition and consolidation of wealth.  Race relations will continue to deteriorate.  As a result, many of the gains made by people of color will be reversed.  The prison industrial complex will flourish.

Despite the challenges, new economic and political realities will provide opportunities to foster strategies of self-determination and collaboration in communities of need.  RCNO aims to achieve these objectives by building the capacity of small to mid-size African American churches to provide traditional and non-traditional education programs; develop youth intervention programs; assist local congregations in gaining access to affordable credit; and create micro-economic opportunities.

Faith based community organizing provides theologically grounded techniques and skills to effectively organize African American communities.  To do so, however, its churches must augment the “Worship” model of ministry with a “Prophetic Service” model.  In the Worship model, the pastor views the congregation as consumers who consume the word on Sundays and in mid-week Bible studies, and consume through giving tithes and offerings in exchange for hearing sermons; in other words, the congregation is essentially reactive.

In the Prophetic Service model of ministry, however, the pastor views the congregation as producers, the congregation forms leadership teams, these leadership teams address congregation and community issues, the congregation engages in “public discourse” on critical issues, and thus the congregation becomes proactive.  RCNO believes that small to mid-size churches are replete with untapped “human capital” and that capital can be organized as churches work together in a faith-based community organization.

(Material provided by the RCNO)