Andrew Mott directs the Community Learning Project, which fosters learning in the field of community and social change. Formerly executive director of the Center for Community Change -- a Mott Foundation grantee -- he has worked with grassroots community groups around the country for over 35 years, assisting with organizational development, community organizing and nonprofit leadership development. [He has no family ties to the Foundation.]
Mott: In your opinion, what are the key elements of successful community organizing?
Andrew Mott (AM): First and foremost is going into neighborhoods and talking with people about the issues that matter to them and what they want to do about them. That process of listening to their stories, their values and concerns is absolutely basic.
Next is helping people tap into their own capacity to make social change happen. This is particularly important in poor neighborhoods, where people are often disconnected from the traditional systems by which public policies are made. Community organizing can bring them back into the conversation and engage them in creating solutions.
Also key is access to trained professionals who can help guide these activities and cultivate genuine local leadership without imposing their own values. This is a major challenge for the field given the tremendous shortage of organizers, particularly those who reflect the cultures and life experiences of those families they are trying to engage.
Mott: You’ve spoken in the past about the importance of “building an infrastructure of learning” in the field of community organizing. How does this need for professional organizers fit into that infrastructure?
AM: Grassroots organizations are critical to any real and lasting social progress, and the jobs of a frontline organizer or director of such an organization are as difficult as any career you can imagine. Yet there aren’t many formal training opportunities available and so staff usually learn on the job with very little training or technical assistance from the outside.
Building this “infrastructure of learning” includes putting in place relevant training and education -- including coursework at the university level -- and developing technical assistance resources. It’s also about creating forums in which community organizers and leaders can come together for continued learning about the mechanics of running a grassroots organization, strategies for addressing the issues they care about, and so on.
Much of my current work includes exploring these and other ways that we can further enhance the field and attract and retain good community organizers.
Mott: What else is part of building that infrastructure?
AM: For many years, the field of community organizing focused its resources on supporting grassroots-based social change and less on documenting what we learned. Now, after nearly 40 years of working on the toughest social problems in the country, we lack the informational materials and archives which could help us learn from that experience.
There’s also been a generational change within the field, with experienced organizers moving on to other professions. Many of them still believe in the work, are now in government, law and social work, and have the potential to be important allies.
Some of us are starting to think about how alumni associations might be created which could reach out to these folks, document their knowledge and reconnect them to the current work.
Mott: What other projects are you working on?
AM: I’ve recently met with coalitions from the west coast who are creating a regional grassroots campaign on safe, affordable housing policies and changing the “top-down” dynamics by which such policies are often created. I’m helping connect them with groups in other parts of the country doing similar work, so that they have an opportunity to learn from one another. These peer-to-peer connections, with a focus on community organizing, are especially important in these tough times.
Mott: What key lessons for philanthropy regarding the field of community organizing have emerged for you over the years?
AM: Foundations need to look at the issues they’re interested in -- education, economic development, the environment, or whatever else -- from the perspectives of the individuals, families and communities who are directly affected. Foundations cannot assume that they know and understand those perspectives; instead, they need to empower people in these communities to identify and analyze their concerns, and create change for themselves.
Also, you can’t just take a program that works in one community and assume it will work in another. It may be that the new community would benefit from a similar program, but it’s also possible that it needs something completely different. You can’t get to the end result without first going through the process of listening and understanding.
Additional Resources
Click here to read a report by Andrew Mott on the role of university-level programs in developing professional community organizers.