By SHEILA BEACHUM BILBY
Rooted in the tenet that government by the people forms the bedrock of democracy, a national network of faith-based community-organizing groups coordinated a non-partisan voter-engagement effort in 2012 that reached 1.6 million people.
“That’s always been the basis for our work — effective and engaged democracy,” said the Rev. Michael-Ray Mathews, director of clergy organizing for the PICO National Network, now in 19 states.
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 Organizing is reaching more people than ever in the U.S.
Photo by Rick Smith Photography
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The voter-engagement initiative demonstrates how institution-based community organizing has grown markedly in the U.S. over the past decade, which is documented in a new study.
“Building Bridges, Building Power: Developments in Institution-Based Community Organizing,” takes a comprehensive look at the field, which has historically sought to bridge the divides of race, class and religion in American society.
The study was undertaken by Interfaith Funders, a network of faith-based and secular funders supporting community organizing as a vehicle for civic engagement.
As a network participant, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation has provided $265,000 in support since 2004.
The study documents what has happened in organizing since Interfaith Funders first surveyed the field in 1999.
Kathy Partridge, the network’s executive director, says that compared to that earlier study, organizing is now reaching more people than ever. This includes an expansion in the number of organizing groups and a growing sophistication in innovative and strategic capacity-building to generate more community-based civic leadership.
Collectively, these groups are tackling issues that in some way touch all Americans, such as health care, home foreclosures, immigration, job training, public safety, racism and unemployment.
“People do want to participate effectively in building grassroots democratic participation, and these organizations are seen as vehicles to doing that,” Partridge said.
The study is based on detailed demographic and other information from 178 of the nation’s 189 institution-based community-organizing groups. The participating groups represent 4,100 member institutions — including churches, schools, labor unions and neighborhood associations — and collectively represent more than 5 million people.
The study uncovered trend lines in the field that mark a shift toward:
- more female, younger and minority-status community organizers;
- more secular institutions getting involved in organizing networks;
- an increase in substantive efforts to address racial and ethnic tensions; and
- an expansion from strictly local work to organizing in the state and national arenas.
Partridge attributes much of the growth in the field to its success in developing leaders, especially women and people of color. Today, for example, 47 percent of directors are women, up from 28 percent 10 years ago.
“The organizing groups have made an effort to reach out to systematically recruit more women, and mentor and develop younger organizers, and to ensure that their staff is diverse in terms of gender, age, race and ethnicity,” she said.
Lead researcher Brad Fulton said the field is going both “deeper and broader,” because groups are strengthening their roots in core urban areas, and new groups have been established in the suburbs as well as in nine states that had no such groups a decade ago. Since then, there has been a net increase of 56 institution-based, community-organizing groups nationwide.
“This growth is a reflection of the health of the field, the development of leaders, and increased efficiency because all of this occurred without seeing more money come into the field,” said Fulton, a doctoral candidate in sociology at Duke University.
A decade ago, the organizing model focused on local issues. Today, two-thirds of all institution-based community organizing groups collaborate in some way with partners at the regional, state and national levels.
“You have to begin to get more strategic and look at the bigger picture and move from cities to regional policy to national policy if you really want to make lasting change,” said the Rev. Sue Engh, director for congregation-based organizing with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, an Interfaith Funders member.
The study found that a majority of the groups are explicitly discussing racial and ethnic issues, which is building trust and creating new avenues to address “structural racism.”
“When those conversations are set up well and people are invited into them — allowed to say what they think and say difficult things to each other, and yet talk through it — that’s where you build the trust,” said Richard Wood, the study’s research director and an associate professor at the University of New Mexico.
“And, especially when people then take action together on some public issue.”