Community Organizing

Strategy and Organization

Prepared by:

Center for Community Organizing

Banská Bystrica

SLOVAKIA

Business Citizens

Government

What is Community Organizing?

Building power through involving a constituency in identifying problems they share and the solutions to those problems that they desire

Identifying the people and structures that can make those solutions possible; enlisting those targets in the effort through negotiation and using confrontation and pressure when needed

Building an institution that is democratically controlled by a constituency that can develop the capacity to take on further problems and that embodies the will and the power of that constituency.

Developing Strategy

Rule 1 - Get comfortable with the words Conflict and Agitation

Rule 2 – The tool we use to expose conflict is agitation

Rule 3 – We want to choose the strategy that will expose the conflict as openly, quickly and deeply as possible

Rule 4 – The organizing target is in control of the pressure

What is the strategic planning process?

It is a realistic, detailed assessment of your organizations power and that of your

organizing target. This process should lead your organization to one of the two following

conclusions:

A. The organization is strong enough to take on the target directly and win.

OR

B. The organization is not strong enough to win right now.

The organization is not strong

enough to win right now.

If your answer was B, your organization has two options:

1. Take on an issue campaign that will build the organizing capacity of your organization so that it can eventually win the primary issue.

2. Go into coalition with other like minded organizations and take on the primary issue directly.

Strategy Chart by Midwest Academy

Strategy Chart

Goals Organizational Considerations

Constituents, Allies and Opponents

Targets Tactics

1. List the long-term objectives of your campaign.

2. State the intermediate goals of this issue campaign. What continues victory?

How will the campaign:

• Win concrete improvements in people’s lives?

• Give people a sense of their own power?

• Alter the relations of power?

3. What short term or partial victories can you win as steps toward your long-term goal?

Goals

Strategy Chart

Goals Organizational Considerations

Constituents, Allies and Opponents

Targets Tactics

1. List the resources that your organization brings to the campaign. Include: money, number of staff, facilities, reputation, etc.

What is the budget, including in-kind contributions, for this campaign?

2. List the specific ways in which you want your organization to be strengthened by this campaign. Fill in numbers for each:

• expand leadership group

• increase experience of existing leadership

• build membership base

• expand into new constituencies

• raise more money

3. List internal problems that have to be considered if the campaign is to succeed.

Organizational Considerations

Strategy Chart

Goals Organizational Considerations

Constituents, Allies and Opponents

Targets Tactics

1. Who cares about this issue enough to join in or help the organization?

• Whose problem is it?

• What do they gain if they win?

• What risks are they taking?

• What power do they have over the target?

• Into what groups are they organized?

2. Who are your opponents?

• What will your victory win?

• What will they do/spend to oppose you?

• How strong they are?

Constituents, Allies and Opponents

Strategy Chart

Goals Organizational Considerations

Constituents, Allies and Opponents

Targets Tactics

1. Primary Targets

A target is always a person. It is never an institution or elected body.

• Who has the power to give you what you want?

• What power do you have over them?

2. Secondary Targets

• Who has power over the people with the power to give you what you want?

• What power do you have over them?

Targets Strategy Chart

Goals Organizational Considerations

Constituents, Allies and Opponents

Targets Tactics

For each target, list the tactic that each constituent group can best use to make its power felt.

Tactics must be:

• In context • Flexible and creative • Directed at a specific target • Make sense to the membership • Be backed up by a specific form of power

Tactics include:

• Media events • Actions for information and demands • Public hearings • Strikes • Voter registration and voter education • Law suits • Accountability sessions • Elections and negotiations

Tactics Strategy Chart

Goals Organizational Considerations

Constituents, Allies and Opponents

Targets Tactics

Tactics

1. Will people accept it?

2. Will it dramatize and build the issue?

3. Will it throw the enemy off guard?

4. Will it personalize the enemy?

5. Will it be fun for the people?

6. What alternatives must be planned?

7. Will it get us to the bargaining table?

Action

Action has a two-fold significance for citizens‘ organization. On the most simple level, the action is the focusing of

organizational energy to effect certain results – police attention to neglected drug traffic, favorable insurance rates, building a

branch bank in a neighborhood that needs and wants it.

More importantly, action fuels the organizing process. Action is to organization, what oxygen is to our bodies. Without action, the process is reduced to a sociology class or navel-

gazing. Action is the womb of discovery - discovery of self, of values. In the actions new sides of current leaders emerge.

New leaders come to the fore, talkers evaporate. And actions create reactions from opponents, which require flexible and factual decision-making by the collective leadership. Action enables the organization to grow, to deal with increasingly

complex issues, to win more substantial victories, and thereby again increase its growth.

Ed Chambers

Director, Industrial Area Foundations

Action

The most important part of the action is the reflection and evaluation afterward. Our

organizations plan “actions” – public dramas, where masses of ordinary people collaboratively and collectively move on a particular issue with

particular focus - which sometimes produce a reaction that is unanticipated. This reaction then produces the grist for the real teaching of politics

and interpretation – how to appreciate the negotiations, the challenge, the argument, and the

political conversation.

Ernie Cortes

Supervisor, Industrial Area Foundation

Organizational Structure

1. When you think about organizational structure, what do you think about?

2. Why is organizational structure important? a) clear mission, purpose and values

b) orderly and democratic way of group decision making

c) clear roles, accountability and transparency

d) legal status ( for handling money, liability, etc.)

Organizational Structure

3. Elements of organizational structure

a) rules or by-laws

b) mission statement

c) membership

d) research and action committees

e) officers

f) elections

g) decision-making process

4. What sort of organizational structure would effectively work for us?

Potential Structure of Community

Organizing 1. Convention

a) full membership

b) meets one time every one or two years

c) elects Leadership Team, approves rules of the organization, decides overall direction of the organization

d) possibly combined with an action meeting

2. Leadership Team – Board of Directors a) 6 – 20 leaders (i.e. persons with a following)

representing the diversity of the organization

b) meets monthly

c) makes ongoing organizational decisions

d) personnel, finance and other permanent or temporary committees

Potential Structure of Community

Organizing 3. Research and Action Committees

a) 5 – 50 individuals, people interested in the community problem or vision

b) Meets as often as needed

c) Conducts research and develops potential solutions

d) Presents research findings and action recommendations to the Leadership Team for approval

4. Action Meetings a) Full membership and supporters

b) At least one time a year

c) Where organization's people power interacts with public officials

Potential Structure of Community

Organizing

5. Paid Staff a) facilitator, not decision maker

b) assists volunteers in all aspects of organization’s work

c) hired, fired, supported and held accountable by the Leadership Team

6. Laws or Rules a) written rules regarding organizational

structure, membership and decision-making processes

b) often a legal document

Leaders

By leaders, we mean men and women who have a following and who can consistently deliver that following. Most so-called leaders are isolated individuals, either self-appointed, or fronts promoted by politicians, the media,

or outside economic interests. Responsible elected leadership maintains its quality and reliability through a

disciplined system of mutual accountability. The system is simple: If you are not committed to an internal training process in which the central value is to teach primary

leaders how to find and in turn teach other leaders, you don’t belong. These leaders recognize that leadership is not by nature a form of individual aggrandizement, but

rather a means continually to expand the number of their fellow-leaders in the interest of collective power.

Ed Chambers

Director, Industrial Area Foundation