Funding the community organizing movement in Europe
(Editor’s note: this conversation between organizers and funders took place in Berlin at the end of 2019. It was a very different world. Now everything has changed with the coronavirus crisis. However, in an environment of extreme social isolation, closing borders, and great uncertainty, this discussion of the role organizing plays in building an open and resilient democratic society feels more relevant than ever before.)
Introduction
The European Community Organizing Network (ECON) is leading a European-wide process of building stronger ties and understanding between community organizers working on national and regional organizing initiatives and European funders seeking to engage meaningfully with the community organizing sector.
Following from an initial meeting in July of 2018, and the subsequent publication of the donor-facing study entitled Making a Way Forward: Community Organizing and the Future of Democracy in Europe, we again gathered approximately thirty organizers and funders for an opportunity to think together about strengthening civil society in the face of numerous threats, as well as opportunities.
The focus of this session was to look for concrete ways that donors and organizers can work together to strengthen the community organizing sector in Europe. To start things off, participants in the event listened to a panel discussion of the authors of the study. (Biographies of the panelists can be found below.)
What follows is a transcript of the panel discussion. It is based on notes taken at the meeting, and it is edited for brevity and clarity.
Anna Striethorst (moderator): I’d like to start by lifting up some of the questions that arose from the earlier meeting in 2018 that inspired the creation of this study on community organizing and the funders working in that space. In that meeting, which took place in Hungary in the summer of 2018, we heard funders raise questions about how a funder can support this kind of work in a place where there is no organization able or willing to lead a community organizing project. We heard questions about the challenges of measuring the impact of organizing. And we heard about the lack of data and understanding on the whole within the funder community which is holding the development of community organizing back.
I’d like to start with you Betti. What would be your recommendations for a conversation between organizers and funders, given these questions?
Bernadett Sebály: I will start by saying that I worked for a decade organizing in Hungary in what was and is a very difficult political context, and now I am in the process of studying and writing about it, including the work I did for this study. So why do I think organizing is an answer to these challenges in this particular moment? I believe that it is important to make clear that “community organizing” is not simply a “methodology.” It is rather an investment in democracy, in civic development. It brings people back into democracy. It gives back to people at the grassroots a sense of agency, and it provides continuity between actions such as mass protests.
One example I would give is a campaign led by the disability rights movement in Hungary. This campaign recently won a 50% increase in the social benefit paid to parents caring for children with disabilities. This campaign was a long time in the making. For many years it was pushed forward by a group of parents directly affected by the policy. This effort was bolstered by a community organizer (herself an affected parent) who supported the leaders of this campaign to build movement infrastructure and who developed leadership among the parents.
“‘[C]ommunity organizing’ is not simply a ‘methodology.’ It is rather an investment in democracy, in civic development. It brings people back into democracy. It gives back to people at the grassroots a sense of agency, and it provides continuity between actions such as mass protests.”
Together, the folks working on this campaign used the election moment to raise the profile of their issue — they managed to get politicians talking about the need to address the low pay for caregivers in this sector. The organizers were also able to launch an “air campaign” to support the on-the-ground organizing by partnering with digital campaigners. At the height of the campaign they were able to gather 50,000 signatures on a nationwide petition in support of their demands. This would have been unimaginable to the parent-leaders a few years before, but thanks to the support and training of community organizers this campaign reached a level of scale and effectiveness that it needed to break through.
Anna Striethorst: Thank you, Betti. That care-giver campaign is a very good example of how organizing looks and feels in practice. I’d like to turn now to Deborah Doane. Deborah, for this study you spoke with a lot of funders who are working in the community organizing space. What were some of your take-aways?
Deborah Doane: Yes, for this study I interviewed nine funders working in the community organizing space. I am also currently doing research on civil work and the fight to keep civic space open, and everyone I am talking to on that study is also telling me how important they think organizing is as a way to preserve the civic space. Organizing builds confidence in people that they can bring about change.
However, it is also the case that on the whole, funders in Europe still don’t know a lot about community organizing. There is a perception of risk, and there is also a worry that it could get too close to party-political work. Also, time and scale was a big issue — it takes too much time, and funders are asking how organizing can actually get bigger and show a better impact? Other funders raised the challenge of not finding partners in some areas where they want to work. And of course, there is always the challenge of being more willing to let go of the process when funding organizing since it is so based on bottom-up community involvement.
“[W]e need to get better at measuring community organizing, and funders need to make a shift from measuring simple outcomes to implementing ways of measuring the process of organizing.”
In terms of overall takeaways, I think there are couple things. A lot of it boils down to risk management. Also we need to get better at measuring community organizing, and funders need to make a shift from measuring simple outcomes to implementing ways of measuring the process of organizing. Finally, I would say there is a real hunger for more practical examples of organizing at work.
Anna Striethorst: Thanks, Deborah. I want to bring Dave Beckwith into this conversation. Dave, you worked as both an organizer and a funder of organizing in the United States for several decades. Tell us about your experience as a funder of organizing.
Dave Beckwith: Well, I will start by making clear that organizing works. I don’t think we need to pretend that this has not been proven. There are many, many examples we can point to that show how organizing has made practical changes on the ground. It is a practice that gives people a voice and embraces the notion that everyone should be able to speak for themselves in our society. There are, of course, ways to make that voice stronger, and the question we should be asking ourselves is what we can do to amplify that voice of local communities.
I think we also need to acknowledge the need for structure in this. In my experience as a funder in the US, one of the ideas that was out there was the notion that supporting community organizing always looked like supporting very grassroots (and not always very organized) initiatives. However, I see the need for organizations that form a bigger network of these initiatives. And I also see a need for having organizers who are trained for the work of organizing over the long haul. This can not be done if we simply sentimentalize hyper-localism in community organizing.
“In my experience as a funder in the US, one of the ideas that was out there was the notion that supporting community organizing always looked like supporting very grassroots (and not always very organized) initiatives. However, I see the need for organizations that form a bigger network of these initiatives.”
Ultimately, my view is that funders and organizers need each other. As a funder I could not do anything if I did not have the partner organizations on the ground who could build out community organizing projects at some level of scale. We are all very much in this together.
Anna Striethorst: Let’s hear from you Gordon. You have been working for a long time in the community organizing sector in the US, and more recently you are now working in an international context as well. How did this set of perspectives shape your contributions to this study?
Gordon Whitman: Thanks, Anna. To give a bit of context, I am coming to this conversation rooted in my work with Faith in Action in the United States where over 15 years I was involved in the process of transforming a small network of regionally-based organizations, that also had a training center, into a large national network of faith-based community organizations in the United States. I am now working internationally as well, including advising some faith-based organizing experiments in Hungary and Slovakia.
I would pick up on what Dave said, but I would say it is not enough for us to simply say “organizing works.” We need to break that down more. For me there are three important things that I would want to hear a community leader say. First, “my life is better as a result of participating in this organizing.” Second, “I see myself and the world differently.” And finally, “My community has more power.”
“It was also critical for us in the [US] organizing sector to take a deep look at how we had been working and to shift our practice…it was a very important transition for us to make to synthesize our impulse toward very local interventions led by local leaders with the need for this to fit together in a larger theory of broad social transformation.”
On the question of scale, in the US, as we point out in the study, we have dramatically increased the size of the community organizing sector in the last 8–10 years. It is now viewed by many people as a key element of the infrastructure that is needed to transform the United States. However, to get to this place, it was not enough for us organizers to simply say “you funders need to change how you work.” It was also critical for us in the organizing sector to take a deep look at how we had been working and to shift our practice.
For many years it was also the case that we organizers were not embracing scale in our work. We were trained in very locally-oriented traditions of organizing. However the problems we face are not going to be solved only at the neighborhood level. So for those of us in the organizing sector it was a very important transition to make to synthesize our impulse toward very local interventions led by local leaders with the need for this to fit together in a larger theory of broad social transformation. This did not happen overnight, but in my opinion it was a necessary shift for us organizers to make before we could start thinking about truly national interventions in the United States.
Anna Striethorst: Finally, I want to turn to you Eszter. You work at the Open Society Initiative for Europe, and you have been an early adopter of the need for community organizing. In particular, you have been involved in the efforts to grow the organizing sector in Central and Eastern Europe. You often use the word “agency” to describe what you hope to accomplish with organizing. Can you tell us about that?
Eszter Szűcs: We started supporting organizing in Hungary in 2015. It was a time when the space for civic initiatives was contracting in dramatic ways, and the traditional methods of advocacy did not seem to be working. So we decided we needed to change our approach. Three things eventually led us to community organizing. First, we were drawn to its strong focus on building power at the community level. Second, we were impressed with the constant involvement of people from the grassroots in the work. And finally, we noticed the strong focus on developing the leadership in local people.
“One of the things I have learned is that there are two ways to look at organizing — you can look at the actual outcome (i.e. a park built, a dangerous road fixed) or you can look at the process of developing real participation and leadership from the community, of exercising one’s rights in a democratic system.”
I want to speak about the idea of “agenda driven” funding, which often comes up. For us we decided that we wanted to focus on the process of community organizing, and particularly how that process gives a sense of agency back to local communities. We were — especially in the first year — struggling with a number of the issues that funders face when getting involved with community organizing. Namely, we struggled with how to measure impact, how to move in an untested space, how to square a long-term process-oriented practice like organizing with short grant cycles, and how to scale-up the work.
One of the things I have learned is that there are two ways to look at organizing — you can look at the actual outcome (i.e. a park built, a dangerous road fixed) or you can look at the process of developing real participation and leadership from the community, of exercising one’s rights in a democratic system. We choose to focus on the latter. This requires letting go of a good deal of control, but we have found that by focusing on the process of developing real participation and leadership as the core metric of organizing it has helped us make sense of this relatively new field for us as a funder.
Anna Striethorst: I want to thank all of our speakers for this very interesting discussion and for their contributions to this study. These conversations are fairly new in Europe, but I am excited that in every one of them we are finding new faces in the room and exploring these topics more and more deeply. Thank you all!
Biographies of the speakers:
- MODERATOR: Anna Striethorst. Anna worked on the study in her role as the Ariadne Network European Program Manager. She is now the Senior Sector Officer for Civil Society at EEA and Norway Grants and previously worked as a Senior Policy Officer of the Open Society Roma Initiatives Office.
- Bernadett Sebály is a community organizer, trainer and mentor with the Civil College Foundation in Hungary. She is the editor of the book titled The Society of Power or the Power of Society? The Basics of Community Organizing, and the author of many articles. She currently studies at CEU’s School of Public Policy.
- Deborah Doane is a London-based writer and consultant working on social justice and human rights issues. Most recently, she was the Director of the Funders’ Initiative for Civil Society (FICS), and now works in a portfolio capacity with a range of clients in philanthropy and civil society. She is a partner of RightsCoLab, a think tank where she works on the future of civil society.
- Dave Beckwith is the principal consultant of the Great Lakes Institute, based in Toledo, Ohio. He has worked since 1971 as a community organizer, trainer and consultant, including ten years as Executive Director of The Needmor Fund, a leading foundation funding community organizing in the United States.
- Gordon Whitman is Senior Consultant to Faith in Action, one of the largest grassroots organizing networks in the United States, with growing work internationally. He opened Faith in Action’s Washington, DC office in 2008 and led the network’s effort to develop national campaign capacity on issues ranging from health care to immigration and is the author of Stand Up! How to Get Involved, Speak Out, and Win in a World on Fire.
- Eszter Szűcs is a program officer with the Open Society Initiative for Europe (OSIFE), based in their Berlin office. OSIFE has been an early supporter of community organizing in Europe. Recognizing the need to broaden the base of funders working in the community organizing space, OSIFE funded the publication of the study.