 About
The Building Movement Project was conceived out of a meeting with twenty people working in small social change nonprofits from across the United States. The meeting, sponsored by the Ford Foundation and held at the Hauser Center in the fall of 1999, examined the role of social change nonprofits in the larger sector, and the constraints they faced in meeting their goals. The results of these discussions led to the Building Movement project, which is designed to explore and challenge (1) the current assumptions and expectations of how US-based social change nonprofit organizations should operate and (2) their impact on building larger movements for change. The project is focused on three areas that emerged during discussions at the 1999 meeting: In the fall of 2000, the project staff spent a considerable amount of time creating a small, extremely committed steering committee that has become a working study/leadership group for the project. The involvement of the steering committee as partners in the project has been crucial as we grappled with how to address issues such as structural constraints on organizations, impact of dominant free-market culture on social change work, ways to aggregate small social change groups into effective movements for change, the role of theory and education in social change nonprofits, among others. The committee has given invaluable guidance on the implementation and outcomes sought by the project. In 2001 the Building Movement Project held five regional meetings to explore the intersection between building movement towards social change and building social change organizations. These discussions, which took place in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Knoxville, New York, and Oakland were designed to deepen our understanding of how to enhance and support the vision and mission of progressive social change organizations -- those interested in changing the distribution of resources and power for disenfranchised groups -- through their structures and practices. We were especially interested in the relationship between the strategies of organizations and their form and structure. Our question was how do organizations develop strategies and structures to facilitate the process of building momentum towards social change, and when do strategies and structures hurt this momentum? Our goal in these discussions was to gain insight into the connection between the vision and mission of progressive social change organizations, and the tools and support they have for implementing their vision. We also wanted to amplify the concerns and ideas of those working in social change organizations. Finally, we were interested in how to recognize and address the constraints of the current external environment and its influence on organizations building movement for social, economic and racial justice. The results of these meeting have been collected and analyzed in the report: The project has evolved and expanded in the time since these initial meetings and conversations but the staff and steering committee continually return to the issues initially raised to make sure the project is addressing the critical concerns of those individuals working for social justice. © Copyright 2005 by Building Movement |