Movement Builders
Movement Builders
May 27, 2005, 14:15

Here is a selection of organizations and sites that the Building Movement Project (its staff, colleagues, supporters, and participants) have found particularly interesting and useful. These organizations - new or perhaps already very familiar to you - are doing work in the nonprofit sector that could potentially assist you in your work or in your thinking about the field. Some months we feature a particular group or rotate the list below to include those organizations that you indicate have been helpful in your work. To suggest other sites, please email us with a link and brief description.

Featured Movement Builder
Western States Center
A catalyst and resource for progressive social change organizations in the West. The Center provides training, consultations and resources to a wide range of community and constituency-based organizations with a particular focus on supporting organizations based in communities of color, immigrant and refugee communities, queer communities, and rural communities.

Applied Research Center
The Applied Research Center is a public policy, educational and research institute whose work emphasizes issues of race and social change.

ACORN
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is the nation's largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, working together for social justice and stronger communities.

David Bollier
David Bollier is an independent policy strategist, journalist, activist and consultant with an evolving public-interest portfolio. His work tends to focus on a few key concerns: reclaiming the American commons, understanding how digital technologies are changing democratic culture, fighting the excesses of intellectual property law, fortifying consumer rights and promoting citizen action.

Center for Community Change
CCC helps low-income people build powerful, effective organizations through which they can change their communities and public policies for the better.

Coalition on Human Needs
The Coalition on Human Needs is an alliance of national organizations working together to promote public policies that address the needs of low-income and other vulnerable people.

GIFT - Grassroots Institute for Fundraising Training
Grassroots Institute for Fundraising Training develops and strengthens the grassroots fundraising skills of people working for social justice.

Grassroots Fundraising Journal and Chardon Press
The Grassroots Fundraising Journal helps nonprofit organizations learn how to raise more money to support their important work.
www.grassrootsfundraising.org

Movement Strategy Center

Movement Strategy Center (MSC) is a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization, that is committed to advancing the next generation of leaders for a sustainable progressive movement.

www.movementstrategy.org

National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy
The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy is dedicated to helping the philanthropic community advance the traditional values of social and economic justice for all Americans. Publications include Axis of Ideology: Conservative Foundations and Public Policy, and The State of Philanthropy 2004.
www.ncrp.org

National Organizers Alliance
NOA's mission is to advance progressive organizing for social, economic and environmental justice and to sustain, support and nurture the people of all ages who do it.
www.noacentral.org

National Priorities Project
The National Priorities Project focuses on changing federal tax and budget priorities by showing the local impact on communities, devising tools for grassroots activism and building bridges between social issue and peace groups.
www.nationalpriorities.org

New Voices
New Voices, inaugurated in 1999, is a national leadership development program that helps nonprofit organizations recruit or retain innovative, new talent. It awards salary-support grants to small nonprofits demonstrating a commitment to cultivating and strengthening the leadership potential of creative and diverse "new voices" in the field.
newvoices.aed.org/home.html

OMB Watch
OMB Watch monitors the activities of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which oversees regulation, the budget, information collection and dissemination, proposed legislation, testimony by agencies and much more.
www.ombwatch.org

Political Research Associates
An independent, nonprofit research center that studies antidemocratic, authoritarian, and other oppressive movements, institutions, and trends.
www.publiceye.org

Progressive Technology Project
(PTP) supports grassroots social change  community-led organizing in low income communities and communities of color. Its goal is strengthening community organizing with effective technology. Its programs include supporting a community of practice of people using technology as part of their grassroots organizing efforts.
www.progressivetech.org

Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty & Genocide
Project South uses popular education as an organizing strategy to develop strong leadership and build effective movement based organizations in the US South and around the country.
www.projectsouth.org

Southern Empowerment Project
The Southern Empowerment Project trains community organizers, fundraiser, and grassroots community leaders. SEP's training includes innovative training in community-based fundraising and publishes You Can Do It!, a participatory manual on fundraising. SEP is also supporting the development of Latinos Unidos, a new organization in east Tennessee.
www.southernempowerment.org

SouthWest Organizing Project (SWOP)
SWOP is a statewide multi-racial, multi-issue, community based membership organization. Since 1980 we have worked to make it possible for thousands of New Mexicans to begin to have a place and voice in social, economic and environmental decisions that affect our lives. Our mission is "working to empower our communities to realize racial and gender equality and social and economic justice."
www.swop.net

The Tomales Bay Institute
The Tomales Bay Institute was founded in 2001 by a group of outside-the-box thinkers seeking to expand the scope of the possible in American politics and policy. The mission of the Tomales Bay Institute is to develop an intellectual framework that includes the commons as well as the market and the state, and to inject that expanded framework into America's vision of possibilities.
www.earthisland.org/tbi

USAction
USAction and their affiliates in 24 states join together to win social, racial and economic justice for all. They connect issues to elections and policy to politics. They seek to take our democracy back from the corporate elite and the well-heeled special interests that dominate the political process today.
www.usaction.org

YouthAction
YouthAction works with youth and community-based organizations, primarily in communities of color, low income communities, and LGBTQ communities. They are committed to finding locally-driven solutions, and to the building of a more genuine democracy.
www.youthaction.net

Z Magazine
Z magazine is an independent monthly of critical thinking on political, cultural, social, and economic life in the US.
www.zmag.org