Projects
Building Movement Projects
May 31, 2005, 17:23

The Building Movement Project's work is particularly timely given the shift in the US political and economic climate over the past two years. The economic downturn coupled with tax cuts is having a devastating effect on services and entitlements for low-income and other disenfranchised groups, and there has been a dramatic reduction of funds available to nonprofit organizations. Nonprofits are fighting both for the survival of their constituents as well as their own financial survival as organizations. This creates a particularly difficult challenge for groups.

Rather than do more with less, exhausting the staff and watching their gains erode, groups need to create space in and outside the organization to re-engage their constituents and rethink their work. The strategies below all emphasize the need for organizations to develop ideas and actions to pursue social justice goals. Places to reflect and conceptualize should not be contained only in think-tanks and academic settings; they need to be built from the ground up, enlisting unusual allies in nonprofit groups to build movements for social change.

The Building Movement Project engages four strategies to accomplish its goals. These include:

1. Changing the discourse and practice within the nonprofit sector to endorse values of justice, fairness, equity, and sustainability.
2. Identifying and working with social service organizations as neglected sites for social change/justice activities where staff and constituencies can be engaged as participants in democratic practices for social change.
3. Supporting young leaders who bring new ideas and energy to social change work and the promise of developing new forms of movement building.
4. Listening to and engaging people working in social change organizations ? especially grassroots and community-based groups ? to strengthen their ability to connect their vision and mission to practice.