Community Organizing: Practice, Research, and Policy Implications

Social Issues and Policy Review, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2015, pp.
193--222
Community Organizing: Practice, Research,

and Policy Implications
Brian D. Christens∗
University of Wisconsin–Madison
Paul W. Speer
Vanderbilt University
Community organizing—a field of practice in which residents collaboratively in-

vestigate and undertake sustained collective action regarding social issues of
mutual concern—has often proven an effective method for achieving changes
in policies and systems at local, regional, and even national scales. The field
is dynamic. It has expanded and has undergone numerous changes over re-
cent decades. Research from a variety of disciplines has documented, evalu-
ated, and informed many of these changes. This article scrutinizes the evolv-
ing field of community organizing, with a particular focus on the current
state of social and psychological research on broad-based community orga-
nizing processes and outcomes. These findings include not only the effects of
community organizing efforts on policies and systems, but also the influences of
community organizing on psychological changes among the people and groups
who participate. These findings are incorporated into recommendations for poli-
cies, practices, and future research.
Introduction
Community organizing is an umbrella term for a field of practice in which

residents collaboratively investigate and take collective action regarding social
issues of mutual concern. Most often, the intent of organizing is to change policies
regarding local issues, which have included, for instance: improvements in public
safety (Speer et al., 2003), housing (Speer & Christens, 2012), employment con-
ditions (Osterman, 2006), transportation (Speer, Tesdahl, & Ayers, 2014), public
∗ Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Brian D. Christens, Univer-

sity of Wisconsin–Madison, School of Human Ecology, 1300 Linden Drive, Madison, WI 53706.
Tel: 608-265-9169 [e-mail: [email protected]].
193

C 2015 The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues
194 Christens and Speer
education (Mediratta, Shah, & McAllister, 2009), and public health and environ-
mental issues (Brown et al., 2003). Although the term is often used in the context
of shorter-term initiatives (e.g., electoral campaigns) and issue-based advocacy
efforts (e.g., grassroots lobbying, direct action, civil disobedience), this review
restricts the definition of community organizing to only those efforts whose issues
and strategies for action are selected by local resident-leaders, and whose goal is
to build power and sustain their organizing initiative over time and across multiple
issues.1 Moreover, although this review does draw on the interdisciplinary litera-
ture on community organizing, the primary focus is on psychological studies of
community organizing, which have been conducted from social, community, and
developmental psychological perspectives.
As a phenomenon, community organizing encompasses a number of potential
points of interest for social issues researchers, policymakers, and funders. These
include community organizing as a topic of study, as a source of new possibil-
ities for research design and methodology, and as a model for community and
systems-level interventions to tackle social issues. This review addresses each of
these points of interest, and consists of five main sections: (1) an introduction to
community organizing processes, which features a brief example of an organizing
initiative for the purpose of grounding further discussion (2) a review of research
on some of the major shifts that have occurred in the field of organizing practice,
in which particular attention is paid to tensions between traditional models for
organizing and more recent or emerging models, as well as the most promising
recent developments, (3) a review of the current state of research evidence on com-
munity organizing with a particular focus on psychological studies of organizing
processes and outcomes, (4) a discussion of implications and recommendations
for policy makers, and (5) summary and conclusions.
Community Organizing
Community organizing processes are bound together by a set of common

elements, including: (1) assessment/relationship development, (2) participatory
research, (3) action or mobilization, and (4) evaluation and/or reflection. These
common elements are often integrated through cycles of learning and action. An
example of a community organizing initiative, summarized from a recent case
study (Speer & Christens, 2012), demonstrates the integration of these common
elements.
A local organizing group, CCO, in Kansas City, Missouri, is a multi-issue,
congregation-based community organization and an affiliate of the PICO National
Network. CCO has worked on numerous issues over the years, including crime,
substance abuse, affordable housing, redevelopment, predatory lending, incarcer-
ation, and health care. Congregation members work to identify and understand
local issues, which are addressed in federated efforts by CCO. In the late 1990s,
Community Organizing 195
one congregation in a declining inner-ring neighborhood of Kansas City conducted

over 100 one-to-one conversations with members and neighbors. This process is
an example of the first common element of community organizing highlighted
above: assessment/relationship development. They heard repeated stories of dete-
riorated housing, abandonment and blight, and determined that they should address
affordable housing and redevelopment in their community.
Members of this congregation worked with the city’s Housing Department
to rehabilitate houses in their local community. The city, at the urging of this
congregation, pledged to invest in rehabilitating deteriorated housing, with the
idea that when houses were sold the proceeds would go back into a revolving
fund to rehabilitate additional houses and strengthen this community. After some
period of time, however, it became clear that the city was not following through on
their commitments. Leaders of the organizing effort then sent a small group of 13
from the congregation to meet with two city council members and the Director of
Housing and Community Development to detail the shortcomings by the city. This
meeting is an example of participatory research, the second common element of
organizing. At this meeting, the city pledged to follow through again. Congregation
leaders gave the city three months to make good on that pledge. Members evaluated
their efforts—as they do after every meeting (common element four described
above: evaluation and/or reflection)—and determined that their council members
were overly deferential to the housing director, accepting on face value all that the
director pledged to do.
Exactly three months and six days after that pledge, the organizing group
within this congregation held a meeting with the Director of Housing and Com-
munity Development, their two city council representatives, and the Mayor to hold
the city accountable for their broken commitments. At this public meeting, the
Director of Housing asserted that his department had purchased and rehabilitated
six houses in the target community. The organizing group knew this to be untrue,
but followed up after the meeting, confirming that the city had, in fact, rehabil-
itated only one house. In evaluating this meeting, members of this congregation
determined that they needed to share more of their experiences with other congre-
gations in the city that were members of CCO. Additionally, these congregation
leaders researched reports to federal agencies about how funds were expended,
and found that the city agency had claimed to have rehabbed houses that, in fact,
it had not. CCO leaders met with local media who reported, in print and on tele-
vision, about the houses that the city had claimed had been rehabilitated, but that
in fact remained in disrepair, overgrown with weeds, contributing to blight in the
neighborhood.
Due to the persistent level of dysfunction and corruption, leaders in the or-
ganizing group decided that personnel changes or additional programming would
not speak to the entrenched problems at this department; they instead determined
that what was required was systemic change in housing policy and administration
for the city. At this point—over two years into a single congregation’s organizing
on housing in their neighborhood—a federated effort by all member congregations
in CCO worked together to press for policy changes. Many congregations within
CCO had worked on housing issues in their local communities, and they shared
some of the experiences of the congregation described here. Additionally, lead-
ers from other congregations realized the interdependent nature of housing with
various other social issues they worked on—improving schools, reducing crime,
access to credit. All were deeply influenced by local housing policies.
Together, the federated group of CCO congregations conducted additional
research with key actors around housing policy: city council members, officials
in charge of community development block grant expenditures, local housing
nonprofits, the city auditor, the home builders association, the Federal National
Mortgage Association, their U.S. senators, and others. Combining this research
with their shared experiences working for improved housing in their local com-
munities, the federated group of CCO congregations determined that systemic
change in the city’s housing policies would require greater accountability from
city government, a program to rehabilitate and repair existing homes, an approach
to dealing with absentee landlords, a better approach to dealing with predatory
mortgage lending, and a holistic approach to strengthening neighborhoods.
At a big public event in 2004, which provides an example of the third common
element of community organizing—action/mobilization—CCO pressed the city
manager and Mayor for these policy changes. As reported in local media (Horsley,
2004a):
More than 400 people packed the sanctuary of St. Therese Little Flower Catholic Church
on Tuesday night to demand reforms to Kansas City’s housing program. Saying they were
fed up with bureaucratic inefficiency and indifference, participants at the meeting called on
city officials to start spending the $18 million in annual housing dollars in a wiser, more
strategic way. The meeting was sponsored by CCO . . .
Two weeks after this public meeting, the city manager eliminated the Housing
and Community Development department. As reported in local media (Horsley,
2004b):
In a major shake-up, Kansas City Manager Wayne Cauthen eliminated the housing depart-
ment Wednesday, saying that it had suffered too long from weak leadership and haphazard
spending . . . Cauthen said he had concluded that the Housing and Community Development
Department was often controlled by outside special interests, that housing services were
fragmented and that there was no comprehensive approach for building and selling houses.
This case study is described in more detail elsewhere (Speer & Christens,
2012) and provides an analysis to demonstrate the central role that CCO played
in making this policy change. This case exhibits a successful organizing effort,
but also demonstrates key features of many initiatives that take place in the larger
field of community organizing.
The Dynamic Field of Organizing Practice
A pronounced period of expansion of the field of community organizing be-

gan in the mid-1980s and continues today. This expansion has not occurred simply
through more widespread adoption of static, preexisting models for community
organizing. Rather, it has occurred through cyclical processes of model adoption,
experimentation, innovation, and broader dissemination. The result is that the field
of community organizing is more eclectic in its models for practice than it has been
in previous eras. Yet, there have been commonalities in these transitions across
the field. These include expanding constituency groups, including congregational
(Swarts, 2008), regional (Pastor, Benner, & Matsuoka, 2009), and intergenera-
tional organizing (Christens & Kirshner, 2011); an expanding range of strategies
(e.g., community development approaches and multisector coalitions; Green &
Goetting, 2010); increasing connections and partnerships (e.g., with researchers,
foundations, and public health practitioners; Shlay & Whitman, 2006); and, par-
ticularly among organizations affiliated with networks, moving beyond local work
to focus on national policy advocacy and movements (Orr, 2007), and supporting
international organizing work (Warren, 2009).
Many of these trends are promising in regard to organizing’s potential to
have positive impacts on social problems and public policy. Yet, some also in-
troduce new dilemmas into the field of practice, as well as research. This section
draws on interdisciplinary research to examine four widespread shifts that have
changed the field of community organizing over the last 30 years: (1) congregation-
based organizing, (2) youth organizing, (3) increasing scale of organizing efforts,
and (4) strategic partnerships between organizing groups and other organizations,
institutions, and actors.
Congregation-Based Organizing
Community organizing that primarily takes place through faith-based insti-

tutions (of multiple faiths) emerged in the 1980s and has steadily become more
widespread, altering the practice of community organizing in the process. Reli-
gious institutions had been important partners to neighborhood organizing during
earlier efforts (Horwitt, 1992), but organizing had not explicitly operated through
congregations until the model that first took hold in Texas, where Industrial Areas
Foundation (IAF) leaders pioneered a multifaith, multiracial model for commu-
nity organizing that built sustainable political power and mounted successful cam-
paigns for improvements in neighborhood infrastructure, schools, and affordable
housing (Warren, 2001). The shift to congregations was in part a response to dein-
dustrialization and the mobility of population, and in part a move to take traditional
organizing into the cultural realm and tap into theological symbols, money, and
networks (Osterman, 2002; Warren, 2001). This seemingly simple adaptation of
existing models for neighborhood organizing has profoundly changed the course
of contemporary community organizing.
The congregation-based community organizing model spread rapidly through
the United States and is today the preferred model of organizing for several of
the largest national organizing networks. Wood and Warren (2002) described
congregation-based community organizing as “one of the broadest based initia-
tives in the American public sphere” (p. 7) and a recent field scan (Wood, Partridge,
& Fulton, 2013) revealed continued growth, such that there are now nearly 300
active primarily congregation-based organizing initiatives in the United States.
Importantly, congregation-based models of organizing have demonstrated that
religious institutions can still be a source of progressive advocacy, despite the
strength of the relationship between some religious groups and right-wing poli-
tics. Organizing efforts have also added range to their cultural repertoire through
association with religious institutions. As an example, organizers often discuss
charity as an essential but overrepresented component of congregational activity
as opposed to justice, which, although strongly rooted in religious teaching, is
often ignored by religious groups. Organizers and leaders have become adept at
connecting organizing processes to religious traditions such as calls for justice
(Wood, 1999).
Today’s congregation-based organizing incorporates theology by linking or-
ganizing practice to religious teaching and faith traditions (Jacobsen, 2001).
Congregation-based organizing has drawn on religious values and teachings
to challenge the dominant market-based ideology that has driven the neolib-
eral policies negatively affecting local communities. The emphasis on values
is now so firmly rooted in contemporary practice that some local organizing has
been described as “values-based organizing” (Robinson & Hanna, 1994, p. 66).
Congregation-based organizing efforts have identified and emphasized values such
as community and justice (Jacobsen, 2001), and healthy communities and eco-
nomic fairness (Speer et al., 2014; Warren, 2001). The emphasis on these values
has led to leadership development and organizing practice that is infused with
a sense of human dignity, and a commitment to a holistic approach to human
development (Keddy, 2001).
Congregation-based organizing networks and the other organizing models
that they have influenced have also stressed the importance of interpersonal re-
lationships to a greater degree than other models of organizing. This focus on
relationships can be contrasted with other models of organizing, which may be
characterized as focusing on issues (e.g., traffic problems, environmental degra-
dation, public safety concerns; Collura & Christens, 2014). A relational focus
attends to these and similar issues but the organizing process prioritizes the con-
nections and relationships among members of the community. Hence, despite
fluctuations in the intensity of issue-based work, strong networks of interpersonal
relationships allow a group to sustain the level of activity and trust necessary to
exercise the social power required to effect community change (Weymes, 2003).
Relational organizing cultivates connections among participants through the
practice of one-to-one meetings (Robinson & Hanna, 1994). Participants are
trained in methods for having one-to-one meetings that are intended to elicit
the experiences and stories of others and to build an understanding that personal
struggles and concerns are often shared with others. These connections are de-
signed to make links between the personal to the collective (Christens, Inzeo,
& Faust, 2014). On an aggregate level, this practice alters the social networks
within and between community institutions, and opens up what some have called
weak ties (Granovetter, 1973), social capital (Warren, 2001), or the social fabric
(Cortes, 1996). The relationships that are built can increase the civic capacity of
the organization. Relational organizing and values-based organizing are hallmarks
of the congregation-based models of community organizing, which have exerted
a profound influence on the field as a whole.
Youth Organizing
Organizing initiatives have increasingly sought to involve youth (ranging from

teens to those in their mid-twenties) as participants and leaders alongside adults,
and many new initiatives have been launched that are primarily dedicated to youth
organizing (Christens & Kirshner, 2011). Many practitioners and scholars have
concluded that youth organizing holds promise as both an effective vehicle for
community and social change (e.g., Conner, Zaino, & Scarola, 2013), and as a
model for promoting positive youth development (Conner, 2011; Kirshner & Gin-
wright, 2012). Youth organizing typically takes place in schools, congregations,
community centers, and other local institutions. The conditions faced by young
people—particularly youth of color and those living in low-income households—
are the central focus of youth organizing.
A 2010 scan of the field of youth organizing (Torres-Fleming, Valdes, &
Pillai, 2010) identified 160 active youth organizing initiatives in the United States.
That a similar count in 2004 identified only 120 active initiatives illustrates the
sharply increasing prevalence of youth organizing. The Funders’ Collaborative for
Youth Organizing’s (2009) definition of youth organizing, now widely cited, is “an
innovative youth development and social justice strategy that trains young people
in community organizing and advocacy, and assists them in employing these
skills to alter power relations and create meaningful institutional change in their
communities.” The focal issues of youth organizing efforts have included violence
prevention, antiracism, increased employment and recreational opportunities for
youth, and policies that support youth and families.
The most common issues that youth organizing efforts have sought to address
have been related to education (Torres-Fleming et al., 2010). Racial segregation
in schools and education systems has increased in recent decades, and dispari-
ties in educational outcomes have been compounded by the adoption of harsh
disciplinary and expulsion policies that have disproportionately been applied to
minority youth (Skiba et al., 2011). Youth who are pushed out of schools are also
increasingly likely to become involved in the justice system, which has simul-
taneously become more likely to treat juvenile offenders as adults, leading to a
phenomenon that is often referred to as the school-to-prison pipeline—through
which youth of color are disproportionately moved out of educational systems
and into correctional systems. An example of a youth organizing effort for ed-
ucational improvement is Voices of Youth in Chicago Education (VOYCE; see
Christens, Collura, Kopish, & Varvodic, 2014). VOYCE is a collaborative effort
by six Chicago community organizations that each house youth organizing efforts.
The groups have collaborated on youth participatory action research projects on
educational policies and practices in Chicago that have been closely integrated
with an organizing campaign to solve the dropout crisis, improve relationships
between school staff and students, and end zero-tolerance disciplinary policies.
Collectively, youth organizing efforts related to education have been high-
lighted as a valuable form of community engagement in educational decision-
making (Orr & Rogers, 2011). Although youth were once somewhat marginal
to community organizing—particularly among efforts affiliated with the larger
and more professionalized organizing networks—youth organizing is now widely
viewed as both a viable method for building power and capacity to make
community change, and as an important context for youth development. Many
congregation-based organizing initiatives have built youth and intergeneration or-
ganizing initiatives. In one example, an adult organizer in a congregation-based
initiative wrote of his group’s realization that their own organizing principle—that
the people closest to community problems should be part of the solution to those
problems—made involving youth an important priority (Stahlhut, 2003).
Increasing Scale of Organizing Efforts
As urban areas have faced challenges associated with globalization, many

of the forces affecting local communities have been decoupled with local areas.
In response, many community organizing groups have sought to recalibrate the
scale at which their change efforts are targeted (Orr, 2007). Although a local focus
and emphasis is a core element and enduring strength of community organizing,
many local groups and networks have sought to develop structures that allow local
organizing to continue while simultaneously expanding efforts into statewide,
regional, and national efforts (Christens, Inzeo, & Faust, 2014; Wood, Partridge, &
Fulton, 2013). These efforts can be seen as responses to the continuing challenges
of deindustrialization, residential segregation, and suburban and exurban sprawl
as well as the increasing scale and power of corporations. Networks have also
developed to support issue-specific work in local organizing initiatives, including

reproductive justice, LGBT rights, and racial equity.
The Gamaliel Foundation provides one example. As one of the large
congregation-based organizing networks, it has embraced a metropolitan or re-
gional perspective, which seeks to link inner cities and suburbs in attempts to
transcend differences of race, class, and culture (Jacobsen, 2001). This work has
been influenced by the regional analysis of Orfield (1997) and Rusk (1999), who
have emphasized the need to connect regional forces such as suburban sprawl to
urban issues such as economic polarization (Kleidman, 2004). Similarly, other
organizing efforts have developed strategies that connect low-income, multiracial
constituencies together across broad geographies to address regional issues such
as mass transportation and urban planning (Pastor, 2001; Rusk, 1999; Swanstrom
& Banks, 2009). Proponents of these regional organizing approaches suggest that
improvements in poor neighborhoods cannot have the desired effects without an
overarching regional strategy for equitable distribution of resources.
The PICO Network has also achieved successes in building statewide com-
munity organizing efforts, particularly in California and Louisiana (Wood, 2007).
More recently, the PICO Network has developed strategies for influencing federal
policies. For example, they brought hundreds of local leaders to Washington in
2007 to advocate for a renewal of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Initially unsuccessful, that effort ultimately paid off in terms of influencing pol-
icy priorities in 2009, and provided a model for how to mobilize a network of
local groups on national issues. Local organizing groups across the country held
rallies in support of children’s health insurance, and volunteer leaders testified
before Congress. PICO leaders and clergy held a public action meeting in the U.S.
Senate, held face-to-face meetings with members of Congress and staffers, ran
advertisements in national media, and were invited to attend the eventual signing
of the bill into law.
Similarly, ACORN—before its collapse—integrated local protest into coor-
dinated national campaigns that linked solid national policy research with the
activism of local people (Fisher, Brooks, & Russell, 2007; Swarts, 2007). Local
activists have worked through national networks such as National People’s Ac-
tion in mounting a campaign to change the practices of lending institutions in
low-income neighborhoods, ultimately resulting in the passage of the Community
Reinvestment Act, the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, and a series of successive
campaigns to enforce elements of these pieces of legislation (Immergluck, 2004).
More than 300 grassroots groups have formed the national Transportation Equity
Network to advocate for transportation funding for central cities and inner-ring
suburbs (Swanstrom & Banks, 2009). These developments have strong implica-
tions for the future of community organizing, as they seek to address issues of
scale—one of the most pressing challenges facing local action groups.
Strategic Partnerships
Historically, organizing efforts have most often been wary of partnerships with
other institutions and organizations. Today, it is not uncommon for organizing
groups to partner with local governments, human service agencies, nonprofit
organizations, universities, coalitions, and private organizations and foundations.
National networks receive funding from multiple foundations at a time, and staff
members of foundations often convey desired outcomes or ideas about how to
improve organizing practices. Local organizing groups have also increasingly
sought grants from foundations, both for special projects and for core operational
expenses. Many of these grants are small, yet they represent new opportunities as
well as vulnerability to outside influence (i.e., resource dependency).
Similarly, local community organizing groups have become more likely to
work collaboratively with researchers. The IAF has worked with academic re-
searchers to train organizing staff (Warren, 2001). As noted above, the Gamaliel
Foundation has collaborated with researchers to develop an analysis that has
altered the efforts and strategies of that network (Kleidman, 2004). ACORN de-
veloped an internal team of researchers on policy and social issues who developed
analyses for their local organizing efforts (Swarts, 2007). Other organizing ef-
forts have been developed from progressive think tanks that are directly tied to
local organizing (Pastor, 2001). Across the field, there has been an increasing
focus on measurable outcomes and evidence-based practice that is often driven by
evaluation components of external funding sources.
The past few decades have also seen an increase in the interplay between
organizing and community development practice. Whereas organizing has histor-
ically focused on building community and capacity to achieve policy concessions
from corporations, and more often, from local government, community devel-
opment is typically accomplished in partnership with local government to build
physical structures, services, and amenities in urban areas. Lately, community
development groups have explicitly sought to build community capacity (Glick-
man & Servon, 1998). Similarly, organizing groups have increasingly understood
the importance of community development, and have sought to influence—and
in some cases, implement—portions of the development process (Murphy &
Cunningham, 2003). For example, BUILD, an IAF affiliate in Baltimore, has
worked to blend their traditional organizing approach with a plan to develop a
worker-owned economic cooperative (Graf, 1995). Blending organizing and com-
munity development presents both opportunities and risks (see Stoecker, 1995).
New partnerships are similarly emerging between community organizing ef-
forts and the field of public health. Scholars and practitioners seeking to reduce
health disparities have increasingly agreed that interventions on the social deter-
minants of health are imperative (Hofrichter, 2006), and community organizing
has frequently been identified as an effective model (Minkler, 2012). Similarly,
many community organizing groups and networks have adopted a population

health frame for their work. One tangible example is the use of Health Impact
Assessment (see Collins & Koplan, 2009). Organizing groups across the United
States are partnering with health practitioners and scholars to conduct assessments
of the likely impacts of various policy proposals on community health and health
equity. Findings from these analyses that might otherwise be buried or dismissed
can achieve much greater attention and political traction when they are conducted
and presented as part of powerful grassroots efforts.
Summary
Community organizing remains a multiparadigmatic field (Sites, Chaskin, &

Parks, 2007). Nevertheless, several trends over the last few decades have caused
systemic shifts in organizing practice. The continued decline of labor organiz-
ing, and the dissolution of the largest neighborhood-based organizing network
(ACORN),2 have created voids that have been partially filled by congregation-
based organizing and youth organizing efforts. The congregation-based networks
have increasingly sought to coordinate and aggregate their organizing efforts to
influence regional and national policy issues. They have also formed multisector
partnerships and coalitions. The years ahead will likely see a continued increase in
efforts to network local organizing groups together to exert influence at national or
international levels. Youth organizing will likely continue to become more com-
monplace. It is possible that large-scale networks will be formed specifically to
support youth organizing efforts. In addition, it is likely that new networks will
grow to support neighborhood-based organizing efforts, effectively filling the void
left by the dissolution of ACORN. Furthermore, community organizing models
are becoming increasingly influential among labor organizing efforts.
Research on Community Organizing
Research on community organizing processes and outcomes straddles several

disciplines, including sociology, psychology, urban studies/affairs, social work,
education, and political science. Some of this interdisciplinary research has been
synthesized in the previous section. Psychological research has been conducted
on community organizing from community, applied social, and developmental
psychological perspectives. Much of this research has used participatory and
community-based approaches (Speer & Christens, 2013; Torre, Fine, Stoudt, &
Fox, 2012). Hence, in addition to the roles that community organizing has played
in building community capacity and achieving changes in local policies, it has also
been studied as a context for positive human development, civic engagement and
voluntarism, psychological empowerment, education, and democratic participa-
tion (Boyte, 2004; Speer & Hughey, 1995; Stoecker, 2009). Here, we discuss the
interdisciplinary mixed-methods research evidence on organizing, drawing con-

clusions about which questions have been satisfactorily addressed in the research
to date, and which questions remain unresolved. The primary focus, however, is
on psychological studies of community organizing processes and outcomes.
Psychologically oriented research on community organizing can be classified
into five main branches. The first branch includes research that has been conducted
on behavioral processes and outcomes, such as civic engagement and community
participation. This branch also contains aggregate concepts that hinge on be-
haviors, such as social capital. The second branch concerns relational processes
and outcomes, including intergroup relations and network perspectives. The third
branch concerns affective and attitudinal processes and outcomes. These include
the study of concepts such as social trust, values, and the emotional component of
psychological empowerment. The fourth branch concerns cognitive processes and
outcomes, including skill development, and gains in critical consciousness and
the cognitive component of psychological empowerment that can occur through
social inquiry that is part of organizing processes. Finally, a fifth branch of the
psychological study of community organizing involves developmental processes
and outcomes. This fifth branch has gained prominence as more research has
been conducted on youth organizing processes, often by researchers employing
developmental perspectives. In this section, we review each of these five branches
before turning to assess the current state of psychological research (and related
interdisciplinary work) on community organizing as a whole.
Behavioral Aspects
Community organizing initiatives create settings that are focused on increas-

ing community involvement and engagement with civic affairs among local res-
idents. The growth of the field therefore represents a countervailing force to the
societal trends toward isolation, civic disengagement and the more individual-
istically oriented forms of participation (e.g., political consumerism) prevalent
in contemporary Western societies. Documentation of these declines in commu-
nity participation and civic engagement have been the source of concerns (e.g.,
Putnam, 1995; Skocpol, 2003), since civically and politically focused activities are
not only a cornerstone of functional democratic systems (Theiss-Morse & Hibbing,
2005), but has also been linked to a range of beneficial outcomes for individuals,
including psychological well-being and mental health (Albanesi, Cicognani, &
Zani, 2007), social trust (Flanagan, Gill, & Gallay, 2005), social capital (Jarrett,
Sullivan, & Watkins, 2005) psychological sense of community (Speer, Peterson,
Armstead, & Allen, 2013), and collective efficacy (Ohmer, 2007). Moreover, liv-
ing in communities with high levels of engagement and social capital can have
beneficial effects on health and well-being (De Clercq et al., 2012).
A study by Speer, Peterson, Zippay, & Christens (2010) reports results from a
mixed-methods study of civic engagement in a single community organizing ini-
tiative over a five-year period. The initiative, Congregations Building Community
(CBC), was organizing through congregations in Northern Colorado. During the
five-year study period, 10 congregations were consistently active in organizing
efforts, and another 22 congregations were active at some point during the five
years. The initiative held 724 meetings of various types (e.g., planning meetings,
research meetings, action meetings), and average attendance at these meetings was
9.4 people. A total of 1,919 uniquely identified individuals participated in meet-
ings organized by the initiative, each attending an average of 3.5 meetings over five
years. On an annual basis, between 400 and 600 unique individuals participated
in organizing activities, with an average annual participation rate that varied be-
tween two and four meeting attendances per year. Larger action meetings drew up
to 356 attendees. It is estimated that there are more than 200 congregation-based
initiatives like CBC that are active in the United States, some of which involve as
many as 80–100 congregations (Swarts, 2011; Wood, Partridge, & Fulton, 2013).
In fact, during the years of the study by Speer and colleagues, CBC was likely
at the smaller end of the spectrum of such initiatives, and it has since ceased
organizing activities. Nevertheless, the fine-grained study of participation in CBC
gives a sense of the depth and breadth of civic engagement that such initiatives
tend to produce.
The same study of CBC (Speer et al., 2010) used a quasi-experimental design
to assess overall levels of self-reported civic engagement (i.e., including civic
participation outside of organizing) of CBC attendees at two time points, compared
with a geographically balanced random sample of their neighbors at the same
two time points. The non-CBC members identified the type of organizational
setting in which they were most active (e.g., church/synagogue, neighborhood
group, no group, etc.). Approximately half of the non-CBC sample indicated that
their primary setting for involvement was a religious institution, making this by
far the largest category. Compared with non-CBC members across these other
categories, members of CBC were significantly more civically engaged than non-
CBC members at baseline. In addition, during the second wave of data, CBC
members were significantly more civically engaged than they had been during
the first wave, while no such difference was detected among non-CBC members,
many of whom were active participants in other organizational settings. These
results support the hypothesis that the civic focus of community organizing efforts
is likely to influence participants to become more active in community and civic
affairs.
Research has indicated that in addition to their focus on civic and community
issues, many organizing models encourage the development of specific organiza-
tional and setting-level features that may be particularly effective at cultivating
civic activity and engagement (Maton, 2008; Speer & Hughey, 1995). In a study
using multilevel longitudinal modeling to analyze engagement and participation

across five organizing initiatives (Christens & Speer, 2011) (including the CBC
and CCO initiatives described earlier), we found that participants who had attended
certain types of meetings in previous years were more likely to remain involved
over successive years, controlling for many other individual- and neighborhood-
level factors, including individuals’ overall levels of participation. In particular,
two types of meetings were significantly predictive of sustained involvement.
The first influential meeting type is the research action, which involves groups
of around 10 participants meeting with one local decision-maker (e.g., school
board member, local business leader) to strategically gather information on the
local issues that are at the forefront of organizing activities. By design, every
participant in a research action is an active participant, and interacts directly with
the decision-maker. Research actions therefore exemplify effective organizational
opportunity role structure (Maton & Salem, 1995) for encouraging participant
engagement. The second type of meeting that proved influential in our 2011 study
are the one-to-one meetings that have been the bedrock of the relational models
of community organizing.
Relational Aspects
As described earlier in this article, many organizing models have emphasized

the importance of interpersonal relationships for building sustainable local power.
In these organizing models, members of local groups are trained to act as re-
flective listeners, and are encouraged to adopt the practice of regularly soliciting
one-to-one meetings with neighbors and fellow organizational members. In the
Christens and Speer (2011) study, we reported that during the five-year study of
five organizing initiatives, 15,043 one-to-one meetings were held, suggesting that
a typical organizing initiative might catalyze more than 50 such meetings each
month. These one-to-one meetings are geared toward the establishment of trusting
relationships, which are often formed across lines of socioeconomic, racial/ethnic,
religious, and ideological differences. In some cases, one-to-one meetings do lead
to the identification of new potential volunteer leaders for the organizing effort.
Yet, trainings on one-to-one meetings tend to emphasize that the goal is not
recruitment, but to create venues for valuing and understanding other peoples’
stories.
Establishing a breadth of interpersonal relationships often gives organizational
members greater clarity about the most pressing issues facing their communities.
In addition, these relationships serve to personalize the issues, bringing a greater
sense of urgency and resiliency of commitment to efforts to improve community
conditions. Hence, the finding in our 2011 study that participation in one-to-one
meetings was significantly predictive of future involvement (controlling for over-
all levels of prior involvement, among other factors) lends support to the emphasis
on this particular meeting type in relational organizing models. In a qualitative

analysis of one-to-one meetings in organizing, Christens (2010) found evidence
suggesting that the networks built through one-to-ones were critical to strengthen-
ing commitments to civic involvement and building collective capacity for action
and mobilization. Moreover, interpersonal relationships were found to contribute
to a shared organizational identity and set of values that aids volunteer leaders
in effectively building relationships with local institutional decision-makers and,
when necessary, holding them accountable to their commitments to community
improvements.
Scholars have noted that community organizing efforts are unusual in their
ability to forge unity among diverse groups according to class, race and ethnicity,
religion, and political ideology (e.g., Wood & Warren, 2002). In particular, it is
unusual to see voluntary organizations with memberships that contain as much
racial and socioeconomic diversity as do many community organizing initiatives.
In a qualitative study of congregation-based organizing efforts in San Francisco
and St. Louis, Swarts (2011) identifies many of the strategies that these organiz-
ing efforts use to build shared identity and unity among diverse constituencies.
Often, these strategies involve redrawing “symbolic boundaries” (p. 454) to create
new in-groups and out-groups. The methods for creating perceived commonalities
within diverse organizing initiatives include emphases on a common value base
(e.g., those rooted in faith traditions) among those involved in organizing, contrasts
between participants in organizing (in-group) and activists and social movements
(out-groups), contrasts between leaders in organizing efforts and professional
politicians (another out-group), and contrasts between organizing’s self-help and
social justice approaches to local issues, and those advocating for approaches to
social issues that hinge on social services (yet another out-group). These contrasts
are critical to building a sense of shared identity that can supersede differences
that might make relationship development less likely in other contexts. It should
be noted that these contrasts are rarely so rigid as to prevent collaborations from
forming with, for instance, more traditional charitable or advocacy-oriented or-
ganizations. They do, however, offer clear points of differentiation and shared
identity for those involved in more power-focused voluntary activities.
Affective Aspects
Involvement in community organizing also influences affective and emotional

dynamics, particularly those that relate to one’s sense of membership and con-
nection to their community, one’s civic identity, and one’s sense of belonging
to a larger civic or social whole. Regarding a sense of membership or connec-
tion to a community, studies have shown that participants in community orga-
nizing tend to perceive greater levels of connection. Much of this research has
focused on the psychological sense of community, which has been theorized as the
understanding that one belongs to a collectivity. McMillan and Chavis (1986) con-
ceptualized the construct according to four dimensions: membership—the sense
of belonging in a community, influence—the sense of mattering in that commu-
nity, need fulfillment—the sense that community members’ needs will be met,
and shared emotional connection—the sense of shared history and common bond.
This conceptualization has informed the study of sense of community in orga-
nizing contexts, which has often also used a framework and measure developed
specifically to assess sense of community for community organizations (Hughey,
Speer, & Peterson, 1999). Studies have consistently found that people’s sense of
community in community organizations is positively associated with their levels
of community participation, and that it is also positively associated with their
levels of psychological empowerment (Hughey et al., 2008; Peterson et al., 2008;
Peterson, Peterson, Agre, Christens, & Morton, 2011).
Psychological empowerment has been theorized as the psychological as-
pects of the mechanisms by which people and groups gain control over their
affairs (Zimmerman, 1995). The emotional/affective component of psychological
empowerment has been studied using a framework and a measure of people’s
self-perceptions of sociopolitical control (Peterson et al., 2006) according to two
dimensions: leadership competence and perceived policy control. Sociopolitical
control therefore captures one’s beliefs about one’s own skills and abilities for ex-
ercising agency and making concrete changes in the civic arena. It is increasingly
clear from research on community organizing processes that increases in sociopo-
litical control are an outgrowth of increased community participation (Christens,
Peterson, & Speer, 2011; Ohmer, 2007). Moreover, results from studies using
structural equations modeling have found that this relationship is mediated by
psychological sense of community (e.g., Hughey et al., 2008). Increasing partic-
ipation in community organizing is therefore a leverage point for enhancing both
affective connections to community and perceptions of agency in the civic arena,
both of which have been empirically linked to elements of psychosocial well-being
at the individual level.
Cognitive Aspects
Participation in community organizing involves many opportunities for skill

development and learning. Many of these opportunities are distributed intention-
ally as more seasoned leaders in organizing efforts train newcomers or delegate
tasks with an eye toward leadership development. For example, most organizing
models deliberately impart perspectives on power, social issues, and social change
strategies through trainings. Moreover, they cultivate skills in new participants,
including meeting facilitation, public speaking, and, often, action research skills
through trainings and practical experience. Newcomers are particularly likely to
readily obtain these skills due to the fact that many organizing efforts regularly
rotate important roles and responsibilities among members (Robinson & Hanna,
1994). In addition to the skills and perspectives that are deliberately cultivated
among participants in organizing initiatives, learning occurs through groups’ ef-
forts to create change in real-world settings, and the group-based reflections and
participatory evaluations that often occur alongside these efforts (Speer & Hughey,
1995). Leaders in organizing efforts often become savvy policy analysts, action
researchers, and political actors. For these reasons, educational research has in-
creasingly identified organizing as a fertile context for civic learning and civic
development (Rogers, Mediratta, & Shah, 2012).
Civic learning taking place in community organizing settings is typically
distinguished by a critical social analysis that seeks to identify the structural
aspects of social problems, and connect them to personal experiences of those
problems (Watts & Flanagan, 2007). In this way, civic learning that occurs through
community organizing is often similar to Freire’s (1973) concept of education
for critical consciousness, in which people learn to uncover structural roots of
inequality and engage in reflective action to bring about change toward greater
social justice (see Watts, Diemer, & Voight, 2011). Importantly, this form of
reflective action in community organizing does not involve only collaboration and
democratic deliberation intended to bring about consensus, but also the strategic
use of power and public conflict to hold decision-makers to account (Schutz,
2011). The learning that takes place through organizing is therefore not only about
understanding complex systems and identifying possible points of intervention
to bring about desired changes, but is also about improvisation on a core set of
principles that are employed adaptively as necessitated by local power dynamics.
Studies of the cognitive component of psychological empowerment have
assessed the understanding of complex processes through which effective and
powerful action can be taken. This set of understandings—that conflict is often
a part of social change processes, that organized groups are more effective in
this arena than are individuals, and keen awareness of the many ways that social
power can be used to the advantage of those who possess it (Gaventa, 1980)—have
been assessed alongside the behavioral and emotional components of psycholog-
ical empowerment. The cognitive component of psychological empowerment has
consistently shown complicated relationships with the other components of psy-
chological empowerment, including a lack of covariance (Christens, Collura, &
Tahir, 2013; Speer et al., 2013). Some of the divergence of the cognitive compo-
nent appears to be related to demographic characteristics of participants, includ-
ing race, gender, and socioeconomic status (Christens, Speer, & Peterson, 2011;
Peterson, Hamme, & Speer, 2002). In general, those with less relative privilege
tend to score higher on measures of cognitive empowerment, while those with
more relative privilege tend to score higher on measures of emotional empow-
erment, suggesting the usefulness of tailored strategies in community organizing
settings (Christens, Speer, & Peterson, 2011; Peterson & Hughey, 2002).
Developmental Perspectives
Organizing has long been studied as a developmental context for adult partic-
ipants. For instance, a study by Kieffer (1984) takes an explicitly developmental
perspective on citizen empowerment through community organizing. Kieffer’s
study identifies different eras in the development of a citizen leader—an era of
entry into sociopolitical involvement, an era of advancement through supportive
peer and mentored relationships, an era of incorporation during which leader-
ship skills are honed, and an era of commitment which entails a fully realized
competence yet continued commitment to struggles in the sociopolitical arena. A
number of other studies of empowerment among adults in organizing have taken a
developmental perspective. These studies have focused on organizing as a context
for developing a greater understanding of social power dynamics (e.g., Speer &
Hughey, 1995), and for increasing involvement in civic affairs (e.g., Christens &
Speer, 2011). These studies have identified particular organizational characteris-
tics and processes (e.g., cycling of roles, one-to-one meetings) that are particularly
influential in the development of participants.
As it has become more common for young people to be involved in commu-
nity organizing initiatives, developmental psychologists, educational researchers,
and other scholars of youth development have become increasingly interested in
understanding the effects of involvement on young people. As a result, youth or-
ganizing has been identified as a catalyst for change at multiple levels of analysis
(Cammarota & Fine, 2008; Christens & Kirshner, 2011). At a systemic level, it fa-
cilitates changes in communities and schools (Camino & Zeldin, 2002; Mediratta
et al., 2009; Orr & Rogers, 2011). At an individual level, it facilitates civic identity
development and, more broadly, positive youth development (Rogers et al., 2012).
This understanding has brought a more prominent focus on community organiz-
ing as a developmental context, particularly for marginalized or disadvantaged
young people. A recent review by Kirshner and Ginwright (2012) delineates the
different domains in which researchers have identified positive developmental out-
comes associated with participation in youth organizing among African-American
and Latino adolescents: enhanced civic development, academic engagement, and
psychological wellness.
In many communities, youth organizing initiatives provide venues in which
young people can gain experiential education about social systems and social
change processes, as well as the participatory competencies associated with em-
powerment and critical consciousness (Rogers, Morrell, & Enyedy, 2007; Watts
et al., 2011). It has therefore been noted as an extracurricular setting that can attract
and engage youth who might not be attracted to more mainstream extracurricular
activities that do not foster concern or take action to address societal injustices.
Once they are engaged in organizing, youth often find a supportive community
of peers and adult mentors who provide social support, guidance, and links to
resources beyond the organizing initiative itself (Zeldin, Christens, & Powers,
2013). As research has demonstrated, these youth organizers are much more likely
than their peers to achieve desirable personal outcomes (Conner, 2011). A report
by Terriquez and Rogers (2012) provides preliminary results from a large-scale
study of alumni of youth organizing (ages 18–26) showing that, when compared
with randomly selected youth from similar backgrounds, those who had been in-
volved in organizing were more than twice as likely to be registered to vote, more
than 2.5 times more likely to have volunteered within the last year, and five times
more likely to have worked on an issue that affects their community. Moreover,
those who had been involved in organizing were more than 2.5 times more likely
to pursue a postsecondary education than similar peers, over three times more
likely to enroll in a four-year university, and less likely, by about a third, to be
both out of school and out of work.
Summary
Research on community organizing points to multiple avenues, at multiple

levels of analysis, through which community organizing is a mechanism for en-
hancing well-being. In many social scientific accounts, community organizing
is studied as a macro- or mesolevel intervention seeking to create changes in
policies, systems, and environments that will have beneficial effects on residents.
As case studies of successful organizing efforts demonstrate, this is an important
avenue through which community organizing can exert positive influences on the
wellness of populations at various scales. Yet, psychological research on com-
munity organizing demonstrates that organizing can also represent a multifaceted
context for promoting civic engagement, capacity, social capital, psychological
sense of community, and psychological empowerment. Through these pathways,
and perhaps others, participation in community organizing is exerting beneficial
influences on participants. At the macro level, we therefore consider the presence
of strong community organizing groups in towns, cities, and regions to be one
very promising indicator (among others, for instance, high-quality schools) of a
community’s resilience, adaptability to the challenges of the postindustrial era,
and ongoing capacity to foster well-being for its residents.
Alongside the changes in policies, systems, and environments that it produces,
community organizing can be hypothesized to have ripple effects on community
well-being as participants radiate its influences through their institutions and net-
works (Hughey & Speer, 2002), but this has yet to be demonstrated empirically.
Similarly, despite the promising findings on beneficial effects of organizing on
individual participants, research has not yet adequately specified the mechanisms
of influence or the ways they are mediated by contextual and personal character-
istics. Nor has research provided many insights into the varying utility of different
approaches to organizing in different contexts, the effectiveness of organizing
around different issues, or the best ways to sustain and deepen participants’ in-
volvement in organizing over time (Collura & Christens, 2014). In short, research
using a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods has convincingly shown
that participating in organizing tends to be beneficial for participants; yet, it has not
yet demonstrated that benefits accrue to nonparticipating residents. Furthermore,
relatively few research findings have been published that can effectively guide
decision-making in organizing practice.
Many gaps in knowledge remain, and major hurdles exist for those seeking
to fill these gaps. The complexity and fluidity of the phenomenon of commu-
nity organizing is a point of interest for many researchers, but presents numerous
challenges to systematic and comparative study. Furthermore, although there are
strengths to the interdisciplinarity of the research literature on community orga-
nizing, there is a tendency for research not to build on the work that is done from
other disciplinary perspectives. Additionally, many types of organizing exist, and
it can be difficult to discern whether findings from one context, issue area, or
model are likely to be translatable to others.
Particularly promising directions for future research on community organizing
include multilevel approaches that link psychological and developmental changes
in participants with the development of community capacity and outcomes at a
community level. Future research should harness technological innovations to ob-
tain richer longitudinal data sets on organizing processes, participation patterns,
social networks, and psychosocial dynamics, so that more specific mechanisms
of influence can be more effectively discerned. Organizing also provides an im-
portant context for researchers engaged in community-based and action-oriented
approaches (see Speer & Christens, 2013). Yet more comparative, systematic,
multisite research, utilizing experimental and quasi-experimental methods, will
be needed to achieve a more detailed understanding of the psychology and multi-
level impacts of community organizing.
Implications and Recommendations for Policy
We now discuss recommendations for policy based on the current field of

practice and the body of empirical evidence that exists on community organizing.
First, policy at all levels of government should seek to rebuild or maintain
the viability of local community institutions (e.g., community and neighborhood
centers, public schools, voluntary associations), which can act as social and insti-
tutional anchors for organizing initiatives, and serve other beneficial functions in
their communities. The decline of such institutions and settings has been noted,
for example, in the work of Putnam (1995), as a decline in social capital that has
negative ramifications for democratic society. With long-term trends toward de-
cline in labor union membership and attendance at religious institutions, gaps
in access to attractive social anchors have emerged for large portions of the
population. These declines have been accompanied by increases in social and

ideological segmentation in involvement through, for instance, online activities,
political consumerism, and checkbook-style memberships in organizations that
support professional advocacy and lobbying around particular issues. Although
these new forms of engagement are each promising for some purposes, there are
also many ways in which these sorts of activities are poor substitutes for reg-
ular attendance in local physical spaces that include a diverse representation of
community members. There is therefore a need for local community centers and
neighborhood houses that can offer programs for youth, families, and the elderly,
that provide volunteer opportunities, cross-cultural experiences, and weave local
social fabrics more tightly. In particular, however, there is a need for more com-
munity institutions that do not simply fulfill associational needs that skew toward
expressive interests, but institutions that also serve instrumental needs—the exer-
cise of collective will to shape the environment rather than simply accommodate
to it.
In addition to the need for social anchor institutions to build social networks
and social capital for participants (see Small, 2009), then, there is a need to invest
in such institutions to provide community infrastructure for mobilization. Com-
munity organizing initiatives can aid in the generation of social capital, but they
also depend on preexisting stores of social capital for sustainability and success
(Wood, 1997). If they are to serve as viable social anchors for organizing, local
institutions must not depend solely on public funding, since these resource depen-
dencies could hamper their ability to exercise power in local systems. Growing the
number and capacity of such social anchors should be a priority for philanthropic
giving as well as for governmental funding at all levels. A concrete example would
be for public and/or nonprofit organizations to work with community groups on
the acquisition of a building (house, apartment, warehouse, etc.) in a neighborhood
that is facing challenging social issues, and to transform the space to serve as an
inclusive community center to accommodate the interests and needs of residents
in the surrounding area.
We recommend greater consideration of community organizing as a model
not only for the pursuit of community and system-level changes, but also as a
model for building civic capacity at multiple levels. Longitudinal psychological
research among participants in community organizing has shown that participa-
tion is more likely to lead to changes in levels of psychological empowerment
than vice versa (Christens, Peterson, & Speer, 2011). These findings run con-
trary to frameworks such as the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991), which
broadly view behavior as an outgrowth of attitudes and perceptions, and associated
models for intervention that target beliefs and self-perceptions in order to influ-
ence behaviors. Findings from organizing research suggest an alternative: policies
and programs that seek to increase civic and community vibrancy should target
greater engagement of residents in civic activities like community organizing, and
their skills, beliefs, and self-perceptions are likely to change as a result of their
involvement in systems change efforts. We therefore recommend that decision-
makers scrutinize whether resources for education-oriented prevention programs
might be better allocated toward funding more widespread opportunities for mean-
ingful engagement and grassroots leadership in work to address social issues.
At the local, state, or regional levels, we encourage organizers and decision-
makers to continue to connect and align community organizing initiatives with
public and nonprofit efforts to improve social welfare, urban planning and public
and environmental health. As discussed in our review of practice, shared concerns
exist between many organizing initiatives and public health professionals around
increasing disparities in health outcomes between rich and poor populations and
different racial/ethnic groups. These shared concerns provide opportunities for
greater synergy between targeted health services and grassroots action on policies,
systems, and environments. We do not believe that these synergies have yet been
fully realized, and promising new models for alignment and integration of efforts
should be tried and evaluated systematically when possible (see Speer et al., 2014).
Yet we also encourage greater strategic attention to the difficulties of aligning the
goals of grassroots organizing groups and public agencies. There is a need for
policies, programs, and funding mechanisms that creatively connect and align
the strengths of community organizing with those of other public and nonprofit
agencies working to improve community well-being. A simple first step toward
such alignment is to ensure that leaders of grassroots organizing initiatives are
included on the task forces, councils, boards, and other decision-making bodies
that determine strategies and approaches to addressing social issues.
With these recommendations, we must caution against neoliberal appropri-
ations of community organizing, which might view organizing and associated
community-based activities as possible substitutes for the provision of basic ser-
vices by state and nonprofit agencies. Community organizing initiatives them-
selves generally shy away from the direct provision of services—not because
organizers view such services as unnecessary—but because of a clear understand-
ing of organizing’s role as building power for more marginal groups to assert
themselves in decision-making processes. This power is used, in some cases, to
secure resources and services that are needed to improve quality of life in these
communities. The purpose of organizing is to alter community environments and
contexts so they are more responsive to the needs and values of people, whereas
the purpose of service provision is to accommodate individuals to better func-
tion in and adapt to the circumstances they are confronting. Hence, community
organizing cannot serve as a substitute for services and programs.
At the national and international levels, we echo calls for policies that create
more “receptive social environments” (Campbell, Cornish, Gibbs, & Scott, 2010,
p. 964) for community voices to be considered by powerful decision-makers. In
many places around the world, the political system does not guarantee sufficient
freedoms (e.g., the freedom to publicly challenge political leaders) for the models
of community organizing that have been described in this review to be effective
vehicles for changing systems. Even in places where such freedoms are guaranteed,
there is typically a lack of access to decision-making venues for people with fewer
resources. Similarly, in nongovernmental efforts to encourage participation, those
with greater power are often overrepresented in decision-making processes. A
principle of community organizing (mentioned earlier in this article) that policy
makers and practitioners would do well to keep in mind is that the people closest
to the problem should be a part of the solution to that problem. Discussions
about potential solutions to community issues should, whenever possible, involve
the grassroots community organizing initiatives that are seeking to build power
to address these issues. We therefore recommend incorporation of organizing
initiatives and organizing perspectives into attempts to achieve collective impact
(Kania & Kramer, 2011), and other issue-focused problem solving and advocacy
efforts.
For foundations and NGOs interested in supporting social change and com-
munity development, community organizing represents a promising model. There
are, however, many differences between supporting grassroots organizing initia-
tives and more traditional models of service or program delivery. For one thing,
organizing initiatives often fluctuate in terms of the pace and scale of activities, so
deliverables associated with more programmatic activities may be inappropriate.
It is particularly critical to tailor evaluation efforts specifically to organizing initia-
tives in ways that provide useful information to the leaders of the initiative and have
the potential to contribute to and advance the current state of research evidence on
community organizing (see Speer & Christens, 2013). Our recommendations for
funders include increasing the timelines of funding commitments to community
organizing groups, while simultaneously carefully considering the processes and
outcomes to be assessed in evaluating organizing initiatives. As described in the
review of organizing research, data are needed to understand the links between
specific organizing processes and positive outcomes at the individual, organiza-
tional, and community levels. More systematic research and evaluation are needed
on organizing to account for differences in organizing processes and outcomes,
and to translate these findings for practice.
Community organizing involving young people is making tremendous strides
as a field of practice, and early research on the topic demonstrates very promising
influences on individual young people who participate. Moreover, case studies
indicate that youth organizing initiatives have the potential to become sustainable,
powerful community actors that are capable of altering policies and systems so that
they are more responsive to youth and community needs. Policy makers, funders,
educators, and youth workers should therefore carefully explore youth organizing
as an underutilized strategy for addressing both positive youth development and
positive community change. The existing evidence is extremely promising. Yet, it
is nevertheless very preliminary when compared with the data available on other
models for youth development and prevention of risk behavior. There is therefore
a particular need for investments in rigorous research on youth organizing in
multiple locations and at multiple levels of analysis.
Finally, the types of grassroots community organizing reviewed in this arti-
cle should be studied more closely by leaders of organizations seeking to produce
large-scale changes in sociopolitical systems (e.g., reducing inequality or respond-
ing to global climate change). Many large, advocacy-oriented organizations have
models for public engagement that are more top-down and campaign-style. Al-
though they may invoke the rhetoric of community organizing, they often offer
few opportunities for members or volunteers to play meaningful roles. Community
organizing groups have been able, in many cases, to achieve more effective and
sustainable mobilization with far fewer resources than large nonprofit and politi-
cal action organizations. We suggest that this is largely due to the ways in which
community organizing engages people as potential leaders, rather than simply as
supporters. Organizations interested in producing social and policy change should
learn from and adapt strategies from community organizing to practice deeper
forms of public engagement.
Summary and Conclusions
Community organizing continues to evolve as a field of practice. Prominent

changes in the recent past include the widespread shift to congregation-based orga-
nizing, the continuing movement toward inclusion of youth in organizing efforts,
the increasing scale of state-wide, regional, and nationally networked efforts, and
the increasing propensity of organizing groups to engage in strategic partnerships
with other entities in their communities. Many of these trends are promising for
enhancing organizing’s impact on policies and practices that promote community
well-being, yet there are numerous and increasing challenges to building sustain-
able local power in a globalizing, neoliberal political and economic context.
Social scientific research has shed light on the effects of organizing processes
at multiple levels of analysis. Psychological research has demonstrated that orga-
nizing is a contributor to well-being through mechanisms that include enhancing
psychological empowerment and psychological sense of community. Yet there
are many remaining needs for insights and evidence that interdisciplinary work
can produce. Very little empirical work has compared the effects of organizing
practices across contexts, or over time. Larger-scale and longitudinal studies can
provide greater insights into the mechanisms and cross-level transactions through
which organizing simultaneously influences psychosocial well-being and drives
community change. Applied and action-oriented research can also provide valu-
able insights for organizing practice.
Finally, for those engaged in policy-oriented work, there is much that can
be learned from grassroots organizing, and much that can be done to support the
field of practice. Public-sector entities can sometimes find shared purposes with
grassroots organizing groups. More generally, they can design policy-making pro-
cesses that allow for increased engagement with grassroots groups. In addition,
they can often support the local community institutions on which organizing de-
pends. For nongovernmental organizations, community organizing groups should
be considered as promising partners for community-driven health promotion and
community development efforts. Community organizing also serves as a model
for deeply democratic work oriented toward change in policies and systems.
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BRIAN D. CHRISTENS, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department

of Civil Society & Community Studies in the School of Human Ecology at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is Faculty Director of the Center for
Community & Nonprofit Studies. His research examines the effects of participa-
tion in community organizing and other systems change efforts, and the effective-
ness of these efforts at achieving changes to promote community wellbeing. In
2012, he received the Michele Alexander Early Career Award for scholarship and
service from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI),
and recently served as chair of SPSSI’s Clara Mayo grants program.
PAUL W. SPEER, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Human and Or-

ganizational Development, Peabody College at Vanderbilt University. Currently
his work is focused on studying characteristics of organizations that support sus-
tained civic engagement, network properties within organizations for developing
strong participation and the relationship between affordable housing and edu-
cational outcomes. He has published over 50 articles and chapters in a variety
of journals including the American Journal of Community Psychology, Health
Education & Behavior, the Journal of Social Issues, and the American Journal
of Public Health. He currently teaches courses in Action Research, Community
Development Theory and Community Organizing.

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Social Issues and Policy Review, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2015, pp.

Community Organizing: Practice, Research,

Community organizing—a field of practice in which residents collaboratively in-

Community organizing is an umbrella term for a field of practice in which

∗ Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Brian D. Christens, Univer-

Community organizing processes are bound together by a set of common

one congregation in a declining inner-ring neighborhood of Kansas City conducted

The Dynamic Field of Organizing Practice

A pronounced period of expansion of the field of community organizing be-

Community organizing that primarily takes place through faith-based insti-

Organizing initiatives have increasingly sought to involve youth (ranging from

Increasing Scale of Organizing Efforts

As urban areas have faced challenges associated with globalization, many

developed to support issue-specific work in local organizing initiatives, including

many community organizing groups and networks have adopted a population

Community organizing remains a multiparadigmatic field (Sites, Chaskin, &

Research on Community Organizing

Research on community organizing processes and outcomes straddles several

interdisciplinary mixed-methods research evidence on organizing, drawing con-

Community organizing initiatives create settings that are focused on increas-

using multilevel longitudinal modeling to analyze engagement and participation

As described earlier in this article, many organizing models have emphasized

on this particular meeting type in relational organizing models. In a qualitative

Involvement in community organizing also influences affective and emotional

Participation in community organizing involves many opportunities for skill

Research on community organizing points to multiple avenues, at multiple

Implications and Recommendations for Policy

We now discuss recommendations for policy based on the current field of

population. These declines have been accompanied by increases in social and

Summary and Conclusions

Community organizing continues to evolve as a field of practice. Prominent

BRIAN D. CHRISTENS, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Department

PAUL W. SPEER, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Human and Or-

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