COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION

The community organizing process has been widely used in developed and developing countries to assist
communities to recognize and address local health and social problems. In public health work, many
disease prevention and health promotion goals can only be realized through the active involvement of
community citizens, leaders, and organizations. Community organization is "a planned process to activate
a community to use its own social structures and any available resources to accomplish community goals
decided primarily by community representatives and generally consistent with local attitudes and values.
Strategically planned interventions are organized by local groups or organizations to bring about intended
social or health changes" (Bracht 1999, p. 86). It is sometimes referred to as community empowerment,
capacity building, and partnership development.

An important outcome of this dynamic process is community ownership (i.e., by community leaders and
institutions), which allows citizens to build skills and resources to effect community health change and to
sustain such efforts over time. Experienced public health facilitators or community organizers often assist
in this process, but control remains with local groups. The use of community organization strategies is not
new in public health. In the early 1900s, for example, the National Citizens Committee on the Prevention
of Tuberculosis worked closely with public health professionals and communities to control this
infectious disease. In the twenty-first century, hundreds of community partnership groups are working
locally to reduce the incidence of HIV/AIDS (human immunodeficiency virus/acquired
immunodeficiency syndrome), heart disease, child and spouse abuse, and other threats to community
health. T. Lasater et al. (1984) have described the use of church groups in mobilizing interventions for
heart health. S. Verblen-Mortensen et al. (1999) illustrated a multistage process of community organizing
to empower citizens to enforce alcohol sale ordinances for minors in rural communities. Community
participation requirements are often mandated by both public and private health-funding agencies.

Communitywide Change

One helpful way to think about effecting change at the community level is to consider the community as a
dynamic system composed of several major sectors (business, government, schools, media). The people
within each of these sectors interact with and influence each other, and when a change or alteration occurs
in one sector it will have an impact on other sectors. A prohibition against secondhand smoke in public
buildings, for example, may lead to a ban on smoking in restaurants. When health-oriented interventions
are incorporated into many sectors of the community, the likelihood of a positive change increases. This
focus on the total community system and its population is the hallmark of modern health-promotion
programs. Mittelmark (1999) has summarized the results of diverse international community health-
improvement programs and has found that community organization strategies are commonly utilized.
Such techniques work regardless of whether the goal is behavioral in nature (e.g., to increase daily
exercise among special groups) or whether the goal is to achieve health-policy changes (e.g., to eliminate
tobacco billboard advertising near schools).

The Five Stages of Community Organization

In many community organization strategies, a five-stage process can be identified. What follows is a
summary of the key factors and tasks in each stage. It should be noted that these stages are dynamic and
overlapping. In addition, some tasks from an early stage may need to be repeated in later stages (e.g.,
updating a community resources inventory).

Stage One: Conducting Community Analysis. A commitment to community participation in health

campaigns requires above all else a knowledge of the assets, capacity, and history of a local community.

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This is accomplished by a careful "mapping" of the community to document its unique qualities, issues,
and modes of decision making. This will provide the basis of an informed approach that realistically
matches health goals with citizen readiness, expectations, and resources. Analysis is a critical first step in
shaping the design of campaign interventions, and it is important to involve members of the community at
this stage. The product of community analysis is an accurate profile that blends health and illness
statistics with demographic, political, and sociocultural factors.

Stage Two: Design and Initiation of a Campaign. Following a community analysis and the
identification of local priorities, the design aspects for a collaborative community campaign begin to
emerge. A core group of citizens and professionals (with both public and private sectors represented) will
usually begin the process of establishing a permanent organizational structure and making preliminary
decisions about campaign objectives and interventions. This group may also write a mission statement
and select a project coordinator. In organizing community partnerships, several structural forms (e.g.,
coalition, lead agency, citizen network) can be considered. B. Thompson (1999) provides a helpful
discussion of the pros and cons of using various structures.

Stage Three: Campaign Implementation. Implementation turns theory and ideas into action, translating
a mission into an effectively operating program. At this stage, organizations and citizens are mobilized
and involved in the planning of a sequential set of activities aimed at accomplishing campaign objectives.
Written plans with specific timelines have been shown to be a critical forerunner of success. Cost
estimates should be included in the plan, along with monitoring and feedback strategies to measure
progress. The key element in this stage is the careful determination and selection of priority intervention
activities that can achieve maximum impact.

Stage Four: Program Refinement and Consolidation. During this stage both successes and problems in
implementation are reviewed. Task forces of the local citizen organization need to determine any new
directions or modifications for the program, including activities to maintain high levels of volunteer
involvement. Efforts of organizers to have health program elements and interventions become more fully
incorporated into the established structures of the community (e.g., exercise programs becoming a regular
part of worksite culture) should continue in this phase as well.

Stage Five: Dissemination and Durability. In this last stage the strategic dissemination of information
on project results and the finalization of plans for the durability of intervention efforts are the key
considerations. Communities and citizens need to receive clear, succinct messages describing what has
been accomplished and what continuing effort may be required. Such messages are reinforced when
community leaders and local advocates are involved in their presentation. The local durability plan should
include a vision for future health and social improvements and lay out a strategy to identify, recruit, and
involve new people in current or future projects and community activities.

A common set of essential planning and organizing tasks has emerged from the many community
mobilization and health promotion experiences of recent decades. These tasks include selecting broadly
representative community participants and clearly identifying their decisionmaking authority, establishing
an effective organizational structure, achieving mission clarity and realistic objectives, identifying
community assets as well as resistance factors, establishing evaluation and tracking mechanisms early,
managing and reinforcing volunteer involvement, conducting ongoing training for citizen intervention
skills, recruiting a community organizer/facilitator with appropriate competencies and experience, and
securing the necessary resources for the durability of program results

History of Community Organizing

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Community organizing is a process where people who live in proximity to each other come together into
an organization that acts in their shared self-interest. Unlike those who promote more-consensual
"community building," community organizers generally assume that social change necessarily involves
conflict and social struggle in order to generate collective power for the powerless. A core goal of
community organizing is to generate durable power for an organization representing the community,
allowing it to influence key decision-makers on a range of issues over time. In the ideal, for example, this
can get community organizing groups a place at the table before important decisions are made.[1]
Community organizers work with and develop new local leaders, facilitating coalitions and assisting in
the development of campaigns.

DCommon aspects of community organizing groups

Organized community groups attempt to influence government, corporations and institutions, seek to
increase direct representation within decision-making bodies, and foster social reform more generally.
Where negotiations fail, these organizations seek to inform others outside of the organization of the issues
being addressed and expose or pressure the decision-makers through a variety of means, including
picketing, boycotting, sit-ins, petitioning, and electoral politics. Organizing groups often seek out issues
they know will generate controversy and conflict. This allows them to draw in and educate participants,
build commitment, and establish a reputation for winning. [2] Thus, community organizing is usually
focused on more than just resolving specific issues. In fact, specific issues are often vehicles for other
organizational goals as much as they are ends in themselves.

Community organizers generally seek to build groups that are democratic in governance, open and
accessible to community members, and concerned with the general health of the community rather than a
specific interest group. Organizing seeks to broadly empower community members, with the end goal of
distributing power more equally throughout the community.

The three basic types of community organizing are grassroots or "door-knocking" organizing, faith-based
community organizing (FBCO), and coalition building. Political campaigns often claim that their door-to-
door operations are in fact an effort to organize the community, though often these operations are focused
exclusively on voter identification and turnout.

FBCOs and many grassroots organizing models are built on the work of Saul Alinsky, discussed below,
from the 1930s into the 1970s.[3]

[edit] Grassroots and "Door-Knocking" Groups

Grassroots organizing builds community groups from scratch, developing new leadership where none
existed and organizing the unorganized. It is a values based process where people are brought together to
act in the interest of their communities and the common good. Networks of community organizations that
employ this method and support local organizing groups include National People's Action and ACORN.

"Door knocking" grassroots organizations like ACORN organize poor and working-class members
recruiting members one by one in the community. Because they go door-to-door, they are able to reach
beyond established organizations and the "churched" to bring together a wide range of less privileged
people. ACORN tended to stress the importance of constant action in order to maintain the commitment
of a less rooted group of participants.

ACORN had a reputation of being more forceful than faith-based (FBCO) groups, and there are
indications that their local groups were more staff (organizer) directed than leader (local volunteer)

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directed. (However, the same can be said for many forms of organizing, including FBCOs.) The "door-
knocking" approach is more time-intensive than the "organization of organizations" approach of FBCOs
and requires more organizers who, partly as a result, can be lower paid with more turnover.

Unlike existing FBCO national "umbrella" and other grassroots organizations, ACORN maintained a
centralized national agenda, and exerted some centralized control over local organizations. Because
ACORN was a 501(c)4 organization under the tax code, it was able to participate directly in election
activities, but contributions to it were not tax exempt.[4]

[edit] Faith-Based Community Organizing (FBCO)\

Faith-based community organizing (FBCO), also known as Congregation-based Community Organizing,

is a methodology for developing power and relationships throughout a community of institutions: today
mostly congregations, but these can also include unions, neighborhood associations, and other groups. [5]
Progressive and centrist FBCO organizations join together around basic values derived from common
aspects of their faith instead of around strict dogmas. There are now at least 180 FBCOs in the US as well
as in South Africa, England, Germany, and other nations. [6] Local FBCO organizations are often linked
through organizing networks such as the Industrial Areas Foundation, Gamaliel Foundation, PICO
National Network, and Direct Action and Research Training Center (DART). In the United States starting
in 2001, the Bush Administration launched a department to promote community organizing that included
faith-based organizing as well other community groups.[7]

FBCOs tend to have mostly middle-class participants because the congregations involved are generally
mainline Protestant and Catholic (although "middle-class" can mean different things in white
communities and communities of color, which can lead to class tensions within these organizations). [8]
Holiness, Pentecostal, and other related denominations (often "storefront") churches with mostly poor and
working-class members tend not to join FBCOs because of their focus on "faith" over "works," among
other issues. FBCOs have increasingly expanded outside impoverished areas into churches where middle-
class professionals predominate in an effort to expand their power to contest inequality. [9]

Because of their "organization of organizations" approach, FBCOs can organize large numbers of
members with a relatively small number of organizers that generally are better paid and more
professionalized than those in "door-knocking" groups like ACORN.

FBCOs focus on the long-term development of a culture and common language of organizing and on the
development of relational ties between members. They are more stable during fallow periods than
grassroots groups because of the continuing existence of member churches.

FBCOs are 501(c)3 organizations. Contributions to them are tax exempt. As a result, while they can
conduct campaigns over "issues" they cannot promote the election of specific individuals. [10]

[edit] Power vs. Protest

While community organizing groups often engage in protest actions designed to force powerful groups to
respond to their demands, protest is only one aspect of the activity of organizing groups. To the extent
that groups' actions generate a sense in the larger community that they have "power," they are often able
to engage with and influence powerful groups through dialogue, backed up by a history of successful
protest-based campaigns. Similar to the way unions gain recognition as the representatives of workers for
a particular business, community organizing groups can gain recognition as key representatives of
particular communities. In this way, representatives of community organizing groups are often able to

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bring key government officials or corporate leaders to the table without engaging in "actions" because of
their reputation. As Alinsky said, "the first rule of power tactics" is that "power is not only what you have
but what the enemy thinks you have." [11] The development of durable "power" and influence is a key aim
of community organizing.

“Rights-based” community organizing, in which municipal governments are used to exercise community
power, was first experimented with by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF.org)
in Pennsylvania, beginning in 2002. Community groups are organized to influence municipal
governments to enact local ordinances. These ordinances challenge preemptive state and federal laws that
forbid local governments from prohibiting corporate activities deemed harmful by community residents.
The ordinances are drafted specifically to assert the rights of “human and natural communities,” and
include provisions that deny the legal concepts of “corporate personhood,” and “corporate rights.” Since
2006 they have been drafted to include the recognition of legally enforceable rights for “natural
communities and ecosystems.”

Although this type of community organizing focuses on the adoption of local laws, the intent is to
demonstrate the use of governing authority to protect community rights and expose the misuse of
governing authority to benefit corporations. As such, the adoption of rights-based municipal ordinances is
not a legal strategy, but an organizing strategy. Courts predictably deny the legal authority of
municipalities to legislate in defiance of state and federal law. Corporations and government agencies that
initiate legal actions to overturn these ordinances have been forced to argue in opposition to the
community’s right to make governing decisions on issues with harmful and direct local impact.

The first rights-based municipal laws prohibited corporations from monopolizing agriculture (factory
farming), and banned corporate waste dumping within municipal jurisdictions. More recent rights-based
organizing, in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Maine, Virginia and California has prohibited corporate
mining, large-scale water withdrawals and chemical trespass.

[edit] Political Orientations

Community organizing is not solely the domain of progressive politics, as dozens of fundamentalist
organizations are in operation, such as the Christian Coalition. However, the term "community
organizing" generally refers to more centrist or progressive organizations, as evidenced, for example, by
the reaction against community organizing in the 2008 US presidential election by Republicans and
conservatives on the web and elsewhere.[citation needed]

[edit] Fundraising

Organizing groups often struggle to find resources. They rarely receive funding from government since
their activities often seek to contest government policies. Foundations and others who usually fund
service activities generally don't understand what organizing groups do or how they do it, or shy away
from their contentious approaches. The constituency of progressive and centrist organizing groups is
largely low- or middle- income, so they are generally unable to support themselves through dues. In
search of resources, some organizing groups have accepted funding for direct service activities in the past.
As noted below, this has frequently led these groups to drop their conflictual organizing activities, in part
because these threatened funding for their "service" arms.[12]

Recent studies have shown, however, that funding for community organizing can produce large returns on
investment ($512 in community benefits to $1 of Needmor funding, according to the Needmor Fund
Study, $157 to 1 in New Mexico and $89 to 1 in North Carolina according to National Committee for

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Responsive Philanthropy studies) through legislation and agreements with corporations, among other
sources, not including non-fiscal accomplishmen[13]Sociology

Trinity CollegeoWhat community organizing is not

Understanding what community organizing is can be aided by understanding what it is not from the
perspective of community organizers.[25]

 Activism: Activists engage in social protest without a coherent strategy for building power or for
making specific social changes.[26]

 Mobilizing: When people "mobilize" they get together to effect a specific social change, but have
no long term plan. When the particular campaign that mobilized them is over, these groups
dissolve and durable power is not built.[27]

 Advocacy: Advocates speak for others instead of trying to get those affected to speak for
themselves.

 Social Movements: A broad Social movement often encompasses diverse collections of

individual activists, local and national organizations, advocacy groups, multiple and often
conflicting spokespersons, and more, held together by relatively common aims but not a common
organizational structure. A community organizing group might be part of a “movement.”
Movements generally dissolve when the motivating issue(s) are addressed, although
organizations created during movements can continue and shift their focuses. [28]

 Legal Action: Lawyers are often quite important to those engaged in social action. The problem
comes when a social action strategy is designed primarily around a lawsuit. When lawyers take
the center stage, it can push grassroots struggle into the background, short circuiting the
development of collective power and capacity. There are examples where community organizing
groups and legal strategies have worked together well, however, including the Williams v.
California lawsuit over inequality in k-12 education.[29]

 Direct Service: Americans today often equate civic engagement with direct service. Organizing
groups usually avoid actually providing services, today, however, because history indicates that
when they do, organizing for collective power is often left behind. Powerful groups often threaten
the "service" wings of organizing groups in an effort to prevent collective action. In the nonprofit
world there are many organizations that used to do community organizing but lost this focus in
the shift to service.[30]

 Community Development[citation needed]: Consensual community development efforts to improve

communities through a range of strategies, usually directed by educated professionals working in
government, policy, non-profit, or business organizations, is not community organizing.
Community development projects increasingly include a community participation component,
and often seek to empower residents of impoverished areas with skills for collaboration and job
training, among others. However, community development generally assumes that groups and
individuals can work together collaboratively without significant conflict or struggles over power
to solve community challenges. One currently popular form is Asset Based Community
Development that seeks out existing community strengths.

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  Nonpartisan Dialogues About Community Problems: A range of efforts create opportunities for
people to meet together and engage in dialogue about community problems. Like community
organizing, the effort in contexts like these is generally to be open to a diverse range of opinions,
out of which some consensus may be reached. A Study circle is a good example of this. However,
beyond the dialogue that also happens inside organizing groups, the focus is on generating a
collective and singular "voice" in order to gain power and resources for the organization's
members as well as constituents in the broader community. *

Power gained and exerted in community organizing is also not the coercion applied by legal, illegal,
physical, or economic means, such as those be applied by banks, syndicates, corporations, governments,
or other institutions. Rather, organizing makes use of the voluntary efforts of a community's members
acting jointly to achieve an economic or other benefit. As opposed to commercial ventures, gains that
result from community organizing automatically accrue to persons in similar circumstances who are not
necessarily members, e.g. residents in a geographic area or in a similar socioeconomic status, or persons
having conditions or circumstances in common who benefit from gains won by the organizing effort. This
may include workers who benefit from a campaign affecting their industry, for example, or persons with
disabilities who benefit from gains made in their legal or economic eligibility or status.

While these distinctions are useful, in actual practice the boundaries are often less clear.

[edit] Community organizing for international development

One of Alinsky's associates, Presbyterian minister Herbert White, became a missionary in South Korea
and the Philippines and brought Alinsky’s ideas, books and materials with him. He helped start a
community organization in the Manila slum of Tondo in the 1970s. The concepts of community
organizing spread through the many local NGO and activists groups in the Philippines.

Filipino community organizers melded Alinsky's ideas with concepts from liberation theology, a pro-poor
theological movement in the developing world, and the philosophy of Brazilian educationalist Paulo
Freire. They found this community organizing a well-suited method to work among the poor during the
martial law era of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Unlike the communist guerrillas, community organizers
quietly worked to encourage critical thinking about the status quo, facilitate organization and the support
the solving of concrete collective problems. Community organizing was thus able to lay the groundwork
for the People Power revolution of 1986, which nonviolently pushed Marcos out of power.

A 1974 manual summarizing some of the Filipino experience of community organizing Organizing
People for Power actually became quite popular in the South Africa, among activist groups organizing
communities in Soweto.

The concepts of community organizing have now filtered into many international organizations as a way
of promoting participation of communities in social, economic and political change in developing
countries. This is often referred to as participatory development, participatory rural appraisal,
participatory action research or local capacity building. Robert Chambers has been a particularly notable
advocate of such techniques.

rd, CT 06106
[email protected]

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In thinking about what to say about community organizing, I was immediately struck by the diversity of
efforts that qualify as community organizing. A quick reading of the Sunday, February 25 edition of The
New York Times, for example, reveals three examples of people turning "personal troubles into public
issues" - a very basic definition of community organizing. The lead article talked about the "blossoming"
of neighborhood groups in New York city and across the nation doing everything from removing graffiti
and renovating parks to setting up computer training for youth and a skills bank where residents can trade
day care for plumbing services. Another article talked about efforts in Long Island to assist immigrant
domestic workers in getting better pay and developing a collective voice in their workplaces. Still another
article described a NAACP sponsored march from New Orleans to Baton Rouge to protest the governors
executive order against affirmative action.

This list could go on and on. While my remarks will be limited to organizing in "physical communities"
or neighborhood organizing, I want to emphasize that there are many different kinds of