Resources for Funding Community Organizing

A lot has been produced about organizing in the past few years: books, case studies, research reports, toolkits, web-based materials, films, and more. As we developed this guide, grantmakers recommended some excellent resources, compiled below. You’ll find print and film resources on organizing in general as well as materials on some of the major branches of organizing in the United States: congregation- or faith-based, education, immigration, and youth organizing. We offer special thanks to Cyrus Driver and the Working Group on Education Organizing, and Maria Mottola and Kevin Ryan of the New York Foundation for their significant contributions to this list.

General Community Organizing Resources

• Dave Beckwith and Cristina Lopez
  Community Organizing:
  People Power from the Grassroots 

• Kim Bobo, Steve Max and Jackie
  Kendall Organizing for Social Change:
  The Midwest Academy Manual for Activists
  3rd Edition. Seven Locks Press, 2001 

• Henry G. Cisneros, editor
  Interwoven Destinies: Cities and the Nation
  Norton, 1993. Among the 13 accessible essays compiled here is "Reweaving the Fabric: The Iron Rule and the IAF Strategy for Power and Politics" by Ernesto Cortes, one of the premier community organizers in the Industrial Areas Foundation network of organizations. This essay describes the so-called "Iron Rule" of community organizing: Never do for others what they can learn to do for themselves. 

• COMM-ORG Listserve, "to link academics and activists, and theory and practice, toward the goal of improving community organizing and its related crafts." 

• Gary Delgado
  The Last Stop Sign
  Shelterforce Online, Nov/Dec 1998. 

• Robert Fisher
  Neighborhood Organizing:
  The Importance of Historical Context
  1995. 

•  Marshall Ganz
  Web Module on Organizing
  Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, Kennedy School for Government, Harvard University. 

• Michael Gecan
  Going Public: An Inside Story of Disrupting Politics as Usual
  Beacon Press, 2004. An inside story of how a city really works and how any organized group of citizens can wield power in seemingly unmovable bureaucracies. Gecan offers unforgettable lessons every American should know: What is the best way to talk to politicians? What resources do all communities need to create change? What kinds of public actions really work? The final chapter on bureaucratic, and market, cultures is particularly useful. 

• Judy Hertz
  Organizing for Change: Stories of Success
  2002.  

• Joan Minieri and Paul Getsos
  Tools for Radical Democracy:
  How to Organize for Power in Your Community
  Jossey-Bass, 2007 

• Needmor Fund
  The Needmor Fund: 50 Years, 50 Stories
  2008.

• Charles M. Payne
  I've Got the Light of Freedom:
  The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle
  University of California Press, 1995

• Progressive Technology Project (PTP) was founded by grassroots organizers to support social change community-led organizing in low-income communities and communities of color. Their mission is to help community organizations achieve their goas more effectively and efficiently. Their programs help community organizers build their skills and understanding to integrate technology into the work of the organizations.

• Robert R. Putnam
  Better Together: Restoring the American Community
  Simon and Schuster, 2003. In response to civic crises and local problems, meet people driven by their vision to succeed by building community, often in innovative ways that may turn out to be appropriate for the twenty-first century: Mexican Americans in the Rio Grande Valley who want paved roads, running water, and decent schools; Harvard clerical workers searching for respect and improved working conditions; Wisconsin schoolchildren organizing to improve safety at a local railroad crossing; and Tupelo merchants joining with farmers to improve their economic status. Chapters 1 and 4 focus especially on community organizing. 

• Rinku Sen
  Stir It Up:
  Lessons in Community Organizing and Advocacy
  Jossey-Bass, 2003 

• Kristin Layng Szakos and Joe Szakos
  We Make Change:
  Community Organizers Talk About What They Do - And Why
  Vanderbilt University Press, 2007 

• Shel Trapp
  Basics of Organizing:
  You Can’t Build A Machine Without Nuts and Bolts
  National Training and Information Center, 1986. 

• Shel Trapp
  Dynamics of Organizing
  National Training and Information Center, 1976.

Congregation- or Faith-Based Organizing

• Interfaith Funders
  Various publications.
  See, in particular:
  Mark R. Warren and Richard L. Wood
  Faith-Based Community Organizing: The State of the Field
  Interfaith Funders, 2001. 

• Mary Beth Rogers
  Cold Anger: A Story of Faith and Power Politics
  University of North Texas Press, 1990 

• Mark R. Warren
  Dry Bones Rattling:
  Community Building to Revitalize American Democracy
  Princeton University Press, 2001. An in-depth treatment of how to rebuild the social capital of America's communities while promoting racially inclusive, democratic participation, this study profiles the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) network in Texas and the Southwest and it's role in reviving democratic life in the inner city. It shows how the IAF network helps unlikely collaborators - interfaith leaders from poor communities of color and those from more affluent communities – to build organizations with the power to construct affordable housing, create job-training programs, improve schools, expand public services, and increase neighborhood safety. 

• Richard L. Wood
  Faith in Action:
  Religion, Race, and Democratic Organizing in America
  University of Chicago Press, 2002. Over the past 15 years, associations throughout the US have organized citizens around issues of equality and social justice, often through local churches, to reshape public policies that neglect the disadvantaged. Wood explores how this faith-based form of community organizing succeeds by comparing two local groups in Oakland, California. He argues that the alternative culture and strategies of these two groups give them radically different access to community ties and social capital.

Education Organizing

• A. S. Bryk and B. L. Schneider
  Trust in Schools: A Core Resource for Improvement
  Russell Sage Foundation, 2002. Over the course of three years, 12 Chicago elementary schools were studied as they underwent extensive reorganization in response to the Chicago School Reform Act of 1988, which called for greater involvement of parents and community leaders in their neighborhood schools. Drawing on a longitudinal survey and achievement data, as well as in-depth interviews with principals, teachers, parents, and community leaders, the authors develop an account of how effective social relationships - which they term relational trust - serve as a prime resource for school improvement. 

• Community Involvement Program
  Publications
  Annenberg Institute for School Reform, Brown University
  See, in particular:
  Kavitha Mediratta, Seema Shah, Sara McAlister
  Organized Communities, Stronger Schools:
  A Preview of Research Findings
  2008 

• Concha Delgado-Gaitan and Trueba Enrique
  The Power of the Community:
  Mobilizing for Family and Schooling
  Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001. Delgado-Gaitan began literacy research in Carpinteria, California, at a time when Mexican immigrant workers had almost no voice in how their children were educated. Regular community gatherings gave birth to a community organization that reached out to everyone in the community, not just other Latino families. In a society that accentuates individualism and independence, these men and women look to their community for leadership, support, and resources for children, developing a fresh approach and workable solutions to the problems that face schools today. 

• Norm Fruchter
  Urban Schools, Public Will:
  Making Education Work for All Our Children
  Teachers College Press, Teachers College, Columbia University, 2007 

• Kavitha Mediratta, Norm Fruchter, and Anne Lewis
  Organizing for School Reform: How Communities are
  Finding Their Voice and Reclaiming their Public Schools
  2002 

• Public Interest Projects
  Communities for Public Education Reform:
  A Fund for Education Organizing 

• Jonathan Schorr
  Hard Lessons:
  The Promise of an Inner-City Charter School
  Ballantine, 2002. The E.C. Reems Academy, a charter school-in-progress established by the Oakland Community Organization, gave Jonathan Schorr complete access to the students, teachers, and parents. Schorr documents the school’s struggle to increase its effectiveness in teaching children from neighborhoods where success is rare, all the while trying to avoid becoming a self-sabotaging bureaucracy. Through successes and setbacks, Hard Lessons reveals just how difficult it is, even with the best of intentions, to offer a quality education to every child in America.

Immigration Organizing

•  Louis DeSipio
  Immigrant Organizing, Civic Outcomes:
  Civic Engagement, Political Activity, National Attachment,
  and Identity in Latino Immigrant Communities
  Center for the Study of Democracy, 2002  

• Craig McGarvey
  Pursuing Democracy's Promise:
  Newcomer Civic Participation in America
  Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees and Funders’ Committee on Civic Participation. 2004. 

• Public Interest Projects
  Four Freedoms Fund "a national funding collaborative to energize American democracy by supporting and engaging immigrants and refugees." 

• Saurav Sarkar
  Immigrant Organizing, Gotham Gazette, April 2006
   

Youth Organizing

• Funders' Collaborative on Youth Organizing
  Occasional Papers Series and other publications 

• Pedro Noguera, Shawn Ginwright, and Julio Cammarota
  Beyond Resistance! Youth Activism and Community Change: New Democratic Possibilities for Practice and Policy for America's Youth. Taylor and Francis Group, 2006

Films

• Building Hope: Community Development in America
  Pratt Center for Community Development, 1994. A unique documentary that takes up the history of community development corporations and their origins in community protest and organizing efforts. 

• Bill Duke
  The Killing Floor
  Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), 1985. Feature film about the 1919 Chicago race riots. It focuses on African-American migration from the south, their ghettoization in the City of Chicago, efforts of workers in the meatpacking industry there to unionize, and the tensions that led to the riots. 

• Ginny Durin
  Promises to Keep
  Durrin Productions Inc., 1988. The work of Mitch Snyder, a homeless advocate, is the subject of this documentary. It looks at how Snyder, along with the Community for Creative Non-Violence organized during the 1980 in response to federal housing cuts and rising homelessness. 

• Rob Epstein
  The Times of Harvey Milk
  Black Sand Productions, 1996. In its examination of the rise of gay politics in San Francisco, California, this documentary highlights the importance of coalitions and the link between grassroots organizing and electoral politics. 

• Barack Goodman
  Daley: The Last Boss
  Social Media Productions, 1996. Documentary about Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago, Illinois - father of the current mayor - and how he ran his urban political machine. It shows what community groups are up against, but it also shows how to build a political/electoral organization that can deliver the goods. 

• Slawomir Grunberg
  Fenceline: A Company Town Divided
  LogTV Ltd., 2002. A documentary on community organizing that takes on environmental justice issues. The film looks at a community called "Diamond" located near a Shell chemical processing plant in Norco, Louisiana. The community struggles to be relocated and eventually 'wins' their request for relocation. 

• Robert Houston
  Might Times: The Children's March
  HBO Family, 2004. This 20-minute film is about young people organizing in Birmingham, Alabama when the elders were encouraging slowing down civil rights organizing. 

• LAANE
  David Beats Goliath: How Inglewood Defeated Wal-Mart
  LAANE, 2004. A 10-minute documentary, sponsored by the LA Alliance for a New Economy, about a community-labor coalition’s victorious fight to turn back Wal-Mart's efforts to locate a mega-story in Inglewood. 

• Ken Loach
  Bread & Roses
  Parallax Pictures, 2000. Maya (Pilar Padilla) is appalled at the work conditions and unfair labor practices at her job as a janitor in a downtown Los Angeles office building. She teams up with Sam (Adrian Brody), a labor organizer, in a stirring fight against her ruthless employer. The film is based on the Justice for Janitors campaign among Los Angeles’ immigrant workers. It was a selection of the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. 

• John Sayles
  City of Hope
  Esperanza Films Inc., 1991. A feature film about urban politics by director John Sayles. It focuses on the tensions between urban redevelopment and community development in a city undergoing gentrification; based on Jersey City or Hoboken, NJ. It has some interesting scenes about organizing and politics. 

• Tim Ward
  Hull House: The House that Jane Built
  1991. Documentary about the first wave of urban social reform at the turn of the 20th Century, focusing on women reformers in the settlement house movement.