Developments in Institution-Based Community Organizing

Posted by on December 16, 2013

A Decade of Growth
By Sheila Beachum Bilby

Organizations like PICO “are increasingly serious about winning on big issues,” says Kathy Partridge, executive director of Interfaith Funders, a network of faith-based and secular groups that works on social change. Those “big issues” include health care, education, immigration, racism, voter registration, criminal justice, poverty, unemployment, and wages, as well as housing and foreclosures, with a focus on reducing poverty and economic inequality.

In a national study, Interfaith Funders highlights the evolution of these “institution-based” community organizing groups over the past decade in helping improve the quality of life for people who live in poor, working-class, and middle-income neighborhoods. The new report, Building Bridges, Building Power: Developments in Institution-Based Community Organizing, documents many of the important gains made by IBCOs since Interfaith Funders conducted its first state of the field report in 1999. Here’s what’s changed:

Read more at: http://www.shelterforce.org/article/3468/a_decade_of_growth/

Read the report at: http://www.soc.duke.edu/~brf6/ibcoreport.pdf