New Book: Power to the Partners: Organizational Coalitions in Social Justice Advocacy

Posted by Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) on July 29, 2025

In the summer of 2022, Kansans for Constitutional Freedom (KCF), a bipartisan coalition of advocacy organizations, came together to fight a proposed constitutional amendment that would have allowed state lawmakers to ban abortion in Kansas. Despite insurmountable odds, KCF succeeded, and in the months that followed their victory, organizers across the country puzzled over how they managed to pull it off. In the words of Ashley All, KCF’s communications director, “Coalition building is absolutely critical. No matter where you live, whatever state you’re in—I don’t care if you’re in New York, California, Montana, or Kentucky—coalition building is critical. You’ve got to bring a lot of different voices to the table.”

And yet, while many ascribe to All’s sentiment—for instance, most advocacy happens in partnerships—there is little empirical evidence of whether, and how, coalition work lends itself to exceptional success. Author Maraam A. Dwidar set out in search of this evidence. She spent seven years speaking with political organizers, coalition leaders, and policy makers, all whilst observing and recording the behavior of more than 20,000 organizations and 1,700 coalitions advocating for social, racial, and economic justice in American politics.

Power to the Partners, is the culmination of that work, and its message is clear: Partnership is powerful, but only certain kinds of coalitions systematically enable successful advocacy outcomes: those that bring together member organizations with diverse backgrounds and specialties and with structural characteristics that encourage collective learning and adaptability.

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