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Kavita Khandekar Chopra

Voices From the Frontlines: What Organizers Need in 2022

On Monday August 22nd re:power is hosting a movement briefing to discuss these findings and most importantly to dig deeper into the solutions we’ve listed below. We hope to see you there!

Register

In March 2022, re:power launched our 2022 Organizer Survey in partnership with Analyst Institute. Our goal was to survey organizers spanning the progressive sector to understand their short and long term challenges and needs. We were particularly interested in understanding the needs of BIPOC organizers. 

re:power engaged organizers to participate in our survey through our partners. Partners were sent unique URLs to share with their staff, volunteers, and networks. In the end we had 349 completed surveys. Unfortunately, despite a concerted effort, we were unable to reach the majority BIPOC audience we were striving to reach*. Despite this limitation, we were still able to subset Black organizers and BIPOC women organizers for deeper analysis.

* Note: re:power is thinking deeply about how we might change future survey dissemination tactics to better reach the audience we hoped to reach. As a primarily BIPOC organization, we are also keenly aware of the ways in which information has often been extracted from Black, Indigenous and other communities of color in ways that did not serve that community. 

Question: Select any and all of the following racial/ethnic categories that you feel describe you

Respondent Demographics 

60% of respondents self-identify as White, 20% as Black or African American, 11% as Latinx or Hispanic and 10% as Asian or Asian American. 71% self-identify as women and 3% as transgender. 22% of respondents self-identify as having a disability. About 28% are first or second-generation immigrants and 34% are re:power alumni! Among the alumni, the training that was most commonly attended was Intro to Digital Organizing. The majority of respondents have at least 5 years of organizing experience and many have 10+. The majority of respondents work in community, electoral and/or legislative organizing and coalition building.

Key Findings

So what DID we learn from organizers? The short answer is that the number one threat to our movement is not external — it’s coming from within. Organizers on the whole are most concerned with organizer burnout in the short-term and long-term. This was consistent across all types of organizing. 

BIPOC women and Black organizers also cited the disconnect between power-building and bettering people’s lived experiences as a top short-term (next 18 months) challenge in addition to organizer burnout. We can draw two conclusions from this finding: 1) Black and BIPOC women organizers themselves are struggling to see the impact of their work on bettering their lived experience and 2) these organizers are concerned that the lack of progress in improving their communities’ material conditions will erode the power-building work they are currently doing.

In the long-term (next 5 years), organizers cited as their top challenge entrenched powers external to organization preventing change, followed closely by organizer burnout. For Black organizers, lack of funding and organizational sustainability were the top two challenges. For BIPOC women organizers, entrenched powers external to organization preventing change and organizer burnout remained at the top followed closely by lack of funding and organizational sustainability.

While none of this is new information for our movement, we found it particularly affirming to see these challenges named so plainly and to see the clear differences in the challenges Black organizers are facing when compared to the movement as a whole. Our survey also asked organizers to think about what they need in order to address the challenges they are facing. 

Short-term and long-term needs across organizers were consistent: more funding for their organizations’ work, more or better collaboration with other orgs, and more support to address or prevent burn-out. BIPOC women and Black organizers named training opportunities as an additional short-term need, superseding the need for improved collaboration among those groups.

Overall, our survey showed that the challenges and needs described by all organizers, and especially Black and BIPOC women organizers, point to a major problem that we must address as a movement: ORGANIZER BURNOUT. And when thinking about burnout, organizers are not just focused on individual self-care mechanisms but rather how all of the challenges and needs they named are leading to a burnout issue that is more prevalent and holistic. Our movement is powered by people and if our people are exhausted, overworked, underpaid, and underinvested in, then we won’t have the momentum we need to achieve the big wins that can lead to improving our communities’ lived experiences.


Question: Please select up to three potential challenges you are most concerned about at your organization in
the short term (i.e., in the next 18 months)

Question: Please select up to three potential challenges you are most concerned about at your organization in
the long term (i.e., in the next 5 years)

Addressing Organizer Burnout

Our survey asked organizers what solutions they had in addressing organizer burnout. Organizers responded to this question in a long-text format and responses centered around the following themes:

  • Value and support organizers
  • Devote resources to preventing burnout
  • Use sustainable funding to support better work environments
  • Support organizing staff with holistic and realistic approaches
    • This theme was the most prevalent across all responses

“Employers [need to] care about not harming their organizers and build in care considerations and an acknowledgement that sometimes things don’t get done on schedule if the conditions changed, new needs were revealed, people needed more time to learn something, etc. Reality.”

Survey respondent

Addressing Training Needs

As a training organization, re:power was also very curious to understand the training needs of organizers across the movement. As we now know that Black and BIPOC women organizers listed training opportunities as one of their top short- and long-term needs, we were eager to go deeper into this topic. 

Organizers on the whole expressed interest in Building Organizing Relationships, Power Mapping, and Finding Our People and Building Community as the training topics that would benefit them and their organizations most. The most popular training topic that interested organizers most was the Women of Color Leadership Cohort. 


Question: Which of the following types of training would benefit you or someone else at your organization?
(check all that apply). Additional trainings selected by fewer respondents are included in the tables.

Nearly half of respondents are more interested in a cohort-based training format that includes staff from their organizations and peer organizations. This finding aligns with both the finding of the need for more or better collaboration with other orgs, and comments from several organizers about the need for more community-building within the progressive community. 

Data Needs and Challenges

re:power was also interested in understanding the data practices, challenges and needs of the organizations we surveyed. On the whole, we learned that a variety of tools are being used to manage data, from Google Sheets to VAN/EveryAction. Most organizers also cited that at least some data needs are not met with existing tools. Organizers reported needing the most data-related support around conducting their own research, improving data collection practices, and improving systems for storing data.


Question: Do the data management tools your organization is using now meet your organization’s needs?

“I wish we had more accurate data that was obtained in a relational way. I wish we had more technology and training in various programs that could help accurately reflect what we are trying to obtain.” 

Survey respondent

Another major challenge respondents often cited was data on marginalized populations being inaccurate. Specific needs include: 

  • “Information on marginalized communities including Native American and recently incarcerated, for example, who need direct health outreach.” 
  • “Data that is more granular than just race (ethnic communities in Latinx communities, AAPI communities, more granular data on Black communities).” 
  • “Data on the invisible citizens who do not vote; better data on Spanish speakers.”

“We have no real way to measure the impact of our work since we work in partnership with many other organizations and with campaigns. We can only measure output, not impact.”

Survey respondent

Funding Challenges 

As is no surprise to us, organizers are extremely worried about short- and long-term funding challenges impeding their progress and work. In the short-term, 50% of respondents are concerned about getting enough funding to expand CURRENT programs and staffing to desired levels. In the long-term, organizers described concerns relating to obtaining and maintaining sustainable funding including: 

  • Competition for sustainable funding that is aligned with org priorities
  • Threat of donor fatigue/ loss of interest
  • Getting funding for ONGOING work
  • Lack of support for longer-term organizing strategies.

“While more funding is essential, organizers are not just describing a need for more cash, but rather a need for more FOCUS. Long-term infrastructure investments need long-term timelines to bear returns. Organizers are asking funders and donors to make multi-year investments, support ongoing work—not just the new shiny thing—and to redefine wins!”

Survey respondent

Conclusions 

It’s clear that our movement has needs to meet and challenges to overcome, especially as we set all of this work against the backdrop of COVID, continued violence against Black and Brown bodies, climate change and more. Despite the feelings of overwhelm that can arise when we see this, there are many actionable solutions that have come out of this research:

  1. Provide sustainable multi-year funding, including for longer-term organizing work, avoiding the pitfalls of “boom and bust” funding. 
  2. Work toward improving the data on marginalized populations through relational data collection to support the work of organizations who are engaging and serving these populations.
  3. Support organizer-driven research on their own programs including supporting improvements to data collection systems and practices.
  4. Fund training and provide continued support post-training. 
  5. Address (and if possible, prevent) organizer burnout at a systems level rather than at the individual level.
  6. Demonstrate the impact of power-building work on bettering lived experiences, potentially through redefining wins. 
  7. Support the work of network-building and community-building among organizers as a response to burnout as well as the need for more collaboration across organizations.

“We need sustained investments by individual foundations—more money over a longer period of time. Conservative foundations have invested in an infrastructure […] Progressive funders need to adopt similar strategies if we are to gain the traction we need to build a stronger base.” 

Survey respondent

Executive Summary

Want to dig deeper into the data? Download the full Executive Summary of our 2022 Organizer Survey below.

2022 Organizer Survey Results Executive SummaryDownload

On August 22nd re:power is hosting a movement briefing to discuss these findings and most importantly to dig deeper into the solutions we’ve listed above.

Beyond Voting: Building Power in BIPOC Communities

Below is an excerpt of an article originally published in Responsive Philanthropy, a publication by The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP), on August 1, 2022. Read the full article at the page linked below.
Co-written by: Karundi Williams, Kavita Khandekar Chopra

In a year like 2022, it is simply impossible to turn our attention away from the relentless attacks on our democracy and our people. While this country has never fully realized a democracy that represents us all, for the last 50 years a strategic, a well-funded, and deeply organized effort has been building to erode any progress that we have made. In just the last two years, states across our country have been systematically restricting voting rights through gerrymandered redistricting, laws targeting who can register voters, increased voter ID laws, and more. And they are not stopping there — moving swiftly to restrict [or erode] other personal freedoms like the right to protest, the right to live in our identities and love whomever we choose, and of course our right to the autonomy of our own bodies.

But let’s be clear — this American democracy was never built for us. It was not built for the Black, Indigenous, Native, Latine, Asian & Pacific Islander communities who have always supported but never benefited from this democracy. Still though, we fought to build power for our people and started transforming our democracy by getting the 13th, 14th, 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th amendments ratified. Despite these advancements, the cornerstones of our democracy — the rights to vote, to dissent, to be treated equally under the law — have never been equitably applied to BIPOC communities. And this battle remains central to the narratives at play in 2022 and beyond.

When things feel so bleak, it is hard for even the most politically educated of us to remain engaged in a system that does not see our humanity. But the question at hand for us now is not ‘How do we get more people to vote?’ The question we must ask ourselves is ‘What hope can we offer our communities about the outcomes of this rigged system?’ ‘How can we bring about real change for our people through civic engagement?‘

What role can philanthropy play to overcome these seemingly impossible barriers?

For too long, philanthropy has been focused on civic engagement as an activity that is typically done in even-number years between May and November. Money begins to flow in with purpose — to engage as many voters as is possible to achieve the best outcomes for our communities. But this cyclical, dump-truck style funding doesn’t work because it makes far too many assumptions about who is engaged, how communities will vote, how to engage different communities, and ultimately what this engagement is for.  

Part of the problem is that philanthropy is often measuring the wrong things. They’re focused on voter engagement as the outcome, instead of recognizing it as the lever by which we see transformational change for our people. As head of the New Georgia Project Nse Ufot said recently in her panel at the Funders Committee on Civic Participation, voting is a “flex” of the power that communities have built over time. Voting is not the end.

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Welcome Heidi Gerbracht, our new PGA Director!

Heidi Gerbracht

re:power Fund, along with our partners at Local Progress and State Innovation Exchange (SiX), are thrilled to announce our newest staff member—Heidi Gerbracht (she/they) as the Director of the Progressive Governance Academy (PGA). 

The PGA is a shared venture of three values-aligned organizations committed to training, supporting and enhancing the capacity of elected officials to govern, all while building the larger progressive movement. re:power Fund, Local Progress and SiX jointly launched the PGA in 2019 after seeing the significant and unique opportunity for the progressive movement to build infrastructure it has long been lacking: a national hub for training legislators. The program  supports newly elected leaders to successfully transition into governance and deepens the expertise of incumbents to build and strengthen the bench of leaders our country needs to ensure a thriving multiracial Democracy. 

The PGA strengthens elected officials’ capacity to govern by providing them with critical skills, training, and a supportive community of practice. Our curriculum emphasizes an organizing approach to governance, including training on skills like power mapping, relational organizing, and coalition building. We also focus significantly on models for collaborative and inclusive governance, working towards a new vision for progressives to hold and exercise governing power.  

In her new role as Director, Heidi will be leading the PGA as the project enters a new era with solidified support and infrastructure. The PGA will continue to offer meaningful training to local and state elected officials across the country and will also seek to strengthen the networks of local and state officials to work together in meaningful ways. 

“We are excited to welcome Heidi to our incredible team and know she is exactly the right leader to further cohere our shared vision and leverage our collective resources to  create the most powerful iteration of the PGA,” says Karundi Williams, Executive Director of re:power and re:power Fund. 

Welcome Heidi! We’re so excited you’re here!

“We are excited to welcome Heidi to our incredible team and know she is exactly the right leader to further cohere our shared vision and leverage our collective resources to  create the most powerful iteration of the PGA.”

Karundi Williams, re:power Executive Director

About Heidi

Heidi Gerbracht is a policy and local government expert and strategist with nearly two decades experience working on equity and justice using an intersectional approach.  Her career has involved the full spectrum of democracy, from recruitment to training to elections to policy and programs.

She founded and directed the nonprofit consultancy Equity Agenda, which works with city governments and mission-aligned nonprofits across the country using an intersectional approach to assess gender equity in their communities and to develop and implement policy and programs to achieve equity for all. Equity Agenda partnered with Mayors Innovation Project in January 2020 to launch the Women Mayors Network, which provides resources and support to nearly 200 diverse women mayors from cities of every size across the country. Previously, she developed, launched, and managed a successful national environmental health program called Bright Cities and was a public servant at the City of Austin in various capacities for nearly a decade where she spearheaded successful passage of several progressive policies that were the first of their kind nationally.

She is a past Board Chair of Annie’s List, an organization that recruits, trains, and elects progressive women who support abortion rights at the state and local level in Texas. Her leadership as Board Chair resulted in the organization’s Board of Directors surpassing fifty percent representation for women of color for the first time in the organization’s history, better reflecting the Texas population. Annie’s List also hired its first Black woman Executive Director during her Board Chair tenure, and their partnership created the space for Annie’s List to be the powerful multiracial coalition that it now is. Heidi is also the Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of URGE: Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity, a state-driven national organization that builds power and sustains a young people’s movement for reproductive justice by centering the leadership of young people of color who are women, queer, trans, nonbinary, and people of low-income.   

Heidi has trained candidates for local office as well as current local officeholders, and regularly serves as a campaign consultant for city-level candidates who are part of the New American Majority: women, people of color, young people, and LGBT candidates in particular.

Heidi holds a Masters in Public Affairs from the LBJ School of Public Affairs and a B.A. in International Relations from American University’s School of International Service.  She lives in Austin Texas.

Announcing Three New Board Members

We’re thrilled to announce three new movement leaders who have been unanimously voted to join re:power’s board:

Jennifer Epps-Addison J.D., has spent the last 25 years leading justice-centered campaigns and organizations. Her work is rooted in community organizing, cultivating winning strategies, and advancing systems-change campaigns to transform our work and create the conditions where we all have the freedom to thrive.

She is the recipient of the 2013 Edna Award from the Berger-Marks Foundation, which honors an outstanding young woman each year for her leadership in fueling social change. In the same year, she was named an ‘Activist to Watch’ by Bill Moyers.

Jennifer earned her BA in Political Science and Women’s Studies and her JD from the University of Wisconsin. Prior to her return to organizing, Jennifer was a trial attorney in the Wisconsin State Public Defender’s Office. Jennifer sits on the board of directors for the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, United For Respect, Be A Hero PAC, and Step Up Louisiana. 

Art Reyes, III is the founding Executive Director of We The People Michigan and We The People Action Fund. Born and raised in Flint, MI, and hails from three generations of proud UAW members. 

Prior to We The People, Art was the training director at the Center for Popular Democracy, where he led national training programs for organizers, lead staff, and executive directors. He spent much of 2016 working in Flint responding to the water crisis and helping launch Flint Rising.

In 2020, Art and his team led a multi-racial organizing effort in Michigan to protect the results of the election and the integrity of our democracy. He has a BA from Michigan and MPP from Harvard where he taught a community organizing class with Marshall Ganz. He lives in Michigan with his wife Ashley, their baby Emilio, and a gigantic dog named Kona the Coney Dog.

Luna Yasui most recently served as Senior Program Officer on the Civic Engagement and Government team at the Ford Foundation, supporting young organizers and leaders seeking transformative and innovative solutions for inequality.

Luna’s work is grounded in the belief that strengthening the political participation and power of women, people of color, immigrants, and LGBTQ people is essential to realizing a just democracy by and for all. 

She has served on numerous charitable boards and as an advisor to multiple civic engagement and social justice donor collaboratives. She currently serves as the Vice-Chair of the Board of the Amalgamated Foundation, and the Chair of the Advisory Board for the AAPI Power Fund.

Luna received her JD from the University of Pennsylvania School of Law where she was a Public Interest Fellow, and Peggy Browning Fellow, and BA from Brown University. She lives in Brooklyn with her partner, their twins, and Tater, the guinea pig.

State Infrastructure Fund

In 2020, re:power Fund partnered with the State Infrastructure Fund (SIF) to train 88 grantees, across 30 states, on digital organizing and civic engagement. The majority of grantees were focused on election protection work and voter turnout and mobilization. More than 187 people participated in this training series and they represented the communities who re:power Fund and SIF seek to center in our work—70% identified as BIPOC and 71% identified as women. 

In a pivotal election year that coincided with the pandemic, organizers needed to quickly build and strengthen their digital organizing skills. re:power Fund worked with SIF to assess grantees’ needs and, based on the results, we developed two different offerings: an Intro to Digital Organizing course that covered the fundamentals of digital organizing for participants who were newer to the field, followed by an Intermediate Digital Organizing course where participants deepened their knowledge and skills. 

The two courses spanned three months and included the following topics:

Intro to Digital Organizing 

  • Building Power through Digital Organizing
  • Finding Our People & Messaging Online
  • Email Writing & Targeting
  • Growing Online Communities
  • Mobile Campaigning
  • Digital Safety

Intermediate Digital Organizing 

  • Leadership Ladder
  • Design Training
  • A/B Testing
  • Intro to Analytics (Sheets)
  • Storytelling Strategies Online
  • Rapid Response Assignment

Based on the feedback we received, we feel confident that the trainings enabled organizers to transition their important work to the digital realm, and to continue engaging historically underrepresented voters and protecting the integrity of the election. 

“I’m already using the tools I’ve learned to organize better and more impactful digital campaigns.”

SIF Particpant

One participant said, “I’m already using the tools I’ve learned to organize better & more impactful digital campaigns,” while another said, “I have legit changed my entire digital strategy and our team has seen a direct increase in our numbers and actions taken.” 

This work was led by Rose Espinola, a contractor with re:power Fund.

White Supremacy and American Politics

As the results of this election continue to come in, we are in awe of the historic turnout. Nearly 160M people voted in the last several weeks by mail and in-person. Congratulations to the many organizers who poured their souls into mobilizing their communities in a year that required radical shifts in strategy and work during a dangerous global pandemic.

Elections are not the beginning or end of our work — they are simply a measurement of where we are as a country.

Last night showed us that white supremacy has an unyielding grip on all of our systems, including our politics. It has proven repeatedly to be dangerous to both our society and democracy, and revealed itself in yet another election. There is still plenty of long-term power-building and narrative-shifting work left to be done, especially with, for, and by communities of color. Like the rest of you, we are still watching. We are still fighting. We will not be muted.