Core Grantmaking: Community Organizing Criteria
The Community Organizing program area seeks to support organizations that engage in power building through taking collective action in order to advance racial equity and/or racial justice in the metropolitan Chicago area. Community organizing enables democracy at the grassroots level to re-imagine and transform systems.
To learn more about key terms in our approach to community organizing, visit our glossary of terms.
We support organizations that:
Operate within metropolitan Chicago (city proper with some consideration of other cities in Cook County)
We prioritize supporting organizations that work within, and with, communities of color and marginalized populations
Utilize a political framework for organizing efforts
Racial equity lens (required)
Center race in their organizing framework
Have an understanding of disparities and the reasons they exist
Look at structural root causes of problems
Name race explicitly when talking about problems
Propose redistribution as a primary solution
Racial justice lens (preferred)
Understand and acknowledges the historical centrality of race in the US
Create a shared affirmative vision of a fair and inclusive society
Focus explicitly on building civic, cultural, and political power by those most impacted
Propose a broader based set of solutions that includes, but is not limited to, equity
Emphasize transformative solutions that impact multiple systems
Have 51% people of color on the executive leadership of the organization and its Board of Directors
We prioritize BIPOC-led and BIPOC-centered/BIPOC-serving organizations
Demonstrate elements of community organizing
Impacted individuals are involved in the organization’s decision-making process and participate in collective action to advance campaign/work
Have a process (informal or formal) to develop the leadership of those impacted by the issue that the organization is working towards dismantling
Articulate a strategy for systems change and involved tactics
Addresses changes in policies, practices, structures, and/or systems
Demonstrates a critique of, and challenges, institutions of power
Builds strategic partnerships with other organizations, including coalitions & coalition building
Size of organization
We prioritize supporting small and grassroots organizations
Grassroots - < $1M
Small - $1M - $3M