Community Organizing Capacity Building

In 2005, the Woods Fund identified the South Side of Chicago as an area that was not receiving the resources it needed to support effective community organizing activities. This was followed by a study by the Center for Impact Research which identified barriers facing groups and leaders that limit not only their capacity for organizing, but also their ability to attract resources for their work. As a result of these findings, Woods Fund created the South Side Capacity Building Initiative to increase community participation in an area of the city that, we discovered, lacked levels of participation found elsewhere.