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

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