ABOUT THE PROJECTS
This website brings together two projects developed and led by Katie Fox and colleagues at Grassroots Solutions, an engagement strategy and evaluation consulting firm dedicated to building healthy, just, and equitable communities.
This website brings together two projects developed and led by Katie Fox and colleagues at Grassroots Solutions, an engagement strategy and evaluation consulting firm dedicated to building healthy, just, and equitable communities.
The Organizer Learning Project was funded by The California Endowment and co-led by Katie Fox, Gigi Barsoum, and Margaret Post from 2023 to 2025. The project engaged over 75 organizers to explore how they came to be organizers, how they have grown in their practice and careers, and who and what made a difference in that growth.
The conversations with organizers culminated in a report, Tilling the Soil: Nurturing Organizer Growth and Learning, that provides a deep dive into what we learned about what it takes to develop a strong and resilient organizer. The report covers three main topics:
phases of organizer growth
These describe the arc of an organizers’ development, leaning into what organizers shared about the emotion and experience of each phase.
Dimensions of Organizer Learning
What organizers learn about the discipline, themselves, and the world around them as they move through the phases.
experiences + relationships
These are the nutrients of organizer growth that propel organizers through the phases and support development throughout their careers.
This report is designed as a grounding resource to sow conversations with organizers, national organizing networks and trainers, funders, researchers, and evaluators about how we can all improve support for organizer growth and learning.
Read about the Phases + NutrientsFunded by the Freedom Together Foundation, in partnership with Community Change, the Organizer Staffing Stories of Practice project gathers and shares stories about successful approaches to organizer recruitment, development, and retention.
In 2024, Grassroots Solutions and Community Change conducted a “discovery” phase to identify key challenges that organizing groups are facing. Three insights emerged:
Lack of focus on solutions
While there is considerable conversation and analysis about the challenges the field and organizations face with organizer staffing, the discussions and ideas about solutions are sparse.
Need for practical examples
Organizing groups are hungry for ideas, inspiration, and concrete information about how they can address staffing challenges within their organizations.
Lots of promising practices
Across the country, individual organizations have implemented successful practices to shore up organizer staff. Their experiences point to promising approaches that may offer ideas and inspiration to other organizations.
The Organizer Staffing Stories of Practice project aims to fill these gaps and provide the organizing field with vivid, detailed, and affirming stories about organizations that are effectively recruiting, developing, and retaining organizing staff.
Read the stories of practiceThis project drew on the wisdom and skills of a diverse mix of organizers, consultants, and creatives. The success of this project is due to the contributions and support of the following team members and collaborators:
For more information about either of these projects, please contact Katie at katie[at]grassrootssolutions.com.
