http://www.mott.org/FundingInterests/Issues/Community%20Organizing.aspxhttp://www.mott.org/~/media/Images/logo_inversed%20jpg.ashxhttp://www.mott.org/FundingInterests/Issues/Community%20Organizing.aspxCommunity Organizingen-usMon, 28 May 2012 14:58:08 GMTMon, 28 May 2012 14:58:08 GMT60http://www.mott.org/news/news/2011/20110615ShannonLauderQandA.aspxShannon Lawder has been a member of the Mott Foundation’s Civil Society [See related story about Mott’s Civil Society grantmaking in Bosnia and Herzegovina] grantmaking team since 1995, and she was named program director in 2007. In March 2011, Mott’s Board of Trustees approved a revamped Civil Society program plan that will guide grantmaking through 2018. In this Q &A, Lawder talks about the new plan, how it will affect grantmaking and some background on Mott’s work under this program.

Mott: Your team has spent the past two years refining and refocusing its grantmaking plan. How does this new plan differ from the past?

Shannon Lawder

Lawder: In the new plan, we have identified two central themes – encouraging philanthropy and supporting citizen participation. These will run throughout our Civil Society grantmaking in Central/Eastern Europe and Russia, South Africa, the United States, and the Global Philanthropy and Nonprofit Sector. We believe that having two themes allows for greater sharing and learning among our grantees and among our own staff. Also, on a very practical level, we worked to reduce the number of focus areas in which we are working, so we have only seven grantmaking objectives across the program as opposed to 14 under the old plan.

Mott: How will the new plan affect grantmaking in the program’s four program areas?

Lawder: Perhaps the most dramatic change in our programming is taking place in the CEE/Russia program area. Having phased out of new grantmaking in the Visegrad countries [Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia], we now work in only two subregions – Southeast Europe and the Western Former Soviet Union. As part of our Southeast Europe subregion, we will explore grantmaking in Turkey, which is a new country for the Foundation.

In South Africa, we are narrowing our objectives from three to two – one related to philanthropy development and the other to the community advice office sector. In the United States, we now have two objectives. The first will focus on ensuring the nonprofit sector’s vibrancy and responsiveness to social needs through maintaining a robust infrastructure, and the second will encourage philanthropy to promote vitality and resilience in local communities.

While we changed the name of our global program area from Special Initiatives-International to Global Philanthropy and Nonprofit Sector, this program area is perhaps the least changed overall. We will continue to have one broad objective that relates to philanthropy and the nonprofit sector. However, the main emphasis of this grantmaking will be fostering a global support system for philanthropy.

Mott: Would you provide a little background on the development of the Civil Society program and how it’s evolved?

Lawder: Although Civil Society did not become an official Mott Foundation program until 1992, we have been making grants in support of philanthropy and volunteerism in the United States since the 1970s. Our interest in global work began through our support for international exchanges in the community education field. Then, in the 1980s, we started exploring grantmaking opportunities in South Africa and Eastern Europe because of the historic democratic developments in these important parts of the world. Today, CEE/Russia, South Africa and the United States remain core areas within our Civil Society program. Our grantmaking, however, has evolved as we have learned from our experience, and as the capacity of our grantees has developed. For almost 20 years, we have supported increasing the capacity and effectiveness of the nonprofit sector and the field of philanthropy to engage people in their communities and societies.

We are currently seeing the fruits of our investments, as well as areas of opportunity and challenge. The world is very different than it was 20 years ago, and our grantmaking has evolved to reflect many of these changes. At its core, however, is the enduring belief that a healthy civil society promotes a culture of respect, freedom and opportunity among, and for, its people.

Mott: What countries are served through the new plan and what went into the selection of these?

Lawder: While our global philanthropy and nonprofit sector grantmaking area plays out in countries and regions all over the world, we currently have in-country grantmaking programs serving 14 nations – Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Russia, Serbia, South Africa, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United States.

When determining what countries we would work in under the new plan, one of the most important factors to consider was our own knowledge and experience. The challenges we are addressing in these countries are long-term, fundamental issues that cannot be resolved quickly. It takes many years to build strong relationships and establish trust with local institutions. Therefore, the Mott Foundation tends to remain engaged in a country for a long time.

We recently phased out of grantmaking in the Visegrad countries, but this was only after implementing an exit strategy that took several years and included increasing our investment in these countries during this period.

As I mentioned earlier, we decided to explore grantmaking in Turkey under the new plan. This was a big step for us and it was the result of careful consideration during the past few years. We believe that there are unique opportunities there right now. While grantmaking in Turkey is new to Mott, we already have peers in the country because of our European networks, so we can learn from them and, hopefully, complement their work.

Mott: Your grantmaking plan is built around the concept of “civil society.” What does that term mean to the Mott Foundation?

Lawder: Civil society is often used interchangeably with the non-governmental, nonprofit or voluntary sector. However to us, it is a broader concept. Civil society is an arena for open dialogue and debate. At the same time, it is a platform for associational and institutional collaboration.

At Mott, we believe it also refers to a set of basic human values – dignity, freedom, civility, equity and peace. This broader concept encompasses all three sectors – government, business and nonprofit/voluntary – working together around shared interests, purposes and values. In our grantmaking to promote civil society, we place a special emphasis on the role of a healthy and vibrant nonprofit sector. However, we also realize that no single sector encompasses all the necessary knowledge, skills or capacity to fully meet society’s needs. Together, the three sectors constitute the fundamental infrastructure of a balanced, effective and healthy civil society.

]]>Civil SocietyThu, 23 Jun 2011 12:00:00 GMT22A0231F-0D1A-4FE7-B6AF-B9AA6860C641http://www.mott.org/news/news/2011/20110610CrisDoby.aspx By ANN RICHARDS

In late 2008, representatives from the European Community Organizing Network (ECON) – a network of people and organizations from 13 countries – began working with a longtime Mott Foundation grantee, the Center for Community Change (CCC), to organize training conferences. To date, they have provided technical assistance and training in community organizing to more than 225 people in six countries. Earlier this year, Mott Program Officer Cris Doby traveled to London to conduct a workshop at the invitation of a group of funders in the United Kingdom. She also had the opportunity to attend the founding convention for North London Citizens, a community-organizing group affiliated with another longtime Mott grantee, the Industrial Areas Foundation. Following that, Doby visited several of the community organizers and organizing groups that had received training from CCC. In the following Q&A, she offers her reflections about the similarities and differences of organizing in different cultures and how the groups she visited are using the techniques of community organizing to help build stronger civic participation. 
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Mott: Tell us a little more about your visit to London and how community organizing has taken root there.

Doby: I’m sure there’s lots of community organizing in the U.K., especially neighborhood-based organizations that are made up of individuals. But I only had a chance to visit one organization, an affiliate of Citizens UK which is itself an affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation, a Mott grantee.

Cris Doby sits with community organizers working in the Zapad neighborhood in Zvolen, Slovakia. The organizers successfully campaigned to get a new sidewalk installed between some housing projects and the local school. The neighborhood organization received training through a Mott grant to the Center for Community Change.

Citizens UK has more than 160 member institutions. That is, individuals don’t join Citizens UK, only institutions do. These are mostly faith congregations but also schools, community groups, service agencies and union locals. The organization began in 1989 after its lead organizer, Neal Jameson, spent time the U.S. learning the arts of organizing from the Industrial Areas Foundation.

A challenge in the U.K. is that the current government is using the term “Big Society” as a way of referring to its approach to governing. Within that, the government holds up the role of community organizer as a critical player at the local level. As public money has been withdrawn from direct services, many community-based organizations now self-identify as community-organizing groups – blurring the distinction between service providers, advocacy organizations and community organizing. So a part of my visit was a meeting with funders who are sorting through the distinctive features of organizing versus other approaches to responding to social needs and interests.

Mott: How adaptable are U.S.-style organizing techniques to the different cultures and countries in Europe?

Doby: Beyond the U.K., I had an opportunity to visit several community-organizing groups in Slovakia and Hungary. I was struck with the tremendous opportunity for organizing to provide a pathway to deep, meaningful citizen engagement and action.

At the same time, the challenges are tremendous. The level of social trust is very low, and there is little experience with effective organizing – political organizing, labor organizing or community organizing. So when organizers begin to work in these communities, they are not just introducing ideas about how to work together to seek the common good. They actually have to introduce the concept of working together, period.

The foundational instrument of organizing in the U.S. is what’s called the one-on-one meeting, a disciplined conversation between a trained leader and a member of the community in order to listen, connect and seek common purpose. In some places, the level of trust is so low that a one-on-one conversation is viewed with suspicion.

All of that said, where community organizing is taking root, it is achieving visible, tangible results.

Mott: You met many inspiring individuals during your visit, but is there one who has a particularly interesting story to tell about the power of organizing?

Doby: There’s one group that was inspiring and uplifting. In the town of Zvolen in Slovakia, there is an enormous, Soviet-era housing development. I’m not sure how many people live there, but I was told that it’s in the range of 50,000. The multistory apartment buildings house many children and there is a school right in the development. But there were no sidewalks between the apartment complexes and the school, and apparently when it rained the ground around the school would be one gigantic mud puddle, which could last for days. And the kids had to wade through that to get to and from school.

When a community organizer began working in this complex, using the usual techniques of organizing, he began having individual conversations with residents, then gathering people and putting them into conversation with one another, and finally, guiding them toward identifying an issue that they would be willing to work on together. Having a sidewalk to the school was one of the community’s primary concerns.

The community’s experience was when you wanted something from the public sector, you begged or bribed. They had no experience of organizing, putting forward a demand, and working to have their vision implemented. But with the help of this organizer, that is what they did, and they are so incredibly proud – not just of the sidewalk, but of the experience of being citizens in a democracy. Over and over they said to me, now we have democracy!

Mott: Are there some lessons you took away from this experience that would be applicable to your work here in the U.S.?

Doby: Well, I think an important connection is to our commitment to democracy. Our own civic culture is in rough shape, I’m afraid. And while I don’t think community organizing alone will save our democracy, I don’t think we’ll save it without community organizing.]]>Pathways Out of Poverty, Civil SocietyTue, 14 Jun 2011 00:00:00 GMT18A744E4-65D2-4DB7-8E50-3046A1E1C81D