In 2019, a group of eight California Bay Area funders began convening under the umbrella of the Bay Area Power Building Funder Table, with the goal of exploring how their collective resources could be better aligned to invest in, build, and sustain grassroots community organizing for the long-term. As the Bay Area Power Building Funder Table puts it, this group of funders “aspires to more deeply understand and support the infrastructure and resources that are required to sustain and grow grassroots-driven, multi-issue, multi-racial community organizing and power building in our region.”
Organizing campaigns are more powerful when groups working in coalition are united not only around the need for short-term wins but have a shared long-term strategy and vision. Similarly, the Bay Area Power Building Funder Table’s guiding ethos is that a regional funders table with a common framework and a shared understanding of both the opportunities and challenges for community organizing and power-building is best positioned for maximum impact. As Hannah Garcia, Senior Program Officer at East Bay Community Foundation and co-chair of the Bay Area Power-Building Funders Table put it, “Funders committed to social justice have a responsibility to serve as movement-building and fundraising partners. Through support and participation in funder collaboratives, we can collectively expand investment in the organizing and infrastructure needed to build and sustain grassroots power over the long-term.”
Still in its early stages, this process has not been a top-down, funder-driven process; rather, it has been conducted hand-in-hand and in partnership with leaders in the region’s grassroots community organizing ecosystem. One of their first steps was to bring on a long-time Bay Area organizer to lead listening sessions and discussions with local grassroots leaders, who identified several key challenges to building long-term community power—and those challenges, unsurprisingly, centered around hiring, training, and retaining community organizers.
In 2022, the Bay Area Power Building Funder Table is continuing to partner with both executive directors of grassroots organizing groups and long-time community organizers to identify concrete recommendations and strategies around organizer hiring, training, and retention. Organizations were invited to participate in this planning phase as teams and received grant support to imagine and design solutions that, by the end of the planning process, will be ready for funding and implementation.
Ultimately, the Bay Area Power Building Funder Table hopes that their work, in deep relationship with grassroots community groups, will help move more resources to the community organizing sector, and ensure that funders are “responding as partners to those who are at the frontlines of building power and to what they need most,” Garcia said.