Community organizing

Protest against fracking in Balcombe, UK

Grassroots organizing builds community groups from scratch, developing new leadership where none existed and organizing the unorganized. It is a values based process where people are brought together to act in the interest of their communities and the common good. Networks of community organizations that employ this method and support local organizing groups include National People's Action and ACORN.

"Door knocking" grassroots organizations like ACORN organize poor and working-class members recruiting members one by one in the community. Because they go door-to-door, they are able to reach beyond established organizations and the "churched" to bring together a wide range of less privileged people. ACORN tends to stress the importance of constant action in order to maintain the commitment of a less rooted group of participants.

ACORN has a reputation of being more forceful than faith-based (FBCO) groups, and there are indications that their local groups were more staff (organizer) directed than leader (local volunteer) directed. (However, the same can be said for many forms of organizing, including FBCOs.) The "door-knocking" approach is more time-intensive than the "organization of organizations" approach of FBCOs and requires more organizers who, partly as a result, can be lower paid with more turnover.

Unlike existing FBCO national "umbrella" and other grassroots organizations, ACORN maints a centralized national agenda, and exerts some centralized control over local organizations. Because ACORN USA was a 501(c)4 organization under the tax code, it was able to participate directly in election activities, but contributions to it were not tax exempt.[6]

Cecil Williams at the I Hotel protest, January 1977

Faith-based community organizing (FBCO), also known as Congregation-based Community Organizing, is a methodology for developing power and relationships throughout a community of institutions: today mostly congregations, but these can also include unions, neighborhood associations, and other groups.[7] Progressive and centrist FBCO organizations join together around basic values derived from common aspects of their faith instead of around strict dogmas. There are now at least 180 FBCOs in the US as well as in South Africa, England, Germany, and other nations.[8] Local FBCO organizations are often linked through organizing networks such as the Industrial Areas Foundation, Gamaliel Foundation, PICO National Network, and Direct Action and Research Training Center (DART). In the United States starting in 2001, the Bush Administration launched a department to promote community organizing that included faith-based organizing as well other community groups.[9]

FBCOs tend to have mostly middle-class participants because the congregations involved are generally mainline Protestant and Catholic (although "middle-class" can mean different things in white communities and communities of color, which can lead to class tensions within these organizations).[10] Holiness, Pentecostal, and other related denominations (often "storefront") churches with mostly poor and working-class members tend not to join FBCOs because of their focus on "faith" over "works," among other issues. FBCOs have increasingly expanded outside impoverished areas into churches where middle-class professionals predominate in an effort to expand their power to contest inequality.[11]

Because of their "organization of organizations" approach, FBCOs can organize large numbers of members with a relatively small number of organizers that generally are better paid and more professionalized than those in "door-knocking" groups like ACORN.

FBCOs focus on the long-term development of a culture and common language of organizing and on the development of relational ties between members. They are more stable during fallow periods than grassroots groups because of the continuing existence of member churches.

FBCOs are 501(c)3 organizations. Contributions to them are tax exempt. As a result, while they can conduct campaigns over "issues" they cannot promote the election of specific individuals.[12]

Broad-based organizations intentionally recruit member institutions that are both secular and religious.[13] Congregations, synagogues, temples and mosques are joined by public schools, non-profits, and labor and professional associations.[14] Organizations of the Industrial Areas Foundation are explicitly broad-based and dues-based. Dues-based membership allows IAF organizations to maintain their independence; organizations are politically non-partisan and do not pursue or accept government funding. Broad-based organizations aim to teach institutional leaders how to build relationships of trust across racial, faith, economic and geographic lines through individual, face-to-face meetings.[15] Other goals include internally strengthening the member institutions by developing the skills and capacities of their leaders and creating a vehicle for ordinary families to participate in the political process.[16] The Industrial Areas Foundation sees itself as a "university of public life" teaching citizens the democratic process in the fullest sense.[17]

While community organizing groups often engage in protest actions designed to force powerful groups to respond to their demands, protest is only one aspect of the activity of organizing groups. To the extent that groups' actions generate a sense in the larger community that they have "power," they are often able to engage with and influence powerful groups through dialogue, backed up by a history of successful protest-based campaigns. Similar to the way unions gain recognition as the representatives of workers for a particular business, community organizing groups can gain recognition as key representatives of particular communities. In this way, representatives of community organizing groups are often able to bring key government officials or corporate leaders to the table without engaging in "actions" because of their reputation. As Alinsky said, "the first rule of power tactics" is that "power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have."[18] The development of durable "power" and influence is a key aim of community organizing.

"Rights-based" community organizing, in which municipal governments are used to exercise community power, was first experimented with by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF.org) in Pennsylvania, beginning in 2002. Community groups are organized to influence municipal governments to enact local ordinances. These ordinances challenge preemptive state and federal laws that forbid local governments from prohibiting corporate activities deemed harmful by community residents. The ordinances are drafted specifically to assert the rights of "human and natural communities," and include provisions that deny the legal concepts of "corporate personhood," and "corporate rights." Since 2006 they have been drafted to include the recognition of legally enforceable rights for "natural communities and ecosystems."

Although this type of community organizing focuses on the adoption of local laws, the intent is to demonstrate the use of governing authority to protect community rights and expose the misuse of governing authority to benefit corporations. As such, the adoption of rights-based municipal ordinances is not a legal strategy, but an organizing strategy. Courts predictably deny the legal authority of municipalities to legislate in defiance of state and federal law. Corporations and government agencies that initiate legal actions to overturn these ordinances have been forced to argue in opposition to the community's right to make governing decisions on issues with harmful and direct local impact.

The first rights-based municipal laws prohibited corporations from monopolizing horticulture (factory farming), and banned corporate waste dumping within municipal jurisdictions. More recent rights-based organizing, in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Maine, Virginia and California has prohibited corporate mining, large-scale water withdrawals and chemical trespass.[19] A similar attempt was made by Denton, Texas to restrict fracking was initially successful, but then overturned and further legislation passed to prevent Texas communities from enacting similar bans.[20]

Community organizing is not solely the domain of progressive politics, as dozens of fundamentalist organizations are in operation, such as the Christian Coalition. However, the term "community organizing" generally refers to more progressive organizations, as evidenced, for example, by the reaction against community organizing in the 2008 US presidential election by Republicans and conservatives both online and offline.[21]

Organizing groups often struggle to find resources. They rarely receive funding from government since their activities often seek to contest government policies. Foundations and others who usually fund service activities generally don't understand what organizing groups do or how they do it, or shy away from their contentious approaches. The constituency of progressive and centrist organizing groups is largely low- or middle- income, so they are generally unable to support themselves through dues. In search of resources, some organizing groups have accepted funding for direct service activities in the past. As noted below, this has frequently led these groups to drop their conflictual organizing activities, in part because these threatened funding for their "service" arms.[22]

Recent studies have shown, however, that funding for community organizing can produce large returns on investment ($512 in community benefits to $1 of Needmor funding, according to the Needmor Fund Study, $157 to 1 in New Mexico and $89 to 1 in North Carolina according to National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy studies) through legislation and agreements with corporations, among other sources, not including non-fiscal accomplishments.[23]

23 February 1908 Boys Selling Newspapers on Brooklyn Bridge

People sought to meet the pressures of rapid immigration and industrialization by organizing immigrant neighborhoods in urban centers. Since the emphasis of the reformers was mostly on building community through settlement houses and other service mechanisms, the dominant approach was what Fisher calls social work. During this period the Newsboys Strike of 1899 provided an early model of youth-led organizing.

During this period, much of community organizing methodology was generated in Schools of Social Work, with a particular methodological focus grounded in the philosophy of John Dewey, which focused on experience, education, and other sociological concepts.[31] This period saw much energy coming from those critical of capitalist doctrines as well. Studs Terkel documented community organizing in the depression era, such as that of Dorothy Day. Most organizations had a national orientation because the economic problems the nation faced did not seem possible to change at the neighborhood levels.

Saul Alinsky, based in Chicago, is credited with originating the term community organizer during this time period. Alinsky wrote Reveille for Radicals, published in 1946, and Rules for Radicals, published in 1971. With these books, Alinsky was the first person in America to codify key strategies and aims of community organizing.[32]

The following excerpts from Reveille for Radicals[33] give a sense of Alinsky's organizing philosophy and of his style of pubilc engagement:

• A People's Organization is a conflict group, [and] this must be openly and fully recognized. Its sole reason in coming into being is to wage war against all evils which cause suffering and unhappiness. A People's Organization is the banding together of large numbers of men and women to fight for those rights which insure a decent way of life....

• A People's Organization is dedicated to an eternal war. It is a war against poverty, misery, delinquency, disease, injustice, hopelessness, despair, and unhappiness. They are basically the same issues for which nations have gone to war in almost every generation.... War is not an intellectual debate, and in the war against social evils there are no rules of fair play....

• A People's Organization lives in a world of hard reality. It lives in the midst of smashing forces, dashing struggles, sweeping cross-currents, ripping passions, conflict, confusion, seeming chaos, the hot and the cold, the squalor and the drama, which people prosaically refer to as life and students describe as "society."

In 1940, with the support of Roman Catholic Bishop Bernard James Sheil and Chicago Sun-Times publisher Marshall Field, Alinsky founded the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF).[34] The mandate of the national community organizing network was to partner with religious congregations and civic organizations to build "broad-based organizations" that could train up local leadership and promote trust across community divides.[35]

After Alinsky died in 1972, Edward T. Chambers became the IAF's executive director. Hundreds of professional community and labor organizers and thousands of community and labor leaders have been trained at its workshops.[36] Fred Ross, who worked for Alinsky, was the principal mentor for Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. Other organizations following in the tradition of the Congregation-based Community Organizing pioneered by IAF include PICO National Network, Gamaliel Foundation, Brooklyn Ecumenical Cooperatives, founded by former IAF trainer, Richard Harmon and Direct Action and Research Training Center (DART).[36][37]

March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (1963)

In the 1960s the New Left (beginning with Students for a Democratic Society) tried their hand at community organizing. They were critical of what they conceived of as Alinsky's "dead-end local activism".[38] But the dispiriting reality was that however much they might talk about "transforming the system," "building alternative institutions," and "revolutionary potential", their credibility on the doorstep rested on their ability to secure concessions from, and therefore to develop relations with, the local power structures. Community organizing appeared to trap the radical activists in "a politics of adjustment".[39] By the beginning of the 1970s most of the New Left groups had vacated their store-front offices.[40]

Nonetheless, the Civil Rights Movement, anti-war protest, ethnic mobilizations, women's liberation, and the struggle for gay rights all influenced, and were influenced by, ideas of neighborhood organizing. Experience with federal anti-poverty programs and the upheavals in the cities produced a thoughtful response among activists and theorists in the early 1970s that has informed activities, organizations, strategies and movements through the end of the century. Less dramatically, civic association and neighborhood block clubs were formed all across the country to foster community spirit and civic duty, as well as provide a social outlet.

During these decades, the emergence of an ongoing process of white flight, the ability of middle-class white Americans to move out of majority Black areas, and the professionalization of community organizations into 501(c)3 nonprofits, among other issues, increasingly dissolved the tight ethnic and racial communities that had been so prevalent in urban areas during the first part of the century. As a result, community organizers began to move away from efforts to mobilize existing communities and towards efforts to create community, fostering relationships between community members. While community organizers like Alinsky had long worked with churches, these trends led to an increasing focus on congregational organizing during the 1980s, as organizing groups rooted themselves in one of the few remaining broad-based community institutions. This shift also led to an increased focus on relationships among religion, faith, and social struggle.[41]

A collection of training and support organizations for national coalitions of mostly locally governed and mostly FBCO community organizing groups were founded in the Alinsky tradition. The Industrial Areas Foundation was the first, created by Alinsky himself in 1940. The other key organizations include ACORN, PICO National Network, Direct Action and Research Training Center, and the Gamaliel Foundation. The role of the organizer in these organizations was "professionalized" to some extent and resources were sought so that being an organizer could be more of a long-term career than a relatively brief, mostly unfunded interlude. The training provided by these national "umbrella" organizations helps local volunteer leaders learn a common "language" about organizing while seeking to expand the skills of organizers.[42]

Many of the most notable leaders in community organizing today emerged from the National Welfare Rights Organization. John Calkins of DART, Wade Rathke of ACORN, John Dodds of Philadelphia Unemployment Project and Mark Splain of the AFL-CIO, among others.[43]

There have been many other notable community organizers through the decades: Mark Andersen, Ella Baker, Heather Booth, César Chávez, Lois Gibbs, Mother Jones, Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Nader, Huey P. Newton, Barack Obama, and Paul Wellstone.[44]

More recently has come the emergence of youth organizing groups around the country. These groups use neo-Alinsky strategies while also usually providing social and sometimes material support to less-privileged youth. Most of these groups are created by and directed by youth or former youth organizers.[45]

Prior to his entry into politics, President Barack Obama worked as an organizer for a Gamaliel Foundation FBCO organization in Chicago. Marshall Ganz, former lieutenant of César Chávez, adapted techniques from community organizing for Obama's 2008 presidential election.[46] At the 2008 Republican National Convention, former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani questioned Obama's role as a community organizer, asking the crowd "What does a community organizer actually do?", and was answered with resounding applause. This was seconded by the Vice Presidential nominee, Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who stated that her experience as the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska was "sort of like being a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities." In response, some progressives, such as Congressman Steve Cohen (D-TN) and liberal pundit Donna Brazile, started saying that "Jesus was a community organizer, Pontius Pilate was a governor", a phrase produced on bumper stickers and elsewhere. Pontius Pilate was the Roman Prefect who ordered the execution of Jesus.

After Obama's election in 2008, the campaign organization "Obama for America," became "Organizing for America," and has been placed under the auspices of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Organizing for America sought to advance the president's legislative agenda and played an important role in building grassroots support for The Affordable Health Care Act.[47]

After the 2012 election OFA went through another transition and is now called Organizing for Action. This 501c4 organization focuses on training people to be community organizers and working on local and national progressive issues such as climate change, immigration reform and marriage equality.

TCC (Trefnu Cymunedol Cymru / Together Creating Communities) is the oldest community organising group in the UK, founded in 1995. TCC is an institutional membership organisation; members include community groups, faith groups, and schools, from across North East Wales (Wrexham, Flintshire, and Denbighshire). As a broad-based alliance, TCC brings communities together for action on local, regional, and national issues. TCC is remarkable in community organising in that its area of operation includes a diverse geographical region, including many rural areas, and is notably not based in a city.

TCC has had success with a number of campaigns over the last 25 years. This includes getting several employers (including the Welsh Assembly) to pay the Living Wage, improving Muslim women's access to leisure facilities, making Wales the world's first Fairtrade nation, improving British Sign Language provision for Deaf young people, getting a Parkinson's nurse to be based in North East Wales, getting a local authority to recycle instead of building an incinerator, and getting a homeless shelter for Wrexham.

In 2019 TCC's Stop School Hunger / Dysgu Nid Llwgu campaign led to the Welsh Government committing funding so that the poorest pupils in Wales will be able to afford breakfast as well as lunch at school.

TCC runs an ongoing programme of community organising training for adults and young people. Community leaders from TCC's diverse membership work together to actively engage in democracy and decision making, holding regular accountability meetings ahead of elections and building ongoing relationships with power holders.

In 2010 the Conservative/Liberal Democrat Coalition Government pledged as part of its commitment to the Big Society to train a new generation of Community Organisers (CO) programme.[48] This policy aim sat alongside a number of other policy objectives including The Localism Act[49] all of which were designed to give new powers to communities to take great control over their neighbourhoods, services and assets.

The Cabinet Office commissioned Ipsos MORI and NEF Consulting to conduct the evaluation of the CO programme.[50] Evaluation work began in October 2012 and the main report, published in December 2015, summarises the final assessment of the programme.[51]

In March 2017, Community Organisers secured a major £4.2m contract from the Office for Civil Society, part of the Department of Culture Media and Sport (DCMS), to expand its movement of Community Organisers from 6,500 to 10,000 by 2020.

The programme embeds community organising as part of the fabric of neighbourhoods across England and equips local people with the skills to transform their communities for good. It expands the community organising movement to include young people from the National Citizen Service (NCS) and ambassadors for the #iwill social action campaign for 10 to 20-year-olds. The programme has also established the National Academy of Community Organising to sustain the ongoing training of Community Organisers.

A key commitment of the Community Organisers (CO) programme, was to build an independent legacy body that would sustain and develop Community Organising in England. Established in 2015, Community Organisers (originally known as COLtd[52]) is the National Training and Membership body for Community Organisers in England, delivering accredited training. Community Organisers has also established he National Academy of Community Organising to provide training and support to people in community organising in the UK.

The National Academy of Community Organising (NACO) provides quality assured training and Qualification courses in community organising. It is a network of affiliated local hubs of community organising known as Social Action Hubs. These organisations deliver our courses.

There are currently 22 Social Action Hubs across England. They are locally rooted organisations committed to community organising who train and support people to develop their understanding and practice of community organising and to get involved in social action.

Each Social Action Hub is unique and works in its own way to ignite social change through community organising, However, all of the Social Acton Hubs are quality assured by Community Organisers to offer our training courses

London Citizens began life in East London in 1996 as TELCO (the East London Communities Organisation) subsequently expanding to South London, West London and by 2011 into North London. London Citizens has a dues paying institutional membership of over 160 schools, churches, mosques, trade unions, synagogues and voluntary organisations. In the beginning, small actions were undertaken to prevent a factory from contaminating the area with noxious smells and prevent drug dealing in school neighbourhoods. Over time larger campaigns were undertaken. Before Mayoral elections for the Greater London Authority in 2000, 2004 and 2008 major Accountability Assemblies were held with the main mayoral candidates. They were asked to support London Citizens and work with them on issues such as London Living wage; an amnesty for undocumented migrants; safer cities initiatives and development of community land trust housing. South London Citizens held a citizens enquiry into the working of the Home Office department at Lunar House and its impact on the lives of refugees and migrants. This resulted in the building of a visitor centre.

Citizens UK has been promoting community organising in the UK since 1989 and has established the profession of Community Organiser through the Guild of Community Organisers teaching the disciplines of strategy and politics. Neil Jameson, the Executive Director of Citizens UK, founded the organisation after training with the Industrial Areas Foundation in the USA. Citizens UK (formerly the Citizens Organising Foundation) established citizens groups in Liverpool, North Wales, the Black Country, Sheffield, Bristol, Milton Keynes and London. London Citizens' forerunner TELCO was formed in 1996. Milton Keynes Citizens began in 2010. The others had a brief and glorious start lasting roughly 3 years when COF was unable to finance them any longer.

Manchester Changemakers was formed in 2007 and is independent of Citizens UK.

In May 2010 Citizens UK held a General Election Assembly at the Methodist Central Hall Westminster with 2,500 people from member institutions and the world media present. This event was three days before the election and proved to be one of the most dynamic and electric events of the election campaign.[53] Citizens UK had negotiated to have David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown as the leaders of the three main political parties attend. Each candidate for Prime Minister was questioned on stage concerning their willingness to work with Citizens UK if elected. Each undertook to work with Citizens UK and come to future assemblies to give account of work achieved. In particular they agreed to work to introduce the Living Wage and to end the practice of holding children of refugee families in detention.

In 1994, the city of Baltimore passed the first living-wage law in the USA. This changed the working and living conditions of Baltimore's low-wage service workers and established an example for other cities in the USA.[54] In London it was a campaign launched in 2001 by London Citizens, the largest civil alliance in the Citizens UK network. The Living Wage Campaign calls for every worker in the country to earn enough to provide their family with the essentials of life. Launched by London Citizens in 2001, the campaign had by 2010 persuaded more than 100 employers to pay the Living wage and won over £40 million of Living Wages, lifting 6,500 families out of working poverty. The Living Wage is a number. An hourly rate, set independently, every year (by the Greater London Authority in London). It is calculated according to cost of living and gives the minimum pay rate required for a worker to provide their family with the essentials of life. In London the 2010–11 rate was £7.85 per hour. London is now being copied by other cities around the UK. As a result, Citizens UK set up the Living Wage Foundation in 2011 to provide companies with intelligence and accreditation. It also moderates the hourly rate applicable for the Living Wage outside London.

When London announced it would bid to be the host city for the Olympic Games in 2012, London citizens used their power to gain a lasting legacy for Londoners from the billions that was to be spent. Following on from hundreds of one-to-one meetings and a listening campaign across member institutions, in 2004 London Citizens signed an historic agreement with the London 2012 bid team, which set in stone precisely what the people of east London could expect in return for their support in hosting the Olympic Games. The People's Promises, as they are known, demanded:

• 2012 permanently affordable homes for local people through a Community land trust and mutual home ownership;
• Money from the Olympic development to be set aside to improve local schools and the health service;
• University of East London to be main higher education beneficiary of the sports legacy and to consider becoming a Sports Centre of Excellence
• At least £2m set aside immediately for a Construction Academy to train up local people;
• That at least 30% of jobs are set aside for local people;
• That the Lower Lea Valley is designated a 'Living Wage Zone' and all jobs guaranteed a living wage

The Olympic Delivery Authority, the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games and the Olympic Legacy Company work with London Citizens to ensure that these promises are delivered.

Citizens UK set up the Independent Asylum Commission in order to investigate widespread concern about the way refugees and asylum seekers were being treated by the UK Border Agency (now, UK Visas and Immigration). The report made a series of over 200 recommendations for change which are still being negotiated. This resulted in the ending of the practice of holding children of refugee families in detention by the Coalition government elected in 2010.

ACORN UK was formed by 100 tenants supported by 3 staff organisers in Easton, Bristol in May 2014 who voted to organise for more security, better quality and more affordable housing. Two of the founding members were graduates of the Community Organisers programme.[55] . ACORN has since hired more staff and organised branches in Newcastle and recently Sheffield and the organisation involves 15,000 members. ACORN UK has combined online organising via social media with ACORNs traditional door-knocking approach, to organise transient private sector tenants. The group has also combined local direct-action "member defence" actions (including eviction resistances and picketing of rogue landlords/letting agents) with larger regional and national campaigns for housing rights (for example winning regional local authority support for including the standards of their "ethical lettings charter" in the regional West of England Rental Standard and persuading Santander bank to drop a buy to let mortgage clause requiring landlords to raise rents). They also worked alongside Generation Rent to register and mobilise the "renters vote" in the 2016 general election.

Living Rent is Scotland's tenant union, also affiliated to ACORN International.[56] The group formed out of the Living Rent campaign in 2015 and today has branches in Glasgow and Edinburgh and two organising staff.

Community organising in the UK is distinctive because it deliberately sets out to build permanent alliances of citizens to exercise power in society. The UK analysis is that to understand Society it is necessary to distinguish Civil Society from the State and the Market. In a totalitarian Society all three may virtually coincide. In a fully democratic society the three will be distinct. Where the state and the market become predominant, even in a democracy, civil society is reduced on the one hand to voting and volunteering and on the other to consuming. This is very dangerous for democracy because the sense of citizenship and agency becomes feeble and ineffective. In other words, Civil Society becomes powerless. Community organising and the role of the professional Community Organiser is working out how to take back power from the State and the Market by holding them accountable. The state and the market cannot operate without moral values and direction. It is not the role of the state or the market to determine those values. In a democratic society there has to be a genuine public discourse concerning justice and the common good. Problems with the global banking system in 2008 in large part arose because "light touch regulation" meant that there was no underlying moral system. The market was left to its own devices with disastrous consequences for the global economy.

Community organising works because it organises people and money through the institutions which have the potential to engage in the public discourse about what is the common good. These are the institutions which can mediate between the family and the State – such as faith organisations, cooperatives, schools, trades unions, universities and voluntary agencies. Community organising builds these institutions into permanent citizens membership alliances which work together to identify issues and agree ways of introducing solutions. Community organising teaches the art of non-partisan, democratic politics. Because community organising brings together diverse institutions which do not normally work together it is sometimes referred to as Broad Based community organising.

Community organising starts with the recognition that change can only come about when communities come together to compel public authorities and businesses to respond to the needs of ordinary people. It identifies and trains leaders in diverse communities, bringing them together to voice their needs and it organises campaigns to ensure that these needs are met. "Our answer is to organise people through the places where they have regular contact with their neighbours – faith institutions and workplaces and educational establishments. Our experience of practising broad based community organising across the UK has confirmed for us that the threads that once connected the individual to the family, the family to their community and the community to the wider society are fraying and in danger of breaking altogether. We believe these strands, connections and alliances are vital for a healthy democracy and should be the building blocks of any vibrant civil society. We believe in building for power which is fundamentally reciprocal, where both parties are influenced by each other and mutual respect develops. The power and influence that we seek is tempered by our religious teachings and moral values and is exercised in the fluid and ever-changing relationship with our fellow leaders, allies and adversaries. We value and seek to operate in the public sphere. We believe that UK public life should be occupied not just by a few celebrities and politicians – but also by the people themselves seeking a part of the action."[57]

Citizens UK set up the Institute for Community Organising (ICO) as part of its Centre for Civil Society established in 2010 in response to growing demands for its training. The ICO is the first operating division of the centre and was established to offer a series of training opportunities for those who wish to make community organising a full or part-time career and also for Community Leaders who wish to learn the broad philosophy and skills of community organising and who are in a position to put them into practice in their institutions and neighbourhoods. The Institute provides training and consultancy on a commercial basis to other agencies which wish to employ the skills and techniques of community organising in their institutions. The ICO has an Academic Advisory Board and an International Professional Advisory Body drawn from the global network of Community Organising Institutes in the UK (CITIZENS UK), USA (Industrial Areas Foundation) and Germany (DICO).

In 2018, The Labour Party set up a Community Organising Unit to focus on organising with communities and groups of employees, helping them to campaign on local and workplace issues.[58]