This online resource center is a space to share and highlight practical tools that organizations can use to integrate movement-building and social change strategies into their everyday work. Here you’ll find a growing collection of exercises, tools and civic engagement models that allow organizations to enter into this work at whichever point reflects their stage of development.
With this in mind, we have organized these resources into the following broad categories:
* Getting Started
* Learning and Awareness Tools & Exercises
* Frameworks for Determining Social Change Work and Civic Engagement
* Models/Examples of Social Change Work and Civic Engagement
* Assessing Your Work
* Additional Building Movement Project Resources
* Additional Tools and Resources From Other Organizations
We hope you find these resources to be useful. Please feel free to share any feedback or suggestions of additional tools by emailing us at .
Getting Started
* Why Nonprofits and Social Change Work? This excerpt from Social Service & Social Change: A Process Guide, makes the case for why nonprofits are well positioned to do social change work. It also offers an overview of the process of incorporating social change values and practices into your work, and a useful classification of groups doing social change work.
* Transformation Process Identified through years of on-the-ground work with service agencies who are going through this process, this is a brief introduction to the six steps that organizations can take to effectively identify and implement a method for integrating social change work with social services.
* Glossary of Social Service/Social Change Terms This is a short list of commonly used terms associated with social change work excerpted from Social Service & Social Change: A Process Guide, defined here for clarity of the overall process.
* Assessment of Organizational Readiness for Social Change Work A seven-question, multiple-choice assessment, this tool helps help groups determine if the process described in Social Service & Social Change: A Process Guide is an appropriate match for their organization. Based on the final score of the assessment, a basic analysis and starting point is suggested.
Learning and Awareness Tools & Exercises
* Theory of Social Change: Many service agencies use some sort of theory of change to articulate their service provision goals. This exercise uses this familiar framework to help organizations develop an analysis and clear goals around their approach to social change. (Adapted from Theory of Social Change exercise from the Power Tools Manual developed by SCOPE).
* Community Problems and Root Causes: This exercise helps service providers and other stakeholders develop a shared analysis and a collective vision by connecting the work of their agency to both community problems and systemic issues.
* What does Social Change Look Like? This creative exercise uses a series of images as prompts for a conversation about what group members associate with the term “social change”. (Adapted from the Visual Explorer® exercise developed by the Center for Creative Leadership.)
* Continuum of Change: The Continuum of Change exercise is designed to help agencies think about where they are in the transformation process and assists in identifying stages of implementation. It also illustrates how the transformation process experienced by staff, leadership and constituents is likely to be aligned with stages of action and engagement as the agency builds capacity for social change work.
* Organizational Culture and Practice of the Board: Creating Access and Success for all: This exercise focuses on how to make your board and board meetings more accessible for diverse groups. The planning and survey process identifies obstacles and potential solutions through small group idea proposal sessions, which are then posited to the larger group for consensus and planning phases. (Developed by Margi Clarke of Margi Clarke Consulting.)
* Racial Equity Tools: This is an online database of tools to support people and groups who are working for inclusion, racial equity and social justice. The site includes ideas, strategies and tips, as well as a clearinghouse of resources and links from many sources. (Racial Equity Tools has been developed and is maintained by the Center for Assessment and Policy Development and MP Associates)
Frameworks for Determining Social Change Work and Civic Engagement
* Features of Movement Capacity Building for Nonprofits: How do organizations develop strategies and structures to facilitate the process of building momentum towards social change, and when do strategies and structures hurt this momentum? While both forms of capacity building are important, this tool points to some key differences between capacity building for organizational sustainability and capacity building for social justice and change.
* Building Organizational Capacity for Social Justice: Framework, Approach & Tools: Recognizing that much has been done in the general field of capacity building of the nonprofit sector, the National Gender and Equity Campaign (NGEC) began conducting extensive research to understand existing frameworks, tools and approaches in capacity building. The transformation framework and accompanying tools within this publication highlight NGEC’s intention to elevate the social justice movement by supporting the development of social justice organizations. (Framework developed by Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy’s National Gender and Equity Campaign)
* Community Engagement Assessment Worksheet:This tool helps agencies take stock of their current level of community engagement by presenting a set activities and prompting agencies to think about how often they currently engage in each of these activities. The worksheet also helps agencies think about how they want to go about addressing this level of engagement and helps them think through their priorities in this area. (Developed by Margi Clarke of Margi Clarke Consulting)
* Discussion Guide for Exploring Community Engagement: This is a series of small-group discussion questions for use during an agency retreat or extended meeting that offers a structured opportunity to explore the agency’s potential for community engagement work. (Developed by Margi Clarke of Margi Clarke Consulting)
* Pathways for Individual and Collective Empowerment: This is a detailed diagram illustrating how collective involvement and individual development empower social justice actions within a community. (Developed by Margi Clarke of Margi Clarke Consulting)
* Criteria for setting priorities in Policy/Program work: Based on an actual document developed by a service agency, this is an example of a set of criteria that an agency might set to determine which policy campaigns the agency should engage in. (Adapted by Margi Clarke of Margi Clarke Consulting)
Models/Examples of Social Change Work and Civic Engagement
* M.O.V.E. Coalition (Family & Children’s Service, Minneapolis, MN)
* Community Leadership Development Program (Family & Children’s Service, Minneapolis, MN)
* The Family Project (Family & Children’s Service, Minneapolis, MN)
* Newcomer Connection - Capacity & Leadership Training Program (North York Community House, Toronto, ON)
* Popular Theater (Somos Mayfair, San Jose, CA)
* Community Action Group (Queens Community House, Queens, NY)
* Target: Hunger (Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, Hatfield, MA)
Assessing Your Work
*Evaluation Work for Racial Equity: This toolkit offers a comprehensive set of resources for groups “Who want to know more about how to do evaluation; Who are working on changing their communities; and Who want to be certain that their evaluations take into account issues of racism, power, privilege, and oppression…” It offers practical evaluation tools in addition to background information to help familiarize groups with the value and process of evaluation. (Evaluation Tools for Racial Equity has been developed and is maintained by the Center for Assessment and Policy Development and MP Associates)
* IMPACT Arts: IMPACT Arts is a resource center designed to help arts organizations evaluate and report the social or civic outcomes of creative work that aims to make social change. Although the site is intended for arts-focused organizations, many of the resources offered are applicable to the work of a wide variety of service agencies interested social change work. (IMPACT Arts was developed as part of the Animating Arts Program of Americans for the Arts)
* Measuring Authentic Demand: This excerpt from the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Sustaining Neighborhood Change report highlights the importance of data as a tool in the community change process. It also outlines a process for developing a data collection and analysis plan that aligns with the Authentic Demand framework described in the full report. (From the report Sustaining Neighborhood Change: The Power of Resident Leadership, Social Networks, and Community Mobilization developed through the Making Connections Initiative of the Annie E. Casey Foundation)
* Developmental Evaluation: This tool offers a clear, concise introduction to the evaluation framework known as Developmental Evaluation, developed and popularized by researcher Michael Quinn Patton. (Written and published through the J.W. McConnell Foundation)
* Overview of Current Advocacy Evaluation Practice: This brief offers an overview of current practice in the new and now rapidly growing field of advocacy evaluation. It highlights the kinds of approaches being used, offers specific examples of how they are being used and who is using them, and identifies the advantages and disadvantages of each approach. (Developed by the Center for Evaluation Innovation)
* Building Knowledge About Community Change: Moving Beyond Evaluations This publication describes and critiques evaluation strategies for comprehensive community initiatives, and advocates a more complex and collective knowledge development strategy. (Developed by the Aspen Institute Roundtable on Community Change)
Additional Building Movement Project Resources
* Social Service and Social Change: A Process Guide: A guidebook that was developed for staff and board members of non-profit service organizations who are interested in learning how to incorporate progressive social change values and practices into their work. It uses a step-by-step process to identify how to address systemic problems through social change work within the context of their usual services and activities, and how to decide which strategies and actions will work best for them.
* Making Social Change Case Studies: Additional Web Resources: A compilation of valuable resources that support and engage a deeper understanding of the organizations profiled in the Case Studies.
* Making Social Change: Case Studies of Nonprofit Service Providers: Serving as a complimentary publication to the Process Guide, this set of case studies was developed as a response to numerous requests from groups looking for real-life examples of the often-challenging process of incorporating social change models into social service work.
Additional Tools and Resources from Other Organizations
*Integrating Civic Participation Strategies into Service Delivery Organizations - An NCLR Toolkit: This toolkit was designed to support the NCLR Latino Empowerment and Advocacy Project (LEAP) to measurably increase Latino electoral participation, but it can be applied to any social service/social change group seeking to increase civic participation as part of their organization’s work. Included are a variety of tools including surveys, intake forms, flyers, workshop guides, and petitions to assist in the integration process. (Developed by the National Council of La Raza)
* Mobilizing Communities for the 2010 Census: A cohesive resource site of information to help prepare your organization for the 2010 census. A specific highlight is a toolkit with everything a nonprofit needs to begin to educate and mobilize its clients and constituents about the Census, including fact sheets, sample census questionnaires, PowerPoint presentations, photos and more. (Developed by Nonprofits Count! a project of the Nonprofit Voter Engagement Network.)
*BuildtheWheel.org: This site aims to provide a space where community educators and organizers can build upon each other’s practice, experiences and reflections in popular education and leadership development to strengthen the movement for social justice.