Coming Soon! A Quick Survey to Help Us Meet Your (Virtual) Needs

In a few days, you’ll be receiving an invitation to participate in a brief survey about your experiences with the Building Movement Project’s online communications. Your input will guide us in setting priorities as we enhance our online activities in the coming months. Many thanks in advance for your participation. We look forward to hearing what you have to say!

USSF 2010: Another Detroit is Happening!

We've just returned from the US Social Forum in Detroit, where over 15,000 grassroots community organizers, activists, social service nonprofits, and individuals envisioned another US! We will be sharing more pictures and report-backs from the Forum, and our two sessions, but for more information on what took place at the Forum, check out their website at www.ussf2010.org.

Why Should Nonprofits Care About Tax Policy and Reform?

Building Movement Project Team Member, Kim Klein, has recently been featured as a guest blogger on the Women's Foundation of California blog. The piece focuses primarily on the critical role that the non-profit sector can play in creating and maintaining a democratic society, and that a progressive tax structure, including accountability for the use of tax funding, is fundamental to building healthy communities.

Kim Klein and the Commons: Foreclosures

What is a commons solution to helping people keep their private property, particularly when the scale of foreclosure is so large? There are many creative solutions being proposed, but any solution must begin with the person affected at the center and not the bank. “What will help this woman and her dog stay in her home?” is a very different question from “What should a bank do with a person who can’t pay her mortgage?” The first step in transforming this economy is to ask entirely different questions.

Online Training: Fundraising in Uncertain Times with Kim Klein

On March 3, Project Team Member and internationally-renowned fundraising trainer, Kim Klein, will lead a 90-minute webinar on the advantages and opportunities inherent in economic turmoil, and how your fundraising program can thrive in this environment. Among other valuable tools and insight, participants will learn what systematic and disciplined fundraising looks like, how to make the necessary corrections in current fundraising efforts, and why focusing on individual donors will be more lucrative than all other strategies.

Kim Klein and the Commons: Reflecting on Haiti

Just as religious reflection can lead people to a more commons-centered orientation, we saw people respond to the disaster in Haiti with the same outpouring of sharing and cooperation. The Commons was there in Haitians risking their health and safety to form impromptu rescue teams before relief started pouring in from across the globe. But even as the response to the suffering in Haiti inspires faith in the ideal of the commons, there’s been an interesting tension between the market and the commons at play here at home.

Suggested Readings on the Commons

These week, practitioners in Detroit will be discussing the commons and how it applies to their work in a day-long workshop led by Project Team Members, Kim Klein and Linda Campbell. To get started thinking about how to develop and use a commons-based frame to organize social change in your own work, check out this selection of readings.

Kim Klein and the Commons: Who owns my seeds?

Do you know who owns most of the seeds in the US? Hint: It's not the farmers... As of this year, here in the United States, Monsanto – through acquisitions and cut-throat business practices – has cornered 90% of the soy, 65% of the corn, and 70% of the cotton markets, and has a rapidly growing presence in the fruit and vegetable markets...

1 of 3 pages  1 2 3 >