WHAT IS ORGANIZING
Marshall Ganz
(2000)
Organizers challenge people to act on behalf of their shared values and interests. They lead by developing the relationships, understanding, and actions that enable people to gain new understanding of their interests, new resources, and new capacity to use these resources on behalf of their interests. Organizers work through "dialogues" in relationships, understanding and action carried out as campaigns. They identify, recruit and develop leadership, build community around that leadership, and build power from that community.
Organizers interweave relationships, understanding and action so that each contributes to the other. One result is new networks of relationship wide and deep enough to provide a foundation for a new community in action. Another result is a new story about who this community is, where it has been, where it is going -- and how it will get there. A third result is action as the community mobilizes and deploys its resources on behalf of its common interests -- as services or as advocacy.
Organizers develop new relationships out of old ones - sometimes by linking one person to another and sometimes by linking whole networks of people together.
Organizers work with people to reinterpret their understanding of their world in terms of why they should act -- their motivation -- and how they can act -- their strategy. Organizers motivate people by enacting a story rooted in people's values in which feelings of anger, hopefulness, a sense of self-worth, urgency, and community can challenge those feelings of fear, apathy, self-doubt, inertia, and isolation that inhibit action. Organizers deepen understanding of how to act by creating opportunities for people to deliberate about their circumstances, reinterpret them in ways that open up new opportunities, and strategize to make creative use of their resources.
Organizers focus on the taking of responsibility to act. Empowerment for a person begins with taking responsibility. Empowerment for an organization begins with commitment: the responsibility its members take for it. Responsibility begins with choosing to act. Organizers challenge people not only to understand, but also to take responsibility, to choose, to make commitment, to act.
Organizers work through campaigns. Campaigns are highly energized, intensely focused, concentrated streams of activity with specific goals and deadlines. People are recruited, programs launched, battles fought and organizations built through campaigns. Campaigns polarize by bringing out those ordinarily submerged conflicts contrary to the interests of the constituency. One dilemma is how to depolarize in order to negotiate resolution of these conflicts. Another dilemma is how to balance campaign work with the ongoing work of organizational growth and development.
Organizers build community by developing leadership. They focus on identifying leaders and enhancing their skills, values and commitments. They also focus on building strong communities: community through which people can gain new understanding of their interests as well as power to act on them. Organizers work at constructing communities which are bounded yet inclusive, communal yet diverse, solidaristic yet tolerant. They work at developing a relationship between community and leadership based on mutual responsibility and accountability.
© Marshall Ganz, Kennedy School, 2000