April 5, 2007 | Read Time: 1 minute
NEW BOOKS
From the Ground Up: Grassroots Organizations Making Social Change
by Carol Chetkovich and Frances Kunreuther
In a study of 16 organizations, Carol Chetkovich and Frances Kunreuther detail the goals, leadership, resources, and organizational structure characteristic of small, local social-change organizations.
The authors define these groups as “nonprofit organizations that aim to address systemic problems in a way that will increase the power of marginalized groups, communities, or interests.” Ms. Chetkovich, associate professor of public policy at Mills College, and Ms. Kunreuther, director of the Building Movement Project at Demos, contrast social-change groups with more service-oriented groups, which typically do not aim to make fundamental changes to the local, national, or global power structure, and do not involve their clients in their operations.
The authors’ findings illustrate how the organizations accomplish their goals of giving power to disenfranchised people or encouraging collective action, what sort of leaders and other staff members work for these groups, how they fit into and work in their communities, where they find financial support, and how they work with other similar groups.
“Grassroots social-change organizations are a critical resource for progressive movement building in the United States,” write Ms. Chetkovich and Ms. Kunreuther. “At the same time, there are serious obstacles to their effectiveness in movement building, including resource competition, lack of cooperation between grassroots and national groups, and the conflicting commitments of leaders.”
Publisher: Cornell University Press, Box 6525, 750 Cascadilla Street, Ithaca, N.Y. 14851; http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu; 205 pages; $18.95; ISBN 978-0-8014-7264-0.
