Embedding Equity in Collective Action
This month, we’re continuing our series on “Creating Momentum for Change.” With the official overturning of Roe v. Wade, the fatal police shooting of Jayland Walker in Akron, Ohio, and the July Fourth mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, it is all too clear that the time for change was yesterday. Thus, this summer, we’re highlighting ways you can begin to create change now as leaders in your organizations and communities. Each month will include a section called “Start Here,” offering practical action for your organizations. This month features centering collective action in our efforts for social change. Check out the newsletter version here.
Center Collective Action for Social Change
As we move forward, we must keep in mind that the work of social change is never about how much we can do as a single individual, organization, or entity. Rather, meaningful social change only ever comes about as the product of our collective action, of our willingness and ability to work together for the good of our communities, cities, and nation. Indeed, in the famous words of Jim Casey, the founder of UPS: “Determined people working together can accomplish anything.”
Centering collective action, rather than our work as separate entities, might just change the way we function as leaders, organizations, industries, and sectors. In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, gun violence, and racial inequities, a new organizational form has risen to prominence—the high-impact coalition—as a way to tackle societal challenges across the boundaries of business, government, and the social sector. High-impact coalitions maintain open boundaries, emergent structures for evolving tasks, and a mission-determined life span, which make them well-suited for galvanizing a range of stakeholders to create positive change around complex societal problems.
However, “there is not one silver bullet that will lead to our potential” to create systemic social change, writes Hildy Gottlieb. Gottlieb is the co-founder of the global non-profit Change the Future and the developer of Catalytic Thinking, a question-based framework for creating a more humane, healthy future. As she reminds us, “What is needed is structural change in every aspect of … work. And the time for that change is right now.”
Start Here
After years of work, collective impact experts John Kania, Mark Kramer, and their colleagues have recently concluded that equity is fundamental to the pursuit of collective impact, often making the difference between initiatives that succeed and those that fail. Thus, they’ve identified the following strategies for embedding equity into collective efforts, which can maximize your organization’s impact in both its internal work and external collaborations for social change.
Ground the work in data and context, and target solutions. Create a shared understanding of terminology, history, data, and personal stories related to issues of inequity, especially those that arise from affected groups. Focus solutions not just on reducing disparities, but on creating better outcomes for all.
Focus on system change, in addition to programs and services. Invest in long-term systems change that encompasses all levels (i.e., social structures, relationships, power dynamics, and mental models), in addition to programs and services that improve present conditions for people in need.
Shift power within the collaborative. Share decision-making power with members of affected groups. Focusing on diversity to change who sits at the table is not enough; the underlying dynamics of culture and power that shape the decisions made at the table must also be changed.
Listen to and act with community. Recognize, include, and build on the power, people, and resources that already exist in a community. Partner with leaders and groups who already have the knowledge, skills, and experience necessary for producing equitable change.
Build equity leadership and accountability. Distribute leadership for equity across multiple individuals and groups. Cultivate those that elevate its importance, motivate widespread commitment, and promote responsibility for personal and organizational equity work.
Collective action rooted in equity will take all of us if we are to achieve meaningful social change, but we cannot remain in our individual silos. We must be willing to break well-established boundaries—between industries and sectors; between organizations and affected communities; between power derived from dominance and power derived from the margins. In short, we must be willing to disrupt the status quo. So, as always, we invite you to join us in this work. Let’s create momentum for change together.
