Three Ways to Support Systems Change Right Now
The world is heavy right now. Here are three ways to support systems change in your community.
It may never make the headlines, but community-based organizations are changing the systems at the root of injustice. Here’s how you can join their fight.
Energy and empathy. The people and teams we get to work with at Emergence are brimming with both. Whether they are revitalizing an endangered language, building a community-based food system, or protecting lands for future generations, it never fails to amaze us how much our clients pour into the work of pursuing justice.
The flip side is this: all that pouring out of energy and empathy becomes draining without enough support. Nonprofit leaders and teams are almost always stretched–to do enough outreach, raise enough money, demonstrate enough impact. Being that stretched for too long is unhealthy, for both people and organizations. And that hurts the communities they serve.
At Emergence, we spend much of our time supporting individual organizations to advance their missions. But we’re also committed to advancing the kinds of radical societal shifts necessary to place more power and resources into the hands of communities. While those shifts demand systems change at the most global level, we can each play our part. Here are three ways to get started!
Develop a relationship with a community-based, community-led organization–and support them however you can.
There are nearly 2 million nonprofit organizations in the United States alone. So why should you prioritize community-based and community-led? Because for far too long, external actors–including government agencies, foundations, charitable groups, and others–have come into communities to implement so-called solutions not remotely grounded in community-members' lived experiences. As many of our Indigenous clients will tell you, that instinct is rooted in unequal power dynamics and white supremacy–and has often done more harm than good.
The reality is that communities already hold the solutions to their greatest challenges. That fact is the very foundation of everything we do at Emergence. Leaders, organizations, and movements must have the resources and tools they need to realize change that aligns with the true needs of community members. Our recommendation? Do your research, then find and put your trust in a community-led organization that you love. Get behind their work in the ways that you can–whether that means volunteering, donating, or helping to spread the word about their work. Because we’ve seen first hand how these organizations are shaping a more just and equitable world, one step at a time.
Connect to movement building organizations working to bring power into communities.
Our biggest challenges demand big, collective action. Climate change and environmental justice, racial and ethnic disparities, threats to democracy, and other systems- and institutional-level crises are beyond what any one organization can effectively confront. That’s where movement building organizations can help.
By creating connections, networks, and coalitions around a shared vision, movement building organizations–examples include the Climate Justice Alliance, Movement for Black Lives, and NDN Collective --leverage the collective power of many to drive and scale societal change. These organizations have the resources to deploy multifaceted strategies, combining grassroots activism and outreach with political advocacy and shaping public opinion. And critically, they offer vital resources, from financial support to training and capacity building and much more, to smaller organizations working within communities and regions.
For example, in just five years, our partners at NDN Collective have not only launched a successful movement and widespread awareness around the need to build power in Indigenous communities–they have also distributed “over $44 million in grant support to over 700 Indigenous-led organizations, individuals, Tribes and First Nations” working to realize change, and much more. NDN’s work to organize, lead, and support a growing network of changemakers is bringing Indigenous voices into spaces where they have long been ignored.
Call on philanthropy to do more (now).
The philanthropic sector is known for being staid, cautious, and even plodding—measuring out investments bit by bit, and year by year, to produce incremental change. Worse than that, by reinforcing the idea that some communities lack the capacity to solve challenges and need “saving,” traditional approaches to philanthropy have actually perpetuated injustice in many ways. It’s time to demand that the philanthropic sector take action.
How can we ask philanthropists to use their power more effectively to confront injustice? We can ask them to invest more and believe in community-based organizations with incredible potential, even if they don’t have the longest track record yet. We can ask them to examine how traditional power dynamics influence how they work with their grantees–and put intention into building truly equitable partnerships with their grantees. And perhaps most critically, we can ask them to unlock more resources and distribute them with fewer strings attached. Going beyond the minimum level of giving doesn’t mean abandoning all grant-related policies and practices—but it does mean that grantees working on the ground in their communities can implement solutions and drive change.
And placing power into the hands of communities is what will ultimately change the world for the better.