People, Power, Change
The Ganz organizing framework in miniature: organizing starts with people (not issues), understands power as interests × resources, and aims at change that is specific, concrete, and significant.
Three load-bearing definitions from the organizing tradition:
People. The first question an organizer asks is "who are my people?" not "what is my issue?" Organizing is not solving a community's problems or advocating on its behalf — it is enabling the people with the problem to mobilize their own resources to solve it, and keep it solved. The organizer's job is to turn a *community* (people who share values or interests) into a *constituency* (people standing together, committed to act).
Power. Martin Luther King Jr. described power as "the ability to achieve purpose." In organizing, power is not a thing someone possesses — it is the influence created by the relationship between *interests* (what people need or want) and *resources* (what they hold: people, time, skills, money, relationships, votes). There are two kinds: power with — organizing our resources alongside others (a community credit union, a neighborhood childcare co-op); and power over — when others hold decisions or resources we need, and we must organize our power-with first to make a claim. Five questions when facing power-over: What change do we want? Who has the resources to make it? What do they want? What resources do we have that they need? How could we organize those resources into leverage?
Change. In organizing, change must be specific, concrete, and significant — not awareness raised but a goal achieved, on a date, with a number. "Stop the dam" is a wish; "get one-third of town residents to sign, and council to vote, within four months" is a goal.
Five practices turn these definitions into work: telling stories, building relationships, structuring teams, strategizing, and acting. The first three build power; the last two wield it.
Details
- source note: Definitions from 'Organizing: People, Power, Change' (Dogwood Initiative, Leadnow, One Cowichan, David Suzuki Foundation, Stonehouse Institute, 2014), adapted from Marshall Ganz / Leading Change Network / New Organizing Institute. MLK quote from 'Where Do We Go From Here?' (SCLC, 1967).
- practice kind: framework
- five practices: telling stories, building relationships, structuring teams, strategizing, acting
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Recipe
A Strategy You Can Say Out Loud
If we do TACTICS, then CHANGE, because REASON. If your neighborhood campaign's theory of change doesn't fit in one honest sentence, it…
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Build prompt
Build: A Debrief That Asks Both Questions
A starter build: an after-action tool that scores the goal honestly AND counts whether the community got stronger — new people, new…
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Build prompt
Build: A Public Narrative Workshop
A starter build: walk a neighbor through the Story of Self / Us / Now worksheets — choice points, challenge-choice-outcome, and a hard ask…
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Build prompt
Build: A Relational Map for Your Block
A starter build: a consent-respecting tool for answering 'who are my people?' — track your 1:1 conversations, what people care about, and…
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Build prompt
Build: A Tracking-Down-the-Power Canvas
A starter build: a shared digital wall for the power-mapping exercise — map the actors around your issue, drag them across the field of…
Contributed by Marshall Ganz · Organizing: People, Power, Change (2014), adapted from the work of Marshall Ganz, the Leading Change Network & the New Organizing Institute
See something to fix or add? Suggest an edit on GitHub — the commons lives in git too, and its history is the changelog.
community-organizingorganizing-frameworkpowerquestion:who-are-my-peoplequestion:what-could-we-do-together