Sector Distinctiveness v. Cross-Sector Commonalities: Are There Qualitative Differences in Graduate Nonprofit Management Education Offered Through Public Service and Business Programs in the United Kingdom?

Previous research on nonprofit management education (NME) in the United Kingdom (UK) has raised the question of whether NME provided through public service departments will focus more on third sector distinctiveness, while NME provided through business schools will concentrate more on general, cross-sector management skills. We collect data on courses offered within UK graduate degree programs with an NME concentration and compare them using Mirabella’s (2007) taxonomy and find that there is more commonality than differences between graduate NME offered in both business and public service programs in the UK. However, statistically significant differences in the provision of courses as a proportion of total curriculum do exist for courses related to “advocacy, public policy, and community organizing,” “financial management,” and “social enterprise.”

Teaching Collective Action: Strategies for Fostering Racial and Social Justice

Universities teach students about social problems but provide few concrete tools for acting to promote social change. Teaching about challenges but not about possible solutions can be potentially disempowering and may reduce civic agency. This chapter discusses the development of a required class on community organizing and civil resistance that provides students with specific strategies for engaging in collective action. The author explores a range of tensions involved in teaching this class: making it experiential without forcing students to work on issues or take steps they might not agree with, providing multiple traditions of social action so they do not get the sense that there is one “right” way, working with students whose perspectives might differ from ones he sees as legitimate, and teaching a class that some outside the institution might see as beyond the purview of a university. Ultimately, he argues that it is incumbent upon universities to provide concrete skills for social action, because failing to do so restricts their capacity to become effective civic actors in our democracy.

Activating Activists

The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate the pedagogical and practical importance of learning skills around political advocacy and community engagement in prison-based classes. The primary focus of the exercises described here is upon engaging students in exercises that develop their skills in advocating for social policies that affect them directly. Learning objectives include understanding the challenges of community organizing and consensus-building, developing policy proposal- and grant-writing skills, and developing skills around public messaging.

Critical Reflection and Cognitive Empowerment among Youth Involved in Community Organizing

Through youth organizing initiatives, young people conduct research into social issues and build power to address these issues. This study examines the developmental interplay between the cognitive components of two of the most influential civic developmental constructs—critical consciousness and psychological empowerment—through analysis of interviews with 19 current and former participants in a youth organizing initiative in San Bernardino, CA, all of whom identify as Latinx. Most participants clearly articulated viewpoints consonant with the cognitive components of critical consciousness and psychological empowerment, but these were much more pronounced among those who had been involved for longer periods of time. Findings provide insights into distinctions and crosscurrents between critical reflection and cognitive empowerment, and into the settings and processes leading to their development. Cycles of action and reflection can support the simultaneous development of critical reflection and cognitive empowerment.

Refugee Resettlement and Macro Practice in the United States

Resettlement-related macro practice reflects a complicated history of immigration and refugee resettlement in the United States, as well as international and domestic policies that shape opportunities and services available to refugees who resettle through these mechanisms. Four intersecting domains of resettlement macro practice are (a) community organizing and community development, (b) advocacy, (c) policy analysis and development, and (d) community-centered management and program planning. To engage meaningfully in macro social work requires a grasp of the history and policies that drive decision-making of individual practitioners and shape the experiences of people resettling to the United States in search of safety and new beginnings. Research and participatory approaches are integral to resettlement macro practice to ensure refugee communities are at the center of all efforts to inform structural and systemic change.

'Midwife for Power': Towards a Mujerista / Womanist Model of Community Organizing

In recent years, communities have responded to police violence in U.S. cities through confrontational models of community organising that evolved from patriarchal and male approaches. Very often, these approaches have not produced the hoped-for outcomes. In this article, I argue that a women-led community organising model, grounded in feminine relational power-with epistemologies, can lead to innovative policy changes, including in contexts of intractable problems, such as police misconduct. This article presents the Midwife for Power community organising model, which creates space for women organisers to nurture solidarity and creativity across all lines of difference, centres personal testimony and uses collective inquiry to create relational power to address injustice. Theoretically, this model draws on the rich insights of Black and Latina organisers and scholars, as well as traditions of intersectional solidarity. In order to illustrate the model, this article presents an empirical case study of a successful police accountability campaign.

Grounded Theory of Asian American Activists for #BlackLivesMatter

A grounded theory study was employed to identify the conditions contributing to the core phenomenon of Asian American activists (N = 25) mobilizing toward thick solidarity with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in 2020. The findings indicate achieving a collective oppressed identity was necessary to mobilize in thick solidarity with the BLM movement and occurred because of causal conditions: (a) experiences of COVID-19–related anti-Asian discrimination, and (b) George Floyd’s murder. Non-action, performative or unhelpful action, and action toward thick solidarity were influenced by contextual factors: (a) alignment with personal and community values, (b) awareness and knowledge, and (c) perspectives of oppression. Mobilization was also influenced by intervening factors, which included affective responses, intergenerational conflict, conditioning of “privileges” afforded by White supremacy, and the presence of organized communities. Mental health professionals and social justice advocates can apply these findings to promote engagement in the community organizing efforts of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities with the BLM movement, denounce anti-Blackness, and uphold a culpability toward supporting the Black community.

The Prevention of Schoolhouse to Jailhouse

Chapter 4 documents the development of the Mississippi Delta Catalyst Roundtable to reform a deeply racist and abusive juvenile justice system and to build power in Black communities. It stresses the importance of grounding the national movement in African American communities in the South. It shows how these groups created models to combine community organizing with legal strategies and advocacy work in ways that centered the leadership of groups rooted in communities of those most impacted. Nevertheless, it demonstrates the critical importance of statewide and national networks to support local organizing carried out by small groups facing entrenched systems of oppression. It shows how people most impacted by injustice facing powerful white resistance spoke out and used intergenerational community organizing to confront systemic racism. Combining deep local organizing and national support, they made important breakthroughs and helped inspire a new racial justice movement.

“Nationalizing Local Struggles”

Chapter 2 offers a new model for understanding the dynamic relationship between local community organizing and national movement building. It highlights the critical contributions of local organizing to building the participation and leadership of those most impacted by injustice and to create organizational forms capable of sustaining campaigns to win policy changes. At the same time, it reveals the limitations of local organizing to dismantle a system of racial inequity deeply embedded in national structures, policies, and consciousness. It considers the contributions of national movements like influencing federal policy and challenging racist stereotypes and narratives. However, they are typically too narrowly focused on federal policy and dominated by Washington-based professional advocacy groups. Instead, movements can be stronger when they seek to strengthen and spread local organizing, “nationalizing local struggles,” and when groups grounded in communities most impacted by injustice share power with professional advocates.