The Righteous Indignation Project

Coalition Building Principles

Key Principles of Coalition Building

The main thing to remember when getting to know other organizers and leaders is to  LISTEN

• Build Relationships
  • Who are the like-minded individuals and organizations

in your community?

o       Get to know leaders of other organizations face to face by meeting with them in person and getting to know their issues and goals

• Identify and Research the Problem/Issue
  • What is the issue you are hoping to address?
  • What examples and evidence do you have to support the cause?
  • How will you frame the issue?
  • What is the end goal? After you achieve the goal, will you continue as a coalition? Re-formulate your goal?

• Evaluate the Context in which You are Operating
  • What gap will this coalition fill?
  • What relationships do you have?
  • Who are your allies? Whose participation will be critical to the success of this effort?
  • What resources are available in the community?
  • Who are your opponents?
  • Who are the leaders in the communities we want to reach to?
  • Whose voices need to be heard on this issue? Who are the obvious stakeholders in this issue?
  • Are diverse populations of the community represented?
  • Who will be effective partners? What do they bring in terms of resources, skills, and expertise?
  • What groups are already working on this issue?
  • Should your coalition become part of an existing coalition? What value does your group bring to the coalition?
  • What are the advantages and disadvantages of becoming part of an existing group?

• Coordinate Administrative Functions
  • Who will fund this effort?
  • Who will staff the coalition? Lay leaders? Paid staff?

   

  • Sometimes coalitions can attain visibility and recruit members more quickly if they have a powerful "champion." The champion may be a judge, political leader, business person, civic leader or member of the faith community, but they should be someone who is well respected and able to generate support for the new entity. (from "Community How To Guide on Coalition Building")

     

    If the staff will be paid, how much? Where will the funding come from? What will staff's responsibilities be?

  • Who will convene the meetings? Where will they be held? How often?

• Invite Members to Join
  • How will you approach people to join your coalition? Phone call? Face to face meeting? Personal or formal invitation?
  • When organizing a diverse community group, try to expand beyond the organizations that are most similar to you. If you start with the people who are most like you and then try to "diversify" your group, it is unlikely that other organizations will feel comfortable joining you.[i]
  • Reach out to people who represent all the groups you hope to include in the coalition.

• Clarify Expectations of Coalition Members
  • Develop a list of roles and responsibilities for coalition members. Include the number of times the group can expect to meet throughout the year, the time of the meetings, what is expected of the group, and what individuals may be expected to contribute.
  • Create mutually agreed upon values statements (i.e. "We believe....")
  • Set explicit ground rules for members to follow and create clearly defined criteria for involvement.

  • Make sure to have alternate strategies in place-if your first method fails, try again with another!

    Once the coalition has been formed, spend the first meeting getting to know one another. Have each member of the coalition talk about their organizations, including their missions and goals, funding sources, leadership, what they hope to gain from participation in coalition and how their work can contribute to overall mission of the coalition.[ii]

• Develop a Strategy

o        What strategy will we pursue to accomplish our determined goal?

o        What is the timeline?

o        How you will measure success?

o        Are we an ad hoc or permanent coalition?

o        Develop a mission statement and agree on goals and objectives.

o        Establish a decision-making structure that all members can agree upon.

• Whenever possible, organize around a vision, rather than a particular issue.

  Engage the Public

  • How do we bring this issue into public consciousness?
  • Who will orchestrate the public response around this issue? The media response? The political response?

[i] Brown, Michael J. and the Jewish Organizing Initiative.  "Jewish Community Organizing Workshops", Boston: 2005, pp. 24-27.

[ii] U.S. Department of Transportation, "Community How To Guide on Coalition Building", 2001 available at http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/alcohol/Community%20Guides%20HTML....