Amplifying power.

Transforming California.

VISION

Movement Innovation Collaborative is an organizer-led effort to amplify and accelerate the field of power building. We are seeding interconnected, intergenerational networks of innovative movements to catalyze lasting, long-term transformation in California. Our vision is to strengthen and scale our vibrant power building ecosystem that honors the collective imagining of each of our past and present movements towards a future deeply rooted in racial justice.

PHOTO COURTESY OF POWER CALIFORNIA

OPPORTUNITY

The steady and disciplined organizing in communities of color over decades in California has positioned our movements to respond powerfully to multiple, intersecting crises in our communities. We’ve made important progress over the past two decades towards meaningful progressive victories, and deepening solidarity across the movement for racial justice, creating coalitions that successfully aggregate power and engaging more younger voters and voters of color with progressive issues. At the same time, our futures and the strength of our democracy still face threats from outsized corporate power and rightwing extremists. People facing the biggest harms lack the power to make decisions — from low wages, rising costs, poor living and working conditions, and homelessness to deteriorating public health systems, industrial pollution, and state violence. If we want to sustain our progress, there is still work to be done. 

Power building movements — especially those led by young people, Black and Indigenous communities and communities of color — have historically lacked investment and have faced inequitable distribution of resources. This lack of investment has slowed the progress of our movements and created conditions that leave many organizers and leaders overworked and under-resourced.

By connecting and scaling local and regional power building centers, organizations, and movement leaders, Movement Innovation Collaborative aims to catalyze a historic, first-of-its-scale, infrastructure to support California’s power builders to co-create, strategize, learn, struggle, heal, and grow together in virtual and physical spaces.

OUR STORY

HOW WE GOT HERE

Movement Innovation Collaborative is the strategic thinking, planning, and work of over 500 community members and organizers, transforming an idea into a living entity to create the change our communities need and deserve. This work is seeded by The California Endowment’s historic Social Bond, offering us a generous foundation to bring our collective vision to life.

In the midst of a pandemic, nearly 40 multi-racial and intergenerational leaders came together in 2021 from a wide range of organizations, issues, and regions in California to form a Design Committee that developed our vision, purpose and structure through seven months of rigorous feedback and input from the community. In 2022, we created a more detailed action plan to launch this concept of cross-sector, cross-racial networks of power building centers, now known as the Movement Innovation Collaborative. 

PHOTO COURTESY OF YO! Cali

THE POWER BUILDING FIELD

We believe that California’s power building organizers and organizations are more capable and creative than ever.  The landscape of organizing by people most impacted by social, political and economic crises is as diverse and intersectional as it has ever been. But, the power we have as a movement is still not as much as we need for the impact we want. 

Burnout, insufficient and inconsistent funding, isolation, and siloed learning are just some of the structural barriers that organizers and movement leaders are facing. Our movements lack scale, connectedness, and coordination – a challenge and an opportunity that we are eager to take on through breakthrough thinking and collective experimentation.

CORE STRATEGIES

Movement Innovation Collaborative is focused on five core strategies to deepen the power, coordination, and impact of the statewide power building ecosystem. These strategies were created in response to the input of intergenerational power building partners, community members, and organizational leaders across diverse backgrounds, races, gender identities, lived experiences, and regions:

Movement Strategy and Innovation

We will create consistent cross-racial, cross-sector, and intergenerational spaces for learning, evaluation, problem-solving, and innovation to advance the theory and practice of power building. These spaces will celebrate and encourage forward-thinking learning, experimentation and research

INTERGENERATIONAL LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

We will strengthen, coordinate, train, and develop thousands of youth and adult leaders in the power building ecosystem. Building an intergenerational pipeline of leaders ensures that knowledge is passed on from our elders, and we can retain talent and leadership across organizations and institutions that leads to more sustainable careers in movement organizing.

THE HUB

To coordinate our efforts, we will cultivate a statewide home for resources that advance our core strategies through programming and training, shared learnings, and space to align and scale our regional movement efforts.

HEALING JUSTICE AND SUSTAINABLE WORK CULTURE

We will support organizations and organizers to build cultures and practices of resilience, belonging, and dignity, so we can strengthen our sustainability and capacity, nurture our health, and heal from trauma. We honor the importance of individual and collective healing to be able to create transformative movements that are responsive to our needs, values, and aspirations as we carry out this vital work.

NETWORK OF CENTERS

We envision a robust, distributed network of regional innovation centers that reflect local strengths and weave together more resilient and innovative movements across California. These centers would be autonomous and community owned and accelerate bottom-up movement building, strengthen collaborative relationships, and increase cross-regional solidarity, innovation, and coordination between organizations and leaders.

IMPACT

Over the next 10 years, our efforts will bring long-term systemic change to California by increasing the number of grassroots base-building organizations while strengthening current ones, activating community organizing and engagement in new regions, and developing new leaders who are taking bold risks, expanding their base, and building power.

PHOTO COURTESY OF PICO

collaborators

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We wish to acknowledge and express gratitude to the hundreds of people from across California who engaged in the process of designing and launching the Movement Innovation Collaborative. Thank you for offering your time and wisdom to this collective effort to transform our state to be a place of healing, wellness, and power for all Californians.

A special thank you to our funders at The California Endowment, The James Irvine Foundation, The California Wellness Foundation, The McCune Foundation, Evelyn & Walter Haas, Jr. Fund and The Weingart Foundation, who supported the Design Process, core strategy pilot, and the power of people designing their own futures.

ORGANIZATIONS

  • AAPIs for Civic Empowerment
  • Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) Institute
  • ACLU of Southern California
  • All Due Respect
  • AORTA
  • Asian Pacific Environmental Network
  • Be the Change Consulting
  • Beloved Communities
  • Black Equity Collective
  • Black Organizing Project
  • Black Women for Wellness
  • BOLD
  • Brotherhood of Elders
  • California Alliance for Youth and Community Justice
  • California Black Power Network
  • California Calls
  • California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance
  • California Native Vote Project
  • Causa Justa :: Just Cause (CJJC)
  • Center for Community Organizing
  • Center for Empowered Politics Education Fund
  • Center for Third World Organizing
  • Central Coast Alliance United for A Sustainable Economy (CAUSE)
  • Central Valley Mutual Aid
  • Centro Binacional para el Desarrollo Indígena Oaxaqueño (CBDIO)
  • Centro Cultural de México
  • Change Consulting
  • Chinese Progressive Association (CPA)
  • The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA)
  • Coaching for Healing, Justice and Liberation
  • Coleman Advocates
  • Community Coalition
  • Community Power Collective
  • CompassPoint
  • Congregations Organized for Prophetic Engagement (COPE)
  • Center on Policy Initiatives San Diego
  • Creative Acts
  • Dignity and Power Now
  • Dolores Huerta Foundation
  • Embodiment Institute
  • EPIC
  • Essie Justice Group
  • Envision Change
  • Faith in Action Bay Area
  • Fresno Barrios Unidos
  • Genders & Sexualities Alliance (GSA) Network
  • Gente Organizada
  • Grassroots Global Justice
  • Grassroots Policy Project
  • Hand in Hand
  • Hmong Innovating Politics
  • In-a(d)vance
  • Indigenous Circle of Wellness
  • Indigenous Justice
  • Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice
  • Inland Empire Justice Lab
  • Inland Empire PRISM Collective
  • InnerCity Struggle
  • Insight Garden Project
  • Justice LA / Frontline Wellness Network
  • Khmer Girls in Action
  • Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance (KIWA)
  • LA Voice
  • Lavender Phoenix
  • LeaderSpring
  • LeadersTrust
  • LOUD for Tomorrow
  • Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability
  • The Management Center
  • Media Justice
  • Million Voters Project
  • MILPA Collective
  • Mixteco Indígena Community Organizing Project
  • Movement Generation
  • Movement Strategy Center
  • Ocho Semillas
  • One LA – Industrial Areas Foundation
  • Orange County Civic Engagement Table
  • Orange County Communities Organized for Responsible Development (OCCORD)
  • Othering and Belonging Institute
  • P3 Lab at Johns Hopkins University
  • Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans (PANA)
  • PICO California
  • Pilipino Workers Center
  • Pillars of the Community
  • Powerful Innovations for Voter Organization and Transformation (PIVOT)
  • Power California
  • PowerSwitch Action
  • Restore Oakland
  • Right to the City Alliance
  • RYSE
  • San Diego Organizing Project
  • Senior & Disability Action
  • Social Justice Healing
  • So’oh-Shinálí Sister Project (SSSP)
  • Starting Over, Inc.
  • Success Stories
  • Tenants Together
  • Transformative Justice Institute
  • Transformative Programming Works
  • Transgender Gender-Variant & Intersex Justice Project
  • Transgender Strategy Center
  • TransLatina Coalition
  • True North Organizing Network
  • University of California Merced Labor Center
  • University of Southern California Equity Research Institute (USC ERI)
  • Urban Peace Movement
  • VietRISE
  • Warehouse Worker Resource Center
  • Working Families Party
  • Working Partnerships USA
  • Young Women’s Freedom Center
  • Youth Organize! California (YO! Cali)

Members of the Design Committee, Implementation Committee and Lead Team

  • Alex T. Tom
  • Alexandria Ramos-O’Casey
  • Angelica Salas
  • Anthony Thigpenn
  • April Verrett
  • Ashley Uyeda
  • Aurea Montes-Rodríguez
  • Camila Chavez
  • Chrissie Castro
  • Christina Livingston
  • Dawn Phillips
  • Dinora Reyna
  • Elly Matsumura
  • Felicia Jones
  • Janetta Johnson
  • Jessica Lehman
  • Jonathan Paik
  • Joseph Tomás McKellar
  • Juan Gomez
  • Laila Aziz
  • Malkia Devich-Cyril
  • Marc Philpart
  • Maria Brenes
  • Marinarde Soto
  • Mark-Anthony Clayton-Johnson
  • Miya Yoshitani
  • Nancy Xiong
  • Olivia Araiza
  • Ramla Sahid
  • Robert Hoo
  • Sarait Martinez
  • Sheheryar Kaoosji
  • Terry Supahan
  • Timmy Lu
  • Tracy La
  • Tyler Okeke
  • Veronica Garibay

GET INVOLVED

We’re just getting started and have ambitious plans to make California a place of healing, wellness, and collective power for generations to come. We invite you to connect with us so we can effectively scale the strength of our movements across the state. 

Please sign up below for our newsletter to learn how to engage your organization in future events, programs, and shared learning opportunities with Movement Innovation Collaborative. Stay tuned for more!

Contact Us

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