Editor’s Note: This piece is the fourth in a series featuring leadership development experts on the value they’ve found in NCRP’s new report, Cultivating Nonprofit Leadership: A (Missed?) Philanthropic Opportunity. For past posts, click here.
Movements for social justice are framed by power and often call for a change in power dynamics, both from within the movement and outside of it. Historically, in the movement for immigrant rights and fair immigration reform, power has been held by groups hostile to the emergence of diverse, thriving communities living free from discrimination and fear. Because the structures and institutions that govern us are built to exclude those with the least power and deny them a voice in decisions that impact them directly, at CASA de Maryland we seek to build the power of people to have a voice in these decisions. We understand that we are all stronger when we empower each other and we enhance, recognize and celebrate our diversity.
Developing and supporting equitable, just leadership is a key part of celebrating our diversity and building our movements. I am pleased that NCRP’s newest report, Cultivating Nonprofit Leadership: A (Missed?) Philanthropic Opportunity, lifts up funding for grassroots leadership development that embraces equity. The report provides a rich overview of grassroots leadership at the nonprofit executive level, but it is important to recognize that empowering community leaders is crucial as well. Grassroots leaders ought to examine carefully the ways they can and should support the development of new leaders in the communities they serve, and funders ought to consider this aspect of their grantees’ work when they fund leadership development. As NCRP’s previous series of regional reports on the impacts of advocacy and organizing clearly demonstrate, an integral way to assess the impact of work at the grassroots level is to measure the number of community members whose skills are honed to lead, thereby sustaining the work.
As the authors of Cultivating Nonprofit Leadership point out, leadership development can have a disruptive effect on the status quo within organizations and movements. Lifting up new leaders by giving them skills and relationships brings new voices to the conversation and new perspectives to our work. This is especially true when these emerging leaders are women and people of color. And supporting next generation leadership ensures our long-term success – after all, today’s achievements will need champions tomorrow and our work is far from over. Both are crucial to consider in nonprofit leadership, but they are important to healthy communities, and ultimately our democracy.
Fostering democratic leadership is an integral part of CASA de Maryland’s work. Through community organizing, we help build collective and individual leadership among immigrant communities. Working together with these communities, we run campaigns to raise the minimum wage, reform unjust immigration enforcement policies, increase access to higher education, preserve low-income housing and secure more job opportunities in our neighborhoods. And our community development team leads SOMOS Langley Park, an initiative that capitalizes on the immense potential of place and person to strengthen immigrant families and communities in the DC suburbs and across Maryland. Both rely on the leadership of community members with CASA’s support.
I believe deeply that solutions to the problems facing immigrant communities will come from leaders from those communities. When we organized around an effort to get the state of Maryland to pass its own version of the DREAM Act, CASA intentionally lifted up leaders among the DREAMers themselves to guide conversations about the virtues of the policy and lobby state representatives on their own behalf. These young, emerging leaders brought a fresh point of view and their own unique talents to the effort, and they helped propel it to success. Building movements by empowering community leaders isn’t just good strategy, it runs through CASA’s organizational DNA.
I am hopeful that Cultivating Nonprofit Leadership will spark a conversation among funders about why and how to fund leadership development. And I hope that an important part of this conversation will be the role that emerging community leaders can and must play in any movement for justice.
Gustavo Torres is executive director at CASA de Maryland and an alumnus of the Rockwood Leadership Institute. Follow @Somos_CASA on Twitter and join the #CultivateNonprofitLeadership conversation.
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