Structure

In 2016, the Center for Participatory Change, with the support of Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, engaged in a year-long process to more clearly define and document our structures and processes so that we could grow deeper as a movement building organization.  For all of you strategy and structure geeks out there, we’re sharing the strategies and organizational lessons that emerged from that process.  This is one way CPC is documenting our journey to shift from movement building theory to practice.

 

Click on any of the headings below to read more of our learnings and practices in that area.

Organizational Identity: A movement building organization based in popular education

CPC’s shift to popular education meant drastically changing the nature and dynamics of the relationships that CPC held, to be in mutual relationships that could transform the work that we were doing.

Circular Work Structures

CPC values the circle model because it provides opportunities for shared leadership, autonomy and interconnectedness, and creates spaces for learning, healing, and relationship building that build analysis for action.

Staff Roles

Circle coordinators make decisions about the direction and scope of their Circle’s work, often in consultation with circle participants.

Circular Staff Structure

Our new structure allows for input from the Full Circle, which ensures each Circle’s work remains rooted in the collective vision of CPC and aligned with our organizational strategies.

Circular Governance Structure

This work allowed CPC staff and our communities the practice and creation of tools needed to build the world that we want to and deserve to live in, every day and for the long haul.

Board

The board will be tasked with developing a membership-based model for CPC as a mechanism for Circle participants to assume decision making roles.

Lessons Learned and Moving Forward

We learned that without addressing the gaps in our analyses we would continue to replicate and reinforce the systems of oppression that we seek to transform.