Tag Archives: nonprofit quarterly

The following is a transcript of the video above, from our webinar on “Remaking the Economy: Owning Our Future.” View the full webinar here.

Kamuela Enos: “Indigenous” is like a catch-all term for a whole bunch of cultures that are not the same. But we’re not white or Brown, in terms of the dominant system. So, I do think it’s a nuanced conversation. One of the core things that is coming up for me in how to approach it—what I’m learning from the people who are mentoring me, and my mentors, and the people who are mentoring me in the next generation that I have the responsibility to employ—is that the systems that people use hold metrics and practices and use-cases that are critical to understanding. Because they have thousands of years of R&D, and how people were able to live within a carrying capacity of a very specific ecology and geography. I think something is lost when you have to go at scale and you use broad strokes to describe what labor and other things can look like. And it’s this history behind these conversations that are happening now about “what are equitable workplaces,” and that’s super important.

I think it’s equally important and rigorous to look at ancestral practices through the lens of economic development. There are great examples of organizations in Hawai`i and other Indigenous network communities that aren’t necessarily co-ops, but they are networks of practitioners holding systems in place that are currently seen as cultural practices, where there’s an opportunity for true solidarity and to see how their work is actually understood as labor. How did their ancestors create equitable workplaces? What were their processes for distributing wealth? And to have that not be fetishized or even romanticized, but to be understood as labor models that have [been] proven to keep people fit and healthy, and landscapes along with them, until extractive forces came in and took them out.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

Having worked in the social sector for a little over a decade, I have firsthand experience with the art and science of getting social impact programs off the ground. Towards the tail end of 2020, I was hired by Newark, New Jersey, to launch the city’s inaugural two-year guaranteed income pilot program and led the program for its first year. During this period, some important lessons about how to develop a successful pilot program emerged.

Guaranteed income is an unconditional, recurring cash grant given directly to income-qualified individuals—no strings attached and no work requirements. Though related to universal basic income (UBI), it is not the same. UBI grants are universal and require no means testing. In contrast, guaranteed income gives cash to people living below the poverty line or with inconsistent or no income and entails a qualifying process. It is nonetheless considerably less bureaucratic than typical social safety net policies in that it provides a steady, predictable stream of cash to recipients to spend however they see fit.

In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King advocated for guaranteed income as the simplest and most effective solution to poverty.

Financially insecure households can effectively use such cash to address their short- and long-term needs. Guaranteed income respects the dignity of those receiving it, freeing recipients to navigate their own unique situations. It is not a substitute for work. It is meant to supplement, rather than replace, the existing social safety net and job sector and can be a critical tool for improving racial and gender equity.

In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King advocated for guaranteed income as the simplest and most effective solution to poverty. The Black Panther Party, Detroit civil rights leader and labor activist , and the National Welfare Rights Organization were also proponents of using guaranteed income to address poverty, while feminists in the Wages for Housework movement in the 1970s proposed using guaranteed income to counter the male breadwinner model.

President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Office of Economic Opportunity launched a series of basic income experiments in the 1960s. A three-year pilot program, called the New Jersey Graduated Work Incentive Experiment, was carried out in Trenton, Passaic, Paterson, and Jersey City. The program granted participating low-income families $4,352 a year (approximately $30,000 today). Notably, there was no widespread withdrawal from work by program recipients.

Today, several guaranteed income pilot programs have been launched in response to economic inequities that the COVID-19 pandemic exposed and exacerbated. In 2018, Stockton, California’s then-Mayor Michael Tubbs announced the first citywide guaranteed income program in the country, the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration, or SEED. Launched in 2019, SEED randomly selected 125 Stockton residents, who received $500 a month for two years. In 2021, San Francisco launched a six-month pilot program, called Miracle Money, which distributed $500 a month to 15 people experiencing homelessness in the city.

The Magnolia Mother’s Trust, now the longest-running guaranteed income pilot program in the United States, was launched in 2018. The program distributes $1,000 a month to 100 Black mothers in Jackson, Mississippi.

As we begin to glean more data from participants of guaranteed income pilot programs, it is important to understand how such programs can be implemented.

Designing a Successful Guaranteed Income Strategy: Ten Key Elements

Below, I highlight ten components of a successful launch of a guaranteed income pilot program, based on my experience in Newark, New Jersey. These components can be employed through a nonprofit organization or city government.

1. Political will from key decision-makers: A commitment from key leaders to invest in the program’s launch sends a message to the greater community that people have a vested interest in seeing the program to fruition. Without this step, it is difficult to secure community members’ trust in the program and, consequently, their participation in the community engagement process.

When identifying key decision makers, be mindful of the environment in which the program is set to occur. For example, at a nonprofit, key decision makers might include the organization’s board members and staff. Board members will be responsible for approving the plan to execute a pilot program, influencing the pilot program’s design, and leveraging resources to bring the idea to life. Staff may be responsible for leveraging resources to launch the program and participating in various stages of its implementation.

In city government, key decision makers may include the mayor, city council members, the housing authority, and other public service representatives. In Newark’s case, the mayor’s commitment to launching a guaranteed income program facilitated passage of a city council resolution to launch a city-led pilot. Gaining buy-in from key decision makers is important as they can help program staff navigate complex webs of regulations and ensure that the program design mitigates potential conflicts between the pilot and existing public assistance programs. When the right leaders publicly support a guaranteed income pilot program, it helps build community trust and makes it easier to navigate a complex policy environment.

2. Community buy-in: An ongoing commitment to ensuring that the community remains fully aware of the pilot program and its progress throughout its lifecycle is key to success. Ensure that community feedback and concerns are acknowledged and addressed well before the launch of a pilot program and certainly well before the program’s parameters are solidified. Community buy-in means facilitating deep community conversations to determine how to construct program guidelines and preemptively address residents’ concerns.

It can be easy to make the mistake of presenting an established plan to the community at the point where changes are no longer possible. In my case, feedback had been gathered from the community before I assumed the role of program lead. I combined this feedback with additional findings from paid focus groups to understand what community members felt about the program’s design after I took on my position. This exposed me to different residents’ concerns, and naturally, residents—along with other stakeholders—had many questions about the selection process.

Establishing community buy-in early on helped me understand how to best communicate the program’s nuances to ensure that the selection process was transparent. Making it clear that participants would be randomly selected by a separate research team (and not by myself or city representatives) was critical in building trust among all stakeholders.

Having such conversations consistently and in a manner that is accessible to all is an essential part of the community buy-in process. To ensure that these conversations were accessible, the Newark program established a mobile-friendly website translated into languages spoken in the community; created a social media presence; and held Zoom meetings accompanied by Spanish, French, and Portuguese speaking translators leading up to the program’s launch. These mechanisms allowed the city to update community members about the program at the early stages of its development. Community buy-in requires constant work, and developing a transparent process was key to furthering this goal.

3. An experienced research partner: Having a solid research partner will help the program to develop a set of research questions that make the case for translating the pilot into policy. While the pilot program’s aim is to provide direct monetary support to recipients, it is also about creating narrative change and challenging public perceptions about the efficacy of cash as a social benefit. Collecting data points about the program’s impact will support this goal. In Stockton, California, one key finding that helped to challenge public perception about guaranteed income programs was that a guaranteed income helped recipients find full-time employment, rather than encouraging them to work less.

Depending on budgetary constraints, a program might opt to partner with a local university or independent research firm. As the research partner will be responsible for soliciting input from program participants, it is important to select partners who understand the nuances of working with the community in which the pilot is set to occur. In Newark, we had the advantage of partnering with the University of Pennsylvania through its Center for Guaranteed Income Research. This partnership allowed the city to hire local research associates who were responsible for contacting program participants and ensuring surveys were completed on time by members of the control group and program recipients.

4. A guaranteed funding source: Identifying a funding source is critical to cementing an organization’s commitment to launching a pilot program. Some cities have used funding from the American Rescue Plan Act to launch their respective pilot programs.

Grants and individual donations can also help to seed funding for a pilot program. One nuance, however, is that the funding source may influence the program’s parameters as eligibility criteria will likely need to align with funder stipulations. Once the funding source has been identified, the program must clearly communicate how and whether this may impact eligibility criteria.

5. An accessible application process: If a pilot program stipulates that individuals wishing to participate must apply, then the application must be accessible to interested parties. Promoting accessibility might mean making the application available in multiple languages and mobile friendly. In some instances, local libraries may be key partners in ensuring access. In Newark, while I was not allowed to publicly preview the application in advance, I was able to inform potential applicants that it was lengthy. Knowing this allowed applicants to make provisions and identify friends or family members to help them apply.
6. A trusted financial disbursement partner: A bank, credit union, or other financial institution will be responsible for distributing funds to program recipients. This partner will also need to collect data about program participants’ spending habits for evaluation purposes. Depending on how this spending data is accessed, the partner can further gain recipients’ trust or elicit suspicion. During the community engagement process in Newark, I made it a point to understand residents’ preferences and attitudes regarding data collection and used this information to help the city establish criteria for selecting a financial disbursement partner. After creating a list of important criteria and ranking different categories, the city chose to partner with MoCaFi, a Harlem- and Newark-based Black-owned fintech company.
7. A storytelling cohort: Changing the narrative requires sharing stories from recipients that will help dispel myths around guaranteed income. In Newark, before funds were disbursed and as part of the onboarding process, participants were asked to indicate their willingness to publicly share stories about how receiving a guaranteed income impacted their lives. They were informed that all program data collected would only be made publicly available at the end of the pilot program. Having participants report on the impact of receiving a guaranteed income in real-time and sharing their stories afterward help to make the program’s benefits real to outsiders and build the political support necessary to move from pilot to established program.
8. A clear plan for participants’ anonymity: Naturally, recipients will want to ensure that their identities remain hidden unless they choose to join the storytelling cohort. This made it critical to design a process for retrieving program materials and exchanging information that protected participant identities throughout the program’s duration.
9. A clear explanation of the program’s impact on public assistance programs: A concern that many potential participants raised was whether and how participation in Newark’s pilot program would conflict with other public assistance programs they were enrolled in. Addressing this concern required identifying all relevant public assistance programs at the state and federal levels, seeking temporary waivers in some instances from New Jersey state officials for specific state public assistance programs, and consulting with other offices for guidance. Once conflicts with other public assistance programs are identified, it is important to share information with potential participants about how they could be impacted. In Newark, I created a chart that showed where conflicts might arise, made myself available to talk to participants about this dynamic, and ensured individuals had the space to decide what felt right to them.
10. A program manager: Hiring a point person to drive program implementation and serve as a liaison between stakeholders helped to streamline communications and give the program the attention it needed. This centralization of communications made it easier to build rapport with the community and other stakeholders. Hiring someone to focus on the program also signals a public commitment to seeing the program to fruition.

Changing the narrative requires sharing stories from recipients that will help dispel myths around guaranteed income.”

Looking Forward

As the program begins its final year, I am proud of the partnerships that helped to establish a solid foundation from which to grow. The successful launch of Newark’s guaranteed income pilot program started with a commitment from Newark’s mayor to launch the program. This catalyzed the community engagement process and laid the groundwork for building trust among stakeholders.

Due to the city’s decision to join Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, a network of other US mayors advocating for a guaranteed income, I was fortunate to leverage learnings from other cities that had embarked on their own guaranteed income pilot programs.

Beyond implementing a guaranteed income pilot program, I hope that people pay close attention to the stories participants share and the ways that the country more broadly can shift towards a less prescriptive, and more inclusive, social safety net.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

In the cooperative world, October is co-op month. October also marks the month that the National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA), the US co-op sector-wide trade association, hosts its annual Co-op Impact conference in Washington, DC. This year’s theme—Forward, Together—was optimistic. Paul Hazen—US cooperative hall of fame inductee and executive director of the US Overseas Cooperative Development Council, which supports cooperative development outside the United States, observed that the co-op movement has been “riding a wave that started in 2008.”

Even so, the obstacles to movement growth were hardly ignored at this year’s gathering. Haven himself remarked that co-op leaders have a “tendency to see the glass half empty instead of half full.” If last year’s conference focused on reconnecting with co-ops’ social justice roots, this year’s focused on the nuts and bolts of how co-ops can overcome the obstacles they face to achieve their social justice goals.

Financing the Movement

One area of focus was financing, with one panel titled, “Financing New Co-op Development, Early-Stage Growth and Business Expansion.” While the panel’s very existence speaks to the past decade’s expansion of co-op financing options, panelists were not shy about naming challenges that they face. Greg Brodsky, co-director of Start.coop, a national co-op accelerator program, noted that while the fund aims to provide investment for early stage co-ops, the Start.coop team still finds that, “There are six to 10 companies a year that are high potential that we don’t have the capital for.”

Casey Fannon, president of the National Cooperative Bank, noted that the problem was not a shortage of investment capital. In fact, Fannon contended that there was a “surplus” of capital. The problem, he said, was that available capital did not match user needs. To translate, this means that investors are seeking higher rates of return than co-op businesses seeking investment are able or willing to pay.

How do you square this circle? Panelists offered different responses to this question. Christina Jennings, executive director of Shared Capital Cooperative (“Shared Capital”), a community development financial institution (CDFI) that was founded by and lends to cooperatives, noted some of these tensions. The fact that Shared Capital raises much of its capital from co-op lenders may reduce pressure for higher returns, but co-op tolerance for losses is limited. As Jennings put it, the message from co-op investors is clear: “We’re supposed to take risks, and we better take smart risks.”

Jennings said that about one quarter of the projects that Shared Capital supports are startups. Most often, the CDFI finds it can lend to co-ops that seek its support, but sometimes “this comes with conditions that are challenging for cooperatives to meet.” As Jennings remarked, “We are betting on them to be able to repay us. Not VC [venture capital] level returns, but enough to cover the cost of capital and operations of the fund and put the money back out to other co-ops afterward.”

Raymond Guthrie, chief investment officer and head of capital deployment for Capital Impact Partners, another CDFI that lends to co-ops, said that part of the challenge is that co-ops are often “encumbered by debt.” This occurs for a reason. As Joseph Cureton, chief coordinating officer and cofounder of Obran Cooperative, which is owned by the workers of the businesses that it invests in, explains, “Co-ops are patronage-based, membership driven.” This creates tension with models of financing that rely on outside equity investors.

In short, the VC model of taking ownership, seeking a high return, and then exiting—that is, selling shares on the stock market or to other outside investors—is not possible. There are workarounds. For example, Todd Leverette wrote in NPQ about how the co-op investment fund that he helped create invests in employee-owned firms. The fund’s design involves seeking positive, but lower, rate of returns. Exit in this model occurs through ultimately selling the business to inside investors, namely, to worker-owners. In this case, the cash to pay back the fund’s outside investors is derived from the profits that the employee-owned business has generated over time.

Still, conventionally, a co-op’s equity comes from its member-owners. To gain ownership in a co-op business, co-op member-owners must each purchase a share in it. (Sometimes, in worker co-ops, this investment is made over time through a payroll deduction.) If the amount of equity needed to start the business exceeds the amount of capital that comes from member-owners, the gap must be filled in some way.

Borrowing money (debt) is one option, but too much debt can drain needed cash from a co-op business before it generates enough income to be able to afford to pay back lenders. This is the “encumbered by debt” problem Guthrie identifies, and it can easily sink startup businesses, as NPQ has noted.

Both Capital Impact Partners and Shared Capital offer equity investments in which business are only obligated to make payments if there are profits (such as non-voting preferred stock) and debt with equity features (such as loans with deferred payment schedules) to help fill this gap, but Guthrie estimated that only “two percent” of CDFIs offer equity investment as a financing option. Other investment vehicles such as crowdfunding also exist, but a gap remains between capital supply and demand.

In terms of resolving this gap, Brodsky suggested that a “charitable vehicle that could fund early-stage co-ops could be an amazing tool,” giving co-ops a “VC-like arm where we can take riskier bets.” Brodsky also offered that existing co-op employees could provide a source of risk capital.

Relatedly, Fannon suggested that if the co-op risk-aversion that Jennings mentioned can be reduced, then perhaps some co-op business revenue could help to finance startups. According to the US Department of Agriculture, annual co-op revenue tops $660 billion.

As this figure makes clear, the co-op sector is quite large—responsible for nearly three percent of US gross domestic product (GDP). But infrastructure to facilitate investments from existing co-ops into new co-ops is limited. The relational work needed to create meaningful economic links of solidarity and mutual support among these different segments of the cooperative movement is no small matter.

Outreach and Education: How to Spread the Co-op Model

Johan Matthews, community engagement facilitator for Cooperative Fund of the Northeast (CFNE), another CDFI, cautioned that even as co-ops have become more common in BIPOC communities, negative perceptions of co-ops in these communities persist. Matthews discussed the Co-op Cnxn program, a community engagement effort to help people in communities of color in upstate New York form co-ops. Matthews, who has led Co-op Cnxn since December 2020, described the engagement process he used, beginning with a months-long community listening process that preceded the program’s public launch.

Cooperatives have long played a critical role in the economic development of Black communities, a history honored this year with the posthumous induction of Ella Jo Baker into the US cooperative hall of fame. Still, Matthews emphasized that the co-op movement continues to have a “branding” problem among many African Americans. “Black people don’t do co-ops,” he noted, remains a common refrain.

But the word, “collective,” resonated, Matthews said. So, the CFNE program leads with collective—and seeks to “connect to cooperatives over time.” Other salient themes that came through community meetings included the importance of economic self-determination and of creating “opportunities for economic solidarity.” The hypothesis of the work, Matthews added, is that “if we understand all the reasons why folks with racialized identities don’t self-identify with co-ops, we can create one.”

Since Co-op Cnxn’s public launch, Matthews and community steering committee members have organized tours to spread knowledge about emerging co-ops in BIPOC communities and make existing models of majority-BIPOC cooperatives more visible. Matthews added that CFNE is also using learnings from the community engagement process more broadly to improve its investment and technical assistance offerings.

Building for the Future

The last session of the conference was, as has become the norm at these gatherings, a panel of US cooperative hall of fame inductees. At that panel, one of the inductees, Dan Waddle, senior vice president of the National Rural Electric Association, noted that the “uniqueness of a cooperative enterprise is it is an enterprise, but it has a social function.” Indeed, cooperatives were in this sense the original social enterprise, long before the term “social enterprise” was invented.

On that panel, Ajowa Nzinga Ifateyo, whose research was key to supporting Baker’s posthumous induction, reiterated the importance of education to Baker’s work and co-op development today. Echoing Matthews’ earlier comments, Ifateyo noted, “A lot of people don’t know about co-ops.…We are in a special place right now where the co-op movement has the potential to grow. If we have the education, the ideas are already out there. People need to know this is an option.”

Ifateyo added that co-op education needs to include both technical business skill development and unlearning. “We live in a society that is all about the individual,” Ifateyo observed. “We have to reorient people to talk about the good of the whole.”

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

Emily Kawano: When we think about going “beyond capitalism,” what’s that got to do with owning our economy? Ownership is more than just owning stuff. It’s really a bundle of rights that are individual, social, and collective. There is an increasing interest these days in challenging and rethinking these rights of ownership. Why is that? Well, I think it’s partly because there are these convergent crises. This is a pivotal and historic moment; it doesn’t come around all the time. There are many converging crises: climate change; ecological destruction; increasing inequality, which is leading to a concentration of wealth and power, and clearly undermining democracy; our slide towards fascism, which is leveraging racism, xenophobia, and white supremacy. All these things are converging, but these converging crises have also shaken people’s faith in the dominant capitalist system, and people are more open to thinking about system change. The whole shebang, so system change beyond capitalism. That’s where we’re getting with the “beyond capital.” At the end of the day, capitalism is a social construction, right? We human beings created it. It’s not even that old, a little more than 200 years old. And if it isn’t serving the common good and Mother Earth, we have not only the duty, but we have the power, to change it. It is a social construction. It’s not a natural law of motion like gravity.

Solidarity Economy is a global movement. It’s a framework that connects Solidarity Economy practices, which are grounded in principles and values of solidarity, participatory democracy, equity in all dimensions, sustainability, and pluralism. In that sense, it’s not a one size fits all model. We embrace that Solidarity Economy will look very different in different places and different cultures and different periods of time. And all that is welcome. We’re all heading towards the same goal of an economy and world that serve the people and the planet.

What does this all have to do with owning our economy? Ownership, again, doesn’t just mean owning stuff. It’s not about what is mine. It’s about having a voice. It’s about having standing. It’s about having control. We’re particularly interested in thinking about collective ownership—so collective control, voice, stewardship, and democratization—so that we all have a right to have that standing and to have that voice. We can think about ownership and democratization along a whole spectrum of things. For example, in the workplace, in community decision making and governance, in terms of crafting policies that serve the common good, in terms of stewarding natural resources, in terms of stewarding Mother Earth, and in terms of ensuring that we have access to clean air and clean water. We can think about democratization of land and housing, we can think about collective democratization of capital and finance. Collective ownership across all these spheres is not only about creating practices of Solidarity Economy. It’s also giving us a base of power, a foundation of power, that ownership, that voice that’s built in and recognized, which is where we really can build our power as a movement and then give birth to a transformation to a post-capitalist Solidarity Economy.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

There are many ways to step into political leadership in America, and how you go about it is often informed by your background, identity, and experiences. I direct a nonprofit called IGNITE, which trained over 10,000 young women as leaders across 30 states during the 2020 election cycle. Most of these emerging leaders are young women of color.

But what does it mean to develop young leaders? The answer is not always obvious.

Our work is influenced by perspectives like those of Cambridge academic Heide Baumann. In her writing, Baumann challenges conventional liberal narratives that blithely assume progress. She writes, “dominant narratives—which are rarely evidence-based—optimistically put forward the notion that we are on the right track.” Wishful thinking, in other words, trumps analysis. Baumann reminds us of the need to work at the level of culture, to rethink what leadership is and redefine it—rather than try to train women leaders to fit mainstream definitions of leadership.

Power begins with movements of people. In that sense, power in the US extends beyond the ballot box. But when it comes to empowering young women of color, narratives—especially those embraced and circulated by foundations—often focus only on power in the electoral realm.

Understanding Current Norms of Leadership Development

People in the field of leadership development often ask of potential candidates: Have they run for office? Are they thinking about it? Have they declared their ambition to do so? Have they won? Have they lost?

To broaden US leadership, we need to first persuade more young women to think of themselves as political in the first place.

Nobody is arguing that these aren’t important concerns, but other concerns are also at play. Women, for example, hold 27 percent of seats in the US House of Representatives and 24 percent of those in the US Senate. There are only eight white women governors and only one woman of color governor, a Latina, across the 50 states. The need to change these numbers in the direction of gender and racial parity is obvious. But we also need to step back to yield broader benefits.

Yes, we can train hundreds of women to run for office. But to broaden US leadership, we need to first persuade more young women to think of themselves as political in the first place. To borrow from corporate-speak, it’s about broadening the political talent pipeline.

That looks a lot different than what we’re doing today. Too often, we—people in the field of young women’s leadership—limit our imagination and creativity to what’s fundable. It takes courage to broaden our horizons and consider what’s possible. Funders must be a catalytic part of such conversations too.

An Alternative Model of Developing Young Women Leaders

Recent research, for example, shows that young people are spending more time and money addressing their mental health needs. They are much less likely to work a job that might jeopardize such health. And they understand the importance of self-care. As a rule, political candidates have not discussed mental health in their stump speeches. Yet, for many young people, mental health plays a larger role in decision making than it did in the decision making of generations past.

We need to ask ourselves: Where are the future leaders in this area? Which young people are taking the lead on addressing the mental health of residents on their city block? Of students and workers on their campus? In their high schools? Who is making sure, for example, that young women of color can access a culturally competent therapist? Building political power depends on identifying leaders in all of these areas.

Let’s measure the success of political campaigns holistically by considering the degree to which they attract such young leaders. Yes, winning or losing a campaign is a key measure of success. But as candidates run for office, we must also pay attention to what they are doing to recruit a broad staffing base, including young people who don’t consider themselves to be about “politics.”

As a grad student in 2007, I had many strong opinions about issues that were considered by many to be “niche” at the time. I was unsure what my future leadership would look like. A transformational moment occurred when a candidate everyone was certain would lose recruited me to work on his campaign. He spoke of building a movement. Every weekend, I drove around the country to campaign for him. From Colorado, where I was living and studying, I went to states like Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. It was not easy to work in those spaces as the only immigrant and Brown person on staff. People threw bags of excrement at us.

While working on this campaign, I developed a clear understanding of US power dynamics. It’s where I realized how important it is to train young women in the skills to overcome obstacles to change and lead their communities. It’s also where I realized that I did not need to hold political office to effect change in the world—and as a result, I decided to dedicate my career to supporting the development of young leaders.

I recently served as finance director for the political campaign of an alumna of my organization’s training program. She was running her own campaign, and I watched her put into practice with her team everything that she had learned from our program—from door-knocking to talking to voters to running her website.

Working alongside her, I had a sudden realization: All campaigns have common threads. You must be able to relate to people to get their vote. This young woman had acquired such skills in the pipeline of doing campaign work, only later deciding to run her own campaign. Doing campaign work opened a door of possibilities for her. But too many people like her hadn’t seen their potential for political leadership enough before life set them on other paths. I worry that many other young women of color like her are slipping through the cracks.

Valuing Community Campaigns and Alternative Routes to Leadership

We need to do more than tell young women, “You should run for office.” Yes, we also need to ask them if they’ve considered working, or have already worked, on a candidate’s campaign, but what is needed to cultivate young female leadership is broader, still, than that. It requires being open to leadership wherever it manifests, be that in electoral politics—or in community work beyond the formal electoral sphere. Openness to a broader concept of leadership requires the creation of entry points into local and state-level campaigns for these emerging leaders of color. It also involves providing these leaders with the training, resources, and mentorship they need to design and build community-based campaigns, so that they can eventually run their own.

Otherwise, we risk discounting critical work in areas where we need more women to lead. One of my organization’s trainees in North Texas, Isabella Fuentes, thought about joining a campaign earlier this year but didn’t feel qualified. It was only after attending our summer conference that she reached out to a candidate for state representative to work for them.

Yes, working on a campaign can take up a lot of a person’s time, but it can be an enriching and empowering experience. Campaign work often connects young leaders with community stakeholders, affording them the opportunity to listen to and learn from their own communities while building a base and gaining new skills. It’s an approach that we should be looking to replicate more often across the country to build power for communities of color.

Moreover, developing youth leaders is not just about working on political campaigns. What about community campaigns? Which young women are using WhatsApp groups to get bottled water and hygiene products to the homeless people sleeping at their local commuter rail station? I worked with one young woman this year who told me that many of the people she helps commute to the city to work then return “home” to sleep around the rail station. She tells me helping them stay employed, find housing, and get on their feet is more important to her than working on a political campaign. We must make sure we’re supporting the work she’s doing. Youth development leadership groups must say, “This is a legitimate use of your time, and we want to incentivize the leadership you’re showing.”

Who is helping to ensure that workers are paid living wages and treated with the dignity they deserve, and how are we incentivizing their leadership?

The truth is that barriers prevent women, and especially women of color, from entering what are exclusive political spaces.

Who is tracking traffic accidents in their neighborhood and making calls to ensure dangerous intersections get fixed? Who is addressing the issue of clean water in their communities and speaking truth to power? Who is helping their fellow students avoid hunger by organizing food pantries at their high schools?

The point that asking these questions raises is this: women show leadership not just in elections but throughout society. In short, the idea that “women lack ambition” for leadership is belied by the fact that women lead our communities all the time. The truth is that barriers prevent women, and especially women of color, from entering what are exclusive political spaces. The work of youth leadership development groups like IGNITE is part of the process of tearing down those barriers.

Yes, people really did throw bags of poop at me on the campaign trail. But once I lived through that, it lit a fire in me to seek a different way forward.

I am excited for all the young women whose passion about the issues that matter to them ignites their potential to envision and build a different future. With their leadership, I am sure this future will be better for all of us.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.