Change doesn’t always begin in Washington. It can start much closer to home — on doorsteps, in living rooms, at city council meetings, and at school boards — when neighbors come together and say, “we can do better.”
In Memphis, Tennessee, a small group of parents began asking questions: “Why aren’t our children getting the education they deserve? Why aren’t we being heard?” What began as a few concerned parents soon became something bigger. They knocked on doors, built trust and kept showing up. They called themselves The Memphis Lift.
Their impact didn’t come from flashy ads or famous endorsements. It came from real people, doing the work — slowly, consistently and together. That’s the true power of community organizing. As their presence grew, school boards listened. Politicians took note. Today, The Memphis Lift commands attention not because of big money or big names, but because they carry the voice of a community that refuses to be ignored.
Their progress didn’t happen by chance. They had passion, but they also had access to the data, tools and resources needed to mobilize their community. These tools supercharged their efforts, enabling organizers to reach more people, deepen relationships and drive greater impact year-round. That’s the strength of community organizing. It grows from trust, thrives with the right support, and reminds us that real, lasting change begins when we invest in people who are already building it.
For many of us, our experience of civic life is episodic and limited to polarized moments around elections. But civic engagement happens every day, in communities across the country where people organize, advocate and use their collective power to transform systems and reshape our country.
Their work touches elections, but it’s also ongoing advocacy work, collective community action and engagement, governance and more. Families facing hunger, lacking affordable healthcare or fighting for access to a quality education are driving these efforts, not for visibility, but for survival. When systems fail and leadership falls short, organizers are the ones who step in, even if it rarely makes headlines, because the futures of their communities are at stake. Yet most civic infrastructure, funding, and public attention remain concentrated around elections — leaving the rest of the civic ecosystem under-resourced and undervalued.
If philanthropic organizations are serious about tackling society’s most complex challenges, they must focus less on the national news cycle and more on the conversations happening in communities, and they must include long-term support for community organizing and the infrastructure that sustains it in their portfolios.
I’ve spent more than two decades working with community organizers and leaders, first in New York City government, then with the Robin Hood Foundation, and now as founder and CEO of Murmuration. Murmuration’s mission is rooted in the belief that community-driven civic engagement can lead to sustainable systems change. We equip local organizations with the data, tools and insights they need to amplify their work. And through our work with partners fighting for better schools or bolstering democracy, I’ve seen both the enormous potential of community organizers and leaders and the formidable barriers they face every day.
National organizations and entrenched special interests often dominate the conversation because they have access to a robust infrastructure: sophisticated data, outreach tools and long-term strategic capacity that propels their work forward. For smaller community organizations, the barriers to accessing this critical infrastructure can include prohibitively high costs, limited internal capacity or a lack of local-level data.
Their inability to access these tools and long-term support slows their efforts and makes it more difficult to build the relationships needed to make progress. Imagine if local groups, rooted in and accountable to their communities, had access to the same resources as national organizations. What different decisions would our leaders make? What priorities might shift? How much more grounded in local priorities — and less driven by polarized national narratives — could our conversations become? How much closer could we get to building healthier, more connected communities? How much more agency might people feel?
Philanthropy has an incredible opportunity to show up for people who are already doing the work. National conversations matter, but lasting change is rooted in local capacity and continuous civic engagement. Building a future where everyone can live a healthy, free and dignified life requires bold, sustained investments in the infrastructure that powers community organizers. These investments must equip communities with the year-round capacity to organize, lead and create change on their own terms.
Multi-year funding for organizers and the infrastructure they need doesn’t fit neatly into traditional funding verticals — it crosses them, amplifying the demand for change and sustaining the impact those verticals seek to make possible. True, lasting progress requires that the philanthropic community prioritize those closest to both the problems and the solutions. The responsibility for unlocking the power of civic engagement and shaping our collective future belongs to all of us.
Emma Bloomberg is the Founder and CEO of Murmuration.
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