What is a grassroots organization?

Summary:

The term has no 'official' meaning in spite of its widespread use. Nonethess, people often feel strongly about such organizations and how they are formed and led.

Jo Anne Schneider (see http://www.chss.iup.edu/jschneid/) of the Catholic University of America, wrote in ARNOVA-L (see http://www.arnova.org/listserv.php) on September 18, 2003:
I have followed this thread on grass roots organizations and governance
with interest, and am glad to see many of the points regarding structure
and theory addressed. However, I have grown concerned that some of
these posts seem to equate grass roots organizations with new, informal,
all volunteer entities when the term may be used in very different
ways. In addition, not all "grass roots" organizations lack formal
governance structures and paid staff. Nor do all "evolve" from informal
meetings of like interested parties to Webarian bureaucracies.

In my experience, "grass roots" generally refers to local people working
together to find solutions to problems in their communities.
Particularly in the advocacy community, I've noticed that "grass roots"
organizations are often contrasted with organizations founded by
outsiders, usually meaning upper class people, the dominant racial
group, or professionals. So, for example, the CDC and NAC system
originally drew participation from local "grass roots" communities
impacted by poverty to develop housing solutions in those communities.
These solutions were considered better than public housing or city-wide
development efforts because they drew on local participation.

Although it may stretch academic definitions, "grass roots" is also used
as a euphemism to the people served by a particular program. For
example, when a local settlement house in Milwaukee decided that it
needed more "grass roots" participation, it brought a public housing
tenant leader who had been served by the organization onto its board.
Did this make it a grass roots organization? Not really. But it did
represent an effort to give those served by the organization some voice
in its governance.

That said, many organizations that rely on grass roots participation
rely on outsiders, paid staff, and formal development and governance
systems as they develop and grow. For example, the various Alinsky
organizing networks (IAF, PICO, Gamaliel, etc.) all develop grass roots
organizations through a highly structured system that involves paid
organizers from the national or regional offices working with local
communities, usually through their churches. Sometimes these efforts
evolve into formal social service organizations that still rely on
people from the "grass roots" (meaning local community members) as
staff, board, etc. Other national organizing efforts like Accorn or
local advocacy networks also use similar tactics. For a good reference
on governance and activities in these types of organizations, see
Richard Wood "Faith in Action." (By the way, as a methodological aside,
I think you clearly need to do the kind of ethnography and interviewing
that you see in this book to get at governance structures in these
organizations.)

(Note: href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226905969/internetnonprofi">Faith in Action is available from Amazon.Com. --Ed.)
The CDCs and settlement houses are another good example. For example,
during the Changing Relations project, Judy Goode and I worked with a
number of CDCs and NACs founded by local community activists. They were
chartered as formal organizations with paid staff in order to develop
housing or provide various community activities for their constituent
communities. And sometimes these organizations were founded by
outsiders interested in developing the grass roots in those
communities. For example, an upper class Latino lawyer started one
organization that hires almost exclusively from the neighborhood, has
local people in governance roles, and provides job opportunities as well
as housing for the Latinos in that neighborhood. Another CDC in another
sector of that neighborhood was founded by a white grandmother who got
tired of trying to find housing for herself and seven children in her
neighborhood. For anyone interested in that example (and more
ethnography), see Goode and Schneider Reshaping Ethnic and Racial
Relations in Philadelphia: Immigrants in a Divided City.

(Note: This book reporting on the href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1566391415/internetnonprofi">changing relations project is available from Amazon.Com. -- Ed.)
Let me end by addressing another thread in the original query. Very
often, "grass roots" is also confused with "multicultural" when
organizations attempt to expand their governance structures, I suspect
on the presumption that people who are the same color as those served by
an organization all come from the same community. As any scholar of
race or ethnicity - particularly in the U.S. - will tell you, any group
includes a huge amount of variation in terms of class, base community,
political beliefs, and so forth. As a result, changing the complexion
of the board may not necessarily mean that "grass roots" voices
participate in organization governance. For example, let me return to
the settlement house I mentioned earlier. That organization brought the
tenant leader (who was in fact a grass roots community member) onto that
board at the same time that it reached out to a number of middle class
professionals from the same racial group as most of the people served by
the organization. Diversifying the board certainly changed its
governance practices and perspectives, but it did not do much to raise
the level of grass roots participation in the upper staffing levels or
governance of the organization.

I think we need to be careful to understand that these kinds of terms
often have political meanings as much as theoretical and practical uses.
And that the terms convey a multiplicity of expectations just as local
community organizations have a number of forms.

Ruth McCambridge, editor of the Nonprofit Quarterly (see http://www.nonprofitquarterly.org) wrote to the magazine's online readers in May 2006:
So...I can claim editorial prerogative to declare a word-of-the-day or even of the century for this sector it is
"grassroots." The meaning of the term should be sacred to
nonprofits and we should be crystal-clear about what it means.

Grassroots groups are organizations that do not just reflect the
voices of those people most affected by the issue being
addressed but are responsive to and largely led by these
constituencies. That is what makes them powerful -- enviable.
It's a strategic advantage to legitimately claim a grassroots
base, as well it should be in a democracy.

And we should be the last sector that abuses the term since the
purpose of the sector is all about helping people to associate
to, as organized groups, take on activities and concerns that
are aimed at the public good. It is our particular strategic
advantage because it is potentially our core strength and yet
many nonprofits let this powerful asset waste away and remain
unclaimed.

I have linked an article below that
illustrates the power of grassroots organizing in the area of
health access.

http://www.nonprofitquarterly.org/section/811.html

We need similar local-to-national movements in many other
sectors -- I don't need to tell you this. In a country suffering
so deeply from a kind of disappointed democratic deficit, these
projects where ordinary people can contribute in substantive
ways to the best interests of their communities are infectious.

In fact, let's plant some viruses and make a pandemic of it!

Putnam Barber wrote in soc.org.nonprofit in 1995:
Others have contributed good thoughts and history on the question of what
makes an organization "grassroots". These additional thoughts may also
be useful.

• "Grassroots" is seen in some circles as a mark of legitimacy.
  That's
  why organizations will describe themselves this way and seek to be so
  identified by others, particularly in the press.
  
  
• The connection with legitimacy comes from the thought that in a
  "grassroots" organization, the energy, resources and direction of the
  organization stem from the contributions of individual members -- people
  acting in their individual capacities as citizens. This pattern is
  implicitly contrasted with organizations which draw upon strictly
  financial contributions to marshall the resources needed to accomplish
  their goals, and with those which are supported by tax revenues or
  corporate profits.
  
  
• The claim may not (of course) be true. It is perfectly correct that
  there is no legal definintion of the term. Political commentators have
  made fun at the expense of what they call "astroturf" organizations --
  those set up to mimic the appearance of grassroots organizations but
  actually created and directed in other ways.
  
  
• We tend to give extra consideration to political claims made through
  grassroots organizations. Many people are attracted by the vision of a
  group with a common civic interest uniting to work for its realization.
  This grant of sympathy will probably be even stronger if the group is
  credibly composed of individuals who are relatively disadvantaged --
  unlikely, in other words, to be able to use other mechanisms of influence
  to accomplish their purposes.
  
  
• Part of the reason for this extra consideration is that creating and
  maintaining a grassroots organization is demonstrably hard. If such an
  organization can sustain itself as a grassroots enterprise, that means
  it's likely the people in it really do care strongly about the civic
  interest they represent.
  
  Hence the scorn which greets organizations that pretend to be grassroots
  when they aren't.
  
  
• It's worth asking, though, whether such a grant of political
  legitimacy is appropriate in every case. There will always be some organizations that meet
  the structural conditions necessary to be called "grassroots" yet are
  bent on pursuing goals that are hard to admire.