The power of a nonprofit is the size of its “army of the engaged” and the power THEY feel to be engaged in the work. Your army consists of your donors, your volunteers, your board, your supporters, your staff, your advocates. They all play a role.
Sure, strong leadership can lead to strong impact, but that’s not sufficient. As a leader, to grow a movement you need to communicate a clear mission and build an environment in which the actions of your army can lead to real change.
In this episode, you will learn how Rashad Robinson, President of Color Of Change, grew his racial justice organization from a staff of 6, a budget of $650k, and a solid but underutilized email list, to a staff of 40, a budget of $7 million, and a real “army” of 1.4 million people who have been ignited into action. Rashad and his team have built a true movement and he is here today to share what he’s learned.
About Rashad Robinson:
Rashad Robinson is President of Color Of Change, a leading racial justice organization with more than 1.4 million members. Rashad designs winning strategies to build power for Black communities: moving prosecutors to reduce mass incarceration and police violence; forcing over 100 corporations to abandon the right-wing policy shop, ALEC; forcing corporations to stop supporting Trump initiatives and white nationalists; winning net neutrality as a civil rights issue; changing representations of race in Hollywood; moving Airbnb, Google and Facebook to implement anti-racist initiatives; forcing Bill O’Reilly off the air. Rashad appears regularly in major news media and as a keynote speaker nationally.
In this episode:
- The key to scale an organization and grow a movement
- Using the model respond, build, pivot, and scale
- Theory of the ladder of engagement
- About Stand Your Ground and voter ID laws
- Passion + Infrastructure + Belief = success
- Setting the right kind of incentive structure
- How does your echo chamber affect your communications?
- The value of playing well in the sandbox to push yourself from an innovation and quality control perspective