Grassroots Capacity Builders Toolkit

This Toolkit represents a selection of resources collected, adapted, and developed during MRG’s Capacity Building Initiative. It evolved out of a need to share knowledge and tools at the intersection of movement building and capacity building. To this end, there are resources in multiple areas of capacity and movement building:

Organizational Development
Governance, Operations, and Financial Management
Programs and Planning
Fundraising and Communication
Critical Race Theory and Movement Building

The resources range from helpful templates (job descriptions, budgets), fundraising trainings, facilitation resources, to “how to” guides. This toolkit was developed especially for work with smaller budget grassroots groups, but can be applied to any organization invested in social and racial justice work.

We thank the consultants for helping to develop this resource, the groups and consultants who originally created the tools that agreed to share them with us and you, and to the groups of the CBI without whom, these tools would not be used.

The Capacity Building Initiative was a multi-year partnership between MRG Foundation and Meyer Memorial Trust to support emerging social change groups in Oregon. CBI combined multi-year funding for the groups along with technical assistance and peer convenings and ran from 2016-2018. Ten organizations participated in CBI including:

Beyond Toxics
Disability Arts and Culture Project
Eugene/Springfield NAACP
Latinos Unidos Siempre
Lotus Rising Project
Right 2 Survive
Rogue Climate
Sankofa Collective
Unidos Bridging Community
Unite Oregon Rogue Valley