What Do You Get When You Cross IAF with NOI?

Saul Alinsky

Our friend Michael Silberman over at Echo Ditto made some excellent observations about what technology means for good old fashioned organizing in a recent Echo Ditto blog post. This is a line of thought I traverse frequently having been inspired by Saul Alinsky, the father of community organizing, and organizing models such as asset-based community development. While many organizing models were developed before the Internet became mainstream, I agree with Michael that good on-the-ground organizing principles apply when doing online work. Still, I have an unsubstantiated hunch that the community of "old school" organizers, perhaps represented by an organization such as The Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), hasn't cross-pollinated much with the new generation of online organizers that might be found at The New Organizing Institute (NOI). Seems to me that there's a big opportunity to innovate at the intersection of these realms. Any thoughts?

Comments

[Celeste W of studio 501c]

I think you're right, and I think a similar gap exists between nonprofit communicators (including fundraisers) and the nonprofit techies who espouse online communications, e.g., blogs, RSS. I think both groups could benefit from more dialogue with each other, as I wrote in this post on Netsquared: http://www.netsquared.org/blog/celeste-w/scary-bloggie-4 . It's also the reason I started my blog, studio 501c, for nontechies in nonprofits.

By the way, I'm also big fan of Jody Kretzmann and Saul Alinksy. Are you familiar with this documentary on Alinksy: http://www.itvs.org/democraticpromise/index.html ?

[Michael Silberman]

Neal, I think your hunch is absolutely correct -- most old-school organizers are not thinking much about online, even though it wouldn't be hard for them to understand. NOI is definitely trying to brdige this gap. I'd also suggest looking to the GOP for some examples of good online/offline organizing cross-polination. Thanks for the link.