Sustainability and Social Justice
Document Type
Article
Abstract
Philanthropic support for grassroots organizing, power building, and community-led social change strategies has increased over the last 15 years. The election of Barack Obama in 2008 sparked greater interest in community organizing, and, with it, increased philanthropic investment in organizing as a strategy for social change (Rebanal, 2022; Suárez, 2012). With that has come a growing interest in evaluating and learning about practices of “base building,” a cornerstone of organizing efforts (Pastor et al., 2020). However, not all base building is the same, and there is a lack of understanding and clarity about base building definitions and practices within the philanthropic and evaluation sectors. “Base building” is often used inter changeably with organizing, mobilizing, and/or power building, which has led to confusion and murkiness in both philanthropic investments and evaluation practices. Copyright © 2025 Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy at Grand Valley State University.
Publication Title
Foundation Review
Publication Date
2025
Volume
17
Issue
3
First Page
132
Last Page
144
ISSN
1944-5660
DOI
10.9707/1944-5660.1752
Keywords
base building, community organizing, community power, electoral organizing, evaluation, labor organizing
Repository Citation
Fox, Katie and Post, Margaret, "Base Building Evaluation: Three Opportunities to Improve its Use and Relevance" (2025). Sustainability and Social Justice. 582.
https://commons.clarku.edu/faculty_idce/582
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Copyright Conditions
Fox, K., & Post, M. A. (2025). Base Building Evaluation: Three Opportunities to Improve its Use and Relevance. The Foundation Review, 17(3), 13.
