Field Notes
Driving Population- and Systems-Level Change: 2023 Collective Action Backbone Learning Series
April 19, 2023
(Note: This Learning Series was focused on the role of backbone support in collective action work. To learn more about collective action as a general approach to advance population- and systems-level change, please see our Collective Action resources.) Collective action is a community-led process for advancing equity and achieving social change. It’s the movement of a group of people impacted by and impacting a challenge who share power, trust, resources, and effort to achieve a common purpose. Backbone teams provide critical support infrastructure to collective action initiatives. They play a key role in ensuring that the initiative…
- Maintains alignment towards the common purpose
- Commits to a culture and process that is equitable, relationship-driven, trustworthy, and transparent
- Continuously learns, adjusts, and improves their work together
- Follows the community’s lead
- How to strengthen backbone capacity — Root Cause continues to build out our free and publicly accessible Collective Action Resource Library, which includes tools and resources to strengthen backbone capacity. We are currently developing and will soon release a full version of the collective action backbone assessment tool.
- How to create more opportunities for backbone peer learning, practice, and resource sharing — To this end, Root Cause is exploring opportunities to facilitate an ongoing community of practice among backbone practitioners (stay tuned!).
- How funders could be involved in the long-term sustainability of systems- and population-level change work — Questions to explore include: Why is it important to fund long-term systems-change work? What are best practices for funding, or getting ready to fund, collective action? What do collective action practitioners believe is most critical for funders to know?
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