By Peter Murray
Accidental death and dismemberment insurance” just might be the most grisly
consumer product name in history—the name suggests that if you
think you need this insurance, what you might actually need is a
dramatic change in your lifestyle or occupation. Two years ago,
when I embarked on a research study to understand why some civic
organizations grow to be large and influential while others don’t,
little did I know that accidental death and dismemberment insurance
would provide the answer.
But there I was, perusing the member benefits of the National
Rifle Association of America (NRA), when I was surprised to discover
that one of the reasons people join is that the NRA will automatically
insure you (and your limbs) in case of a firearms accident. This
morbid, but surprisingly attractive, member benefit turned out to be
the key that unlocked for me the secret of scale: the core model for
growth that every large-scale civic organization shares.
What I found is that the largest civic organizations have all
scaled up using the same basic approach—a model I call “functional
organizing.” All of these organizations provide benefits and services
to cater to the everyday needs of their members—such as insurance,
childcare, support groups, and discount cards—giving people a practical
reason to join and remain active while providing the organization
with a steady revenue stream. With more than four million members
and a robust $250 million budget, the NRA and its package of member
benefits perfectly illustrate the secret of scale.
The Quest for Scale
I began searching for the secret of scale after seven years of running
the Center for Progressive Leadership, a national training
institute for leaders of civic organizations. Over that time, our
institute trained and coached leaders at more than 1,000 civic organizations,
ranging from local community centers to state-level
advocacy groups to national issue organizations.
Although civic organizations work on an array of issues, they
share a focus on engaging citizens in creating systemic change,
spurring fundamental shifts in culture, policy, and politics. Civic
organizations see citizens not only as recipients of services but also
as social-change agents themselves. The social-change efforts can
be as simple as neighborhood residents coming together to create
a community garden or as ambitious as advancing a national policy
agenda for education reform.
Many are traditional membership organizations, such as the NRA,
AARP, and AAA. But others, such as Planned Parenthood, local immigrant
organizations, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender
(LGBT) community centers, provide services for millions of community
members who are not officially “members.” Civic organizations
include unions and worker organizations, neighborhood associations,
community service clubs, PTAs, business and professional
associations, and co-ops. Civic organizations also include churches,
which often endorse a range of social transformation goals in addition
to their mission of personal transformation. Whatever the form
or goal of these civic organizations, they share the core underlying
idea that citizens have the power to reshape our society.
Civic organizations across the United States struggle with a common
fundamental problem: they simply aren’t growing to the scale
needed to create systemic change. For me, “growing to scale” happens
when a civic organization both builds deep relationships with
a significant portion of the people in its community (measured by
frequency of interactions and ability to influence members) and develops
a robust, sustainable financial base (measured by percentage
of revenue that is self-generated).
Most civic organizations struggle to reach beyond the same
core group of activists to more deeply engage members who are often
little more than names on mailing lists. Instead of developing a
broad donor and revenue base, many civic organizations have become
overly-dependent on big grants from foundations, large donors, and
government—grants that are shrinking in the wake of the financial
crisis and government cuts.
I knew there must be a better model. So with the support of a fellowship
from the Tides Foundation, I launched a research project. I
first looked at every large-scale civic organization I could find, ranging
from US institutions such as the NRA, AARP, megachurches, unions,
and trade associations to international organizations such as the
Canadian Federation of Students, the Mondragon workers cooperative
in Spain, and consumer cooperatives in England. I also looked at
local US organizations that have achieved significant scale within their
regions, such as CASA de Maryland and Make the Road New York.
In the end, I focused my research on the organizing, membership,
and business models of more than 50 large-scale membership
civic organizations. I dug into these organizations’ finances, studied
their membership models, assessed their policy and organizing
strategies, and gained an understanding of what drives their growth
and power. It was through this process that I discovered the NRA’s
member benefits package, including its accidental death and dismemberment
insurance.
How The NRA Scaled Up
With convincing victories in gun control battles in Congress and
state legislatures across the country, the NRA has proven yet again
that it is one of the most powerful civic organizations in the country.
How exactly has the NRA grown to a scale that permits it to
dominate the political landscape on gun control issues?
Many assume that gun owners join the NRA for the same reasons
people join pro-choice organizations or environmental organizations:
to show their support for a cause they believe in. In reality,
most people join the NRA because the member benefits fit their
lifestyle. They join to get access to their local hunting clubs, shooting
and safety classes, kid and family programs, gun insurance,
free subscriptions to the NRA’s magazines, discounts at thousands
of gun, sports, and outfitter shops, and, yes, accidental death and
dismemberment insurance. The NRA’s American Rifleman is one of
the 50 most widely read magazines in the country, and American
Hunter is in the top 100. Moreover, between the NRA’s discounts
and free insurance, the $35 a year membership quickly pays for itself
for active gun owners.
The NRA’s services and programs have made the organization
a trusted brand with its members. Building on these relationships,
the NRA activates its members for advocacy and civic engagement.
Through its local clubs and “Activist Centers” (often hosted by gun
shops), the NRA carefully shepherds members into deeper and deeper
engagement as volunteers and activists for the organization. This active
member base, coupled with heavy political spending, places the
NRA among the most powerful lobbying forces in the United States.
The NRA’s member services and benefits are also the backbone
of the organization’s financial success. In addition to the more than
$100 million a year that members pay in dues, the NRA brings in
more than $30 million from businesses that pay to be part of the
NRA’s discount network, advertise in its magazines, and receive
product endorsements. Altogether, the NRA generates two-thirds
of its total income from dues and earned revenue.
The NRA’s benefits and services make the organization relevant to
the daily lives of its members. This is the true secret of scale: offering
benefits and services that build deep and lasting relationships with
members, and then activating those members for long-term, systemic
change goals. This is the key to effective functional organizing.
The Power of Functional Organizing
Functional organizing enables the NRA to build a deeply engaged
membership and robust financial foundation to advance gun rights.
The NRA capitalizes on its local gun clubs, political action centers,
and popular magazines to draw members into fights against gun
control legislation—fights that the NRA has won over and over again.
The NRA is hardly alone in using functional organizing to attract
members and build a financial base through benefits and services.
In fact, every large-scale US membership organization is fueled by
functional organizing.
Almost 40 million seniors receive discounts, insurance, travel advice,
and financial services from AARP. AARP The Magazine is the
largest circulation magazine in the United States, giving the organization
a powerful voice for influencing seniors and protecting
their interests on issues such as Medicare and Social Security.
Approximately 15 million US workers belong to unions that negotiate
better wages, benefits, and working conditions for their
members. Unions then build on these workplace relationships
to activate members for policy and political campaigns relevant
to working families.
Each year, through nearly 800 health centers across the country,
Planned Parenthood provides reproductive health services
and education to 5 million women. These functional health services
fuel Planned Parenthood’s $1 billion annual budget and
have enabled the organization to attract more than 6 million
members and supporters. With a strong financial base and deep
connection with women across the country, Planned Parenthood
is a powerful lobbying force for reproductive rights and
women’s health.
About 150 million Americans attend church regularly, not only to
connect to spiritual communities, but also to access services
ranging from childcare and summer camps to business classes
and financial planning support. Churches have used their deep
member relationships to spearhead social movements ranging
from civil rights and anti-war campaigns to the early temperance
movement and the modern conservative social movement.
More than 50 million Americans belong to AAA in order to access
emergency road service and discounts. AAA is one of the
most active lobbyists for automobile and transportation spending
and regulations at both state and national levels.
The top 10 professional associations, such as the American Bar
Association and the National Association of Realtors, average
more than 300,000 dues-paying members who gain access to
accreditation, training, news, conferences, and professional networks.
These professional associations regularly activate their
members on advocacy campaigns for policy priorities affecting
their sectors.
Large-scale membership organizations have all developed a set
of benefits and services that are relevant to the daily lives of their
members. These benefits and services attract new members, keep
old members engaged, and most important, build member relationships
that the organization can activate for social and policy change
initiatives.
The beauty of this model is that through services and benefits,
functional organizations also create robust revenue models. Successful
functional organizations develop their member services and
benefits into high-growth businesses, which, in turn, finance these
organizations’ operations and growth.
The Trap of Issue Organizing
When I began this research, I assumed that many of the most recognizable
issue advocacy organizations—like the American Civil
Liberties Union, Greenpeace, NARAL Pro-Choice America, Amnesty
International, and the National Right to Life Committee—would
rank among the largest civic organizations in the country. But no
issue organization comes close to matching the scale of the largest
functional organizations.
Although issue organizations often play an important role in advancing
focused policy agendas, they are inherently limited in scope
and scale. They do not offer the kinds of services and benefits that
functional organizations do. Rather, issue organizations start with
the assumption that caring about an issue is enough to motivate
someone to become a member or make a donation.
But most Americans don’t view themselves primarily as activists.
As a result, issue organizations rarely grow to
engage more than a few hundred thousand
members. They struggle to build independent
donor and revenue bases, instead becoming
highly dependent on foundations and large
donors. The top five issue groups combined
have fewer members than the NRA alone.
They are an even smaller fraction of the
membership of AARP or the largest churches.
(See “Comparing Functional and Issue
Organizations,” below.)
Despite the limitations of the issue organization
model, it has, since the 1960s,
become the dominant model for civic organizations.
There are a slew of groups
organizing around every issue imaginable,
from poverty and hunger to animal rights
and the environment to reproductive rights
and abortion to education reform and child
development.
Although limited in scale, many smaller
issue groups have been able to create outsized
policy and political impact, using
strategic deployment of activists and smart
media strategies. And conversely, although
scale creates opportunities for impact, the
largest functional organizations often fall
short of creating lasting social change.
Nonetheless, scaled membership and
finances do create a powerful platform for
advancing systemic change. The NRA and
AARP have been at the center of two of the
biggest policy fights in recent years: gun control
and national health care. With vital services and benefits that
are highly relevant to their members’ everyday lives, functional organizations
have the tools to develop deep and lasting relationships
with millions of Americans. These deep member relationships are
the crux of functional organizations’ power to advance cultural,
policy, and political change.
Engaging Members
One might think that having millions of members would make it
difficult for organizations to sustain deep relationships. It turns
out, however, that members of functional organizations often access
benefits, services, and information weekly or monthly. In contrast,
members of many issue organizations rarely interact with the
organization more than two or three times a year.
This significant disparity reflects starkly divergent approaches
to member engagement. Issue organizations constantly ask, “How
can we get this member more engaged in our issues?” whereas functional
organizations constantly ask, “How can we get more engaged
in this member’s daily life?”
Megachurches provide a good example of the member-focused
approach. The fastest-growing megachurches have moved far beyond
Sunday services. They now provide after-school programs, business
and financial literacy classes, and a stunning array of support groups
for everything from single parenting and married life to hiking and
fitness to music and arts.
The deep member connections that megachurches, the NRA, and
other functional organizations develop are critical for their success.
Engaging members in fundraising, volunteering, events, programs,
and issue campaigns is predicated on having trusted bonds.
The organizations use three core strategies for building deep
relationships with members: 1) They provide tangible benefits and
services, 2) they foster in-person member communities, and 3) they
create engaging media platforms. Some functional organizations,
such as the NRA, employ all three of these strategies to engage members,
but most use only one or two. (See “Building Deep Member
Relationships," below.)
Provide Tangible Benefits and Services | Benefits are often the
initial impetus for members to join civic organizations, whether
those benefits are AARP’s discounts, the financial services of credit
unions, the YMCA’s gym membership, or AAA’s road service. Not
all benefits, however, are created equal when it comes to building
deep member relationships. Monetary benefits and transactional
services are helpful for members and generate needed income for
the organization, but they are rarely enough to develop and sustain
a trusted relationship. Building trust requires more intimate and
consistent engagement with members.
Member services that involve a direct personal relationship between
the organization and its members—such as business classes
at megachurches, health services at Planned Parenthood, or legal
services provided by unions—have greater potential for building
trusted relationships than purely transactional benefits do. These
relational services create space for sharing information about important
issues and for encouraging members to take action in the
organization’s initiatives.
Some of the most striking examples of institutions with deep
member relationships are LGBT community and health centers
across the country. These organizations have had to take a functional
organizing approach to help their members overcome the discrimination
and legal barriers that LGBT people face.
The San Francisco LGBT Community Center (the Center) is
one of the largest LGBT-serving organizations in the country, and
it is a good reminder that organizations can grow to large scale in a
single community. More than 9,000 people visit the Center every
month for a wide array of services, including career counseling, small
business lending circles, youth programs, childcare, and first-time
homebuyer programs. The Center combines these services with
vibrant cultural programs and events ranging from art gallery shows
to cabaret performances to Queer Youth Prom.
With this combination of high-touch personal services and open
cultural programs and events, the Center and similar organizations in
dozens of cities across the country have become vital organizing hubs
for LGBT issues. These centers build on their service relationships to
educate members about issues affecting the LGBT community and
connect members to issue advocacy and civic engagement campaigns.
Foster In-Person Member Communities | Maintaining strong
relationships among members, leaders, and staff requires creating
opportunities to connect regularly in person, whether that’s
through hunting clubs, union halls, church support groups,
local business networking events, or professional association
conferences.
One of the most impressive member communities I studied
is the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in Washington, D.C.
Over the past eight years, Sixth & I has turned the synagogue
model on its head by transforming a defunct synagogue into a
multicultural center with concerts, art exhibits, book signings,
lectures, and comedy shows.
During the week that I visited Sixth & I, the synagogue hosted
a concert with The Magnetic Fields, a book signing with Bob
Woodward, a photography festival focused on India, and
“Havdallah and Hoops” after the regular Shabbat services on
Saturday. In addition to this cultural fare, Sixth & I engages members
in political events, ranging from speeches by Al Gore and
Nancy Pelosi to presentations on ethical eating to rallies in support
of Israel. It may be unorthodox (literally and figuratively), but
this eclectic, open-space approach led Newsweek to name Sixth
& I one of the “25 Most Vibrant Congregations” in the country.
For some organizations, in-person community building is
an Achilles’ heel. For example, although AARP has local chapters,
only a small percentage of members are deeply engaged
in face-to-face member communities. AARP members join for the
discounts, insurance, and magazine, but rarely connect with other
members just because they are a part of AARP. This lack of face-to-face
contact limits AARP’s ability to develop trusted member communities
and to activate its members for advocacy efforts. In the case
of AARP, however, its sheer size allows it to turn out large numbers
of people on important issues, as it did to support Obamacare.
Create Engaging Media Platforms | From the NRA’s popular
hunting magazines to Focus on the Family’s podcasts and website to
megachurches’ global televangelism broadcasts, media platforms can
be a powerful tool for capturing the hearts and minds of members.
The most striking example of a media platform strategy comes
from AARP, whose magazine’s circulation is three times larger than
the next largest US publication’s. A lifestyle magazine with multiple
versions targeted at various senior demographics, including a
Spanish version, AARP The Magazine is a potent mechanism for AARP
to influence its members on cultural and policy issues. The magazine
is seen as a highly valuable member benefit: I was amazed by the
number of AARP members who told me that AARP The Magazine,
with its stories about senior health and wellness, over-50 celebrities,
and world travel tips, was the primary reason they renewed their
membership year after year.
Although media platforms are powerful advocacy tools, the
most successful media platforms owned by civic organizations are
primarily lifestyle-oriented rather than issue-oriented. With article
titles like “Buck Fever,” “A Rifleman’s Paradise,” and “The Six Guys
You Meet at Deer Camp,” the NRA’s American Hunter magazine is
chock full of hunting stories, articles about the best hunting trips in
the world, and tips for every aspect of hunting and marksmanship.
Parents are drawn to Focus on the Family’s website and podcasts
to find help on discipline issues, teen sexuality, and raising kids in a
digital age. Lakewood Church’s broadcasts of Joel Osteen’s sermons
are popular because of his modern and practical self-help messages
about everything from family to fitness to finances.
Once these organizations have built popular lifestyle media
platforms, they can deeply influence members on cultural and policy
issues through stories and calls to action. Focus on the Family
includes voter registration links and calls to “put your values in office” next to articles about Christian parenting challenges. And ten
times a year, AARP moves beyond lifestyle issues to push more serious
news, advocacy, and political information for seniors through
the AARP Bulletin.
For the major membership organizations built in the 20th century,
magazines, television, and radio have been the primary media
platforms for connecting with members. For the next wave of membership
organizations, the Internet, and particularly social media,
will be critical for attracting members with news and information.
Unlike the one-directional media of television, radio, and print,
social media has the unique potential not only to deliver content and
information to members, but also to foster connections between
members (online and in person). We have seen inklings of social
media’s potential for community building in the rapid growth of Tea
Party groups on MeetUp.com and the extraordinary growth of Occupy
pages on Facebook during the heyday of the Occupy Wall Street
protests. These social network platforms not only provide ways for
these groups to disseminate information
to members, but also give
each group a tool for self-organizing,
sharing, and connecting.
The Importance of Monetizing Membership
The most robust revenue engines
for civic organizations are natural
outgrowths of the benefits and services
that drive their membership.
Although the dues that members
pay to gain access to the benefits and
services generate significant revenue,
most scaled-up civic organizations go
beyond member dues by monetizing
benefits and services so as to generate
income every time services are
used. It turns out that some kinds
of benefits and services are easier
to monetize than others, and no organization
has perfected the art of
monetization better than AARP.
AARP generates billions of dollars
of revenue by endorsing insurance
and travel products, providing
discounts, and running ads in
its popular senior living magazine.
(See “The Big Business of AARP,” below.) Although the scale of AARP’s
brand licensing program may seem
unattainable for most civic organizations, versions of this basic business
model are used by groups of all sizes: aggregate a group of consumers,
negotiate better deals for these consumers, and then receive
a referral fee from the companies providing the deals.
Historically, insurance benefits and financial services are the
most common consumer aggregation services used by associations.
Providing insurance and loans at lower cost and with better terms
has long driven the development of membership associations for
farmers, small businesses, professionals, and consumers.
Most large associations provide some form of insurance referrals and
benefits. One of the fastest growing functional organizations launched
in the 21st century, the Freelancers Union, has primarily focused on helping
independent contractors obtain access to more-affordable health
insurance options. With this core benefit, the Freelancers Union has
grown to almost 200,000 members since launching in 2003.
Insurance and financial products are just the beginning of consumer
aggregation strategies that membership organizations can
employ. For example, for Union Plus (the package of discounts and
services for AFL-CIO union members), the most popular benefits
include 15 percent off AT&T cell phone plans and up to 25 percent
off car rentals. In addition to providing valuable benefits for members,
Union Plus has generated tens of millions of dollars in royalty
revenue to help sustain the operations of the labor unions.
Even at the local level, community organizations are tapping into
this revenue stream. Local organizations raise thousands of dollars
a year through referrals of customers to banks and credit unions;
local business associations garner fees from a range of vendors who
present and market their services at association events and conferences;
and local immigrant organizations receive referral fees for
recommending members to trusted legal services.
THE BIG BUSINESS OF AARP
With 40 million members and an annual budget of more than $1 billion,
AARP is the undisputed king of membership organizations. AARP has
perfected the benefits and services model of functional organizing.
Like all scaled-up membership organizations, AARP’s revenue
base is derived from its suite of member benefits and services. AARP
also owns a huge for-profit company (with more than $6 billion per
year in revenue) that manages royalties and deals with insurers,
banks, and travel companies. This for-profi t arm licenses AARP’s brand to insurers, financial services
providers, and travel companies. In 2011, AARP’s for-profit arm generated more than $700
million in net income, which was used to cover more than half of AARP’s nonprofit operating budget.
The discounts, insurance, financial services, and travel deals that keep seniors renewing their
AARP membership finance the lion’s share of AARP’s operating budget. AARP promotes these
deals through its magazine (which also generates more than $100 million in ad revenue each year)
and direct mail. The companies partnering with AARP each tout AARP’s endorsement in their own
ads and promotions. This practice makes AARP’s brand ubiquitous in the senior market and further
increases the revenue potential for the organization from endorsements and deals.
With a robust, independent revenue base, AARP is able to make large investments in advocacy
and issue organizing. In 2009, AARP spent about $100 million on lobbying and made passage of
the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) its top priority. With these funds, AARP was one of the
largest advocates for passing the bill: more than 1.5 million members took part in town hall meetings
and conference calls; more than 1 million members signed petitions supporting the bill; AARP
ran a barrage of television and print ads; and AARP created positive stories about health care in the
nation’s largest circulation magazine (which it just happens to own).
Although AARP has faced criticism for being too business oriented and for being heavily tied to
its insurance profits, the organization remains a trusted brand with seniors and one of the largest
advocacy forces in the country.
Keys to Functional Organizing
Although every community is unique in its needs and opportunities,
there is a core set of components that leads to successful functional
organizing. Launching a functional organizing initiative, however,
takes a serious and sustained commitment to shift an organization to
a functional model. Many groups just aren’t ready to make this leap.
For organizations whose boards, executive leadership, and donors
embrace a long-term strategy for becoming an indispensable part
of their members’ daily lives, there are five critical components to
launching a successful functional organizing initiative:
Understand Your Members’ Challenges | Companies spend billions
of dollars every year trying to understand their customers. For
leaders of civic organizations, the two most important questions to
ask about your targeted members are: “What are their challenges in
life?” and “What would make these challenges just a little bit easier?”
Maybe you are working with parents trying to figure out pickup and
after-school care; maybe you are working with families struggling to
find reliable caregivers for their aging parents; maybe you are working
with immigrants with only limited legal status straining to build
credit. Whoever your constituents are, you must deeply understand
their daily needs and figure out whether your organization can provide
a helpful tool or resource.
Focus on What You’re Good at and Known For | Reputation is
everything when it comes to scaling up membership. Build member
benefits and services based on what your institution is already good at
doing and what your community trusts you to do. If you’re known for
housing issues, think about referrals for home insurance, mortgages,
and contractors. If you’re known for ethical food issues, think about referrals
to organic food restaurants, farm shares, and health food stores.
If you’re known for health issues, think about prescription cards, vision
discounts, and gym membership discounts. If you’re known for parenting
and children’s issues, think about babysitting co-ops, discounts to
local museums, and referrals to financial advisors for college saving.
Create Products and Services to Generate Profits | Profit is
often considered a bad word in the social sector. But finding ways
to monetize services and benefits in a self-sustainable way is crucial
for scaling up membership. In some cases, direct service provision
models—like classes, support groups, networking events, and health
or legal services—can be made profitable. Consumer aggregation,
however, is the more common path to developing profitable benefits.
To succeed at consumer aggregation, focus on high-margin
products and services (financial and insurance products instead
of retailers and supermarkets, for instance) and fill a trusted referral
gap for consumers by identifying high-quality providers (don’t
provide the service yourself).
Join with Other Organizations to Negotiate Deals | Negotiating
discounts requires organizations to have a large base of active
members. Obtaining this kind of negotiating power often requires
joining together with other organizations in your region or nationally.
Build coalitions with other organizations in your sector to amplify
your negotiating power and share the costs of setting up member
benefit programs.
Find Funders Willing to Act Like Venture Philanthropists |
Launching functional organizing ventures takes steady support from
funders who are willing to shift into the role of venture philanthropists.
Usually, funders make grants year after year to the same groups
to achieve the same outcomes. But as venture philanthropists, funders
make time-limited investments in high-risk functional organizing
initiatives. The functional organizing projects that succeed should
be fully self-sustainable within 5 to 8 years (and will achieve proof
of revenue potential within just 2 to 3 years). Only a small fraction
of functional organizing initiatives will succeed, so funders need to
be willing to invest in a range of projects, carefully assess which are
working, and let fail those that aren’t.
Creating a Virtuous Cycle
Immigrant organizations provide some of the most compelling
examples of how functional organizing can build scale and impact
at the local level. CASA de Maryland’s Multi-Cultural Center is
located in the heart of the Langley Park neighborhood (an unincorporated
area of Maryland), where almost two-thirds of residents
are immigrants. The Multi-Cultural Center is the largest of CASA’s
five immigrant “Welcome Centers” where CASA offers members a
broad array of services.
In addition to providing direct services, CASA has also been in
the forefront of policy fights for national immigration reform. In
June 2012, President Obama announced that the US Department
of Homeland Security would not deport “DREAMers,” young immigrants
who came to the United States before they were 16, have
graduated from high school, and have kept a clean record.
CASA sprang into action to help young immigrants throughout
Maryland obtain the documentation and support they needed to
qualify for this program. In a few short months, through individual
outreach and legal clinics, CASA helped nearly 2,000 DREAMers
apply for the program and become dues-paying CASA members.
CASA then immediately engaged these young immigrants in efforts
to pass a state-based DREAM act in Maryland—a 2012 ballot
initiative providing DREAMers with in-state tuition eligibility at
Maryland’s public universities. During the election, CASA deployed
the DREAMers and thousands more of its members as volunteers
and canvassers to support the initiative. The initiative passed last
November by a sixteen-point margin. “Our goal is to develop life-long
members,” says George Escobar, who directs CASA’s social services.
“This [the DREAMers engagement] is a great model of organizing
and services working together.”
CASA de Maryland shows that organizations can tap into the
symbiotic relationship between member services and social change
organizing. The most successful functional organizing models create
a virtuous cycle of support, engagement, revenue generation, and
impact. Functional organizing models that focus on building deep
relationships with members have the potential to reinvigorate civic
institutions across the country and engage millions of Americans in
reshaping the fabric of society.