The most effective path forward is always shifting with changes in political context. To have an idea of how the particular movement in which you are participating is making progress toward that shared vision, you must measure both visible and invisible impact at the societal scale.

• Visible:  time-bound campaigns with specific goals are necessary vehicles through which groups build power to achieve their visions and are important indicators of progress in power building at the societal level.

• Invisible: A less visible indicator of power is the ability to set and advance an agenda. After successfully stopping the voter ID requirement, the organizations involved in Our Vote Our Future were able to advance multiple bills at the legislature the following year. To measure the ability to set the agenda in the state, the coalition could have tracked the bills introduced during the 2012 legislative session and compared that to the 2013 season (and beyond).

• Invisible: Another less visible measure of power at the societal scale is the ability to influence mindsets, underlying assumptions, and culture. These are the tectonic plates of social change—slow-moving, large in scale, and foundational for all change efforts—and they make up what is often called the “dominant narrative”

The core work of building power in marginalized communities is organizing a constituency base and developing leaders among its members. In the most general sense, this base consists of both the targets of power-building efforts (members of communities that have been historically marginalized) and the agents of these efforts (activists and engaged voters from all backgrounds), with considerable overlap between the two.

The power of this membership base can be measured in a variety of ways. The most common measures of this organizational “people power” are size and diversity of the membership base, number of members taking on leadership roles, and number of grassroots leaders

Beyond measures of size and scale, what matters for the exercise of power in the world are certain attributes of the membership base. 

An organization can learn a great deal by tracking who is in its constituency base and what they are doing. In turn, this allows an organization to better understand the independence, commitment, and flexibility of the base. What relationships do people have with each other? Are they repeatedly taking action? Are they accountable to each other? How easily do they pivot as the terrain they are operating on shifts?

Organizational structure and capacities are too often seen as separate from power building efforts, but design choices internal to an organization—what we call “collective capabilities”—are essential to a constituency base’s ability to wield power

Given the importance of these design choices to building power, funders, and community-power organizations should consider an organization’s progress in building these capacities when assessing power-building efforts.

• Does the organization have transparent decision-making processes that ensure accountability to the constituency base?

• Have the organization’s leaders developed strategies to integrate learning into their daily routines and then apply what they’ve learned?

• Do they build space into people’s work plans to allow for flexibility in times of change?

Organizations should identify the capacities in greatest need of development and then invite a range of people, including staff and members, to assess these capacities and the organization’s progress in building them. The organization can then use this data to identify what has led to their success, identify opportunities for additional growth, and track their progress in building these capacities.