The Community Organisers Programme in England

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Journal of Community Practice

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Robert Fisher & Kristin Dimberg

To cite this article: Robert Fisher & Kristin Dimberg (2016) The Community Organisers Programme in England, Journal of Community Practice, 24:1, 94-108, DOI: 10.1080/10705422.2015.1129006

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Download by: [University of Michigan] Date: 02 September 2016, At: 13:22 JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY PRACTICE 2016, VOL. 24, NO. 1, 94–108 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10705422.2015.1129006

COMMENTARY The Community Organisers Programme in England Robert Fisher and Kristin Dimberg School of Social Work, University of Connecticut, West Hartford, CT, USA

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS Community-based initiatives for meeting social need and pro- Civil society; community; moting social change are widespread and expanding through- community organizing; funding; international; out the globe. Part of conservative Prime Minister David neoliberalism; United Cameron’s Big Society alternative to the Big State is the Kingdom Community Organiser Programme (COP). Begun in 2011 the COP met goals to hire and train 500 “senior” community organizers and educate and engage 4500 volunteers in community organizing basics by 2015. Obvious contradictions and limits about its neoliberal underpinnings, theory of change, and selected organizing models notwithstanding, COP is one of the boldest initiatives in the field in a generation, not the least because it is funded by the national government. Its innovativeness is especially evident in comparison to efforts in the US, where community organizing is heavily reliant on charitable donations and where, in our contemporary political economy, public-funded hiring and training of community organizers is unheard.

There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear. (Stephen Stills, 1966) We live in a globalizing world, with information and capital moving across continents and oceans at unprecedented velocity. But people in the United States are still often unaware of social policies and innovations outside their borders. The Community Organisers Programme (COP) in England is an excellent example. Begun in 2011, the COP ended in September, four years later, con- current with the election and term of the David Cameron administration. The COP was always seen by the administration as an experiment, with a central part of the experiment to find, after 2015, its own source of funding for community organizing (CO). Nevertheless, David Cameron’s reelection in May, 2015, for a second term as Prime Minister, despite the near secession of Scotland from the United Kingdom in 2014 and continued unpopular and painful austerity measures, has markedly increased the likelihood of the administration continuing support for CO, albeit in a reduced and different format. Accordingly, the importance of the COP, in theory and practice, derives from both the lessons

CONTACT Robert Fisher [email protected] School of Social Work, University of Connecticut, West Hartford, CT 06117, USA. © 2016 Taylor & Francis JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY PRACTICE 95 one can draw from its history, as well as the debates it stimulates regarding the future of government-sponsored CO. What the COP fully represents is not so much unclear as it is contested. Is it more of the same neoliberal (mis)uses of community-based initiatives so widespread in the United States and throughout the globe? Or is the COP an innovative experiment that offers alternatives for expanding CO in an age of fiscal austerity? This commentary argues that it is both. Studying the COP raises critical questions about organizing models, the politics of community organizing, the role of social change theory, and funding CO (Emejulu, 2010; Fisher, 1994; Shaw, 2013). It is widely agreed that community and community-based initiatives for meeting social need and promoting social change are widespread and expanding throughout the globe (Edwards, 2011). Community is touted as an antidote to widespread social ills, whether public school perfor- mance, individual health, violence prevention, or challenges to egalitarian democracy. One paradoxical source behind the turn to community is contemporary economic globalization (Ashbee, 2015). Neoliberal forms of contemporary capitalism imply that markets should be open and, as far as possible, free of state interference. Within this context, a major shift occurred in social service provision and meeting basic human needs. The most obvious privatization trend has been the withdrawal of the public sector from direct provision of social services (Fisher & Karger, 1997). Less obvious but equally significant has been the decentralization of economic and social development functions to local communities. In the United States, most welfare programs are contracted to nonprofits via grant opportunities, which result in a not-for-profitization of the state (DeFilippis, Fisher, & Shragge, 2010). This shift to decentralized community policy in the United States has four ingredients: state retrenchment, devolution of state functions and shrinking of state scale, policies that redirect activities to community-based nonprofits, and community efforts that adjust and respond to state policies and market imperatives. Recently, England has followed a similar policy path but developed a pioneering one with explicit support for community organizing. The coalition government led by Prime Minister Cameron developed a Big Society alternative to the Big State (Imrie & Raco, 2003;Powers,2012; Taylor, 2011;Wiggan,2012). The Big Society initiative, begun in 2010, promoted retrenchment and shrinkage of the social welfare state by shift- ing involvement and responsibility to local communities. Most important for community practice, the Cameron initiative included a COP to recruit, hire, and train 500 community organizers who would be supported by an additional 4500 trained community volunteers. Not since the Great Society programs of the early 1960s in the United States has a nation encouraged such grassroots participation. Although there have been public-supported 96 R. FISHER AND K. DIMBERG

community-based programs in the United States since the 1960s and in the United Kingdom since the 1990s, the COP seems unprecedented. No nation has ever officially and explicitly trained and hired so many community organizers. It is not uncommon for shifts in civil society to follow transformative structural changes. As Michael Edwards (2011,p.3)putit,“From the time of Classical Greece, thinkers have returned to civil society as one way of generating new energy and ideas around old and familiar questions as the world has changed around them.” Although the contemporary moment would appear a fortuitous one for community organizations, the reality is more ambiguous. Community organizations continue to play roles that both reinforce and contest dominant political and economic relationships. Clearly, the Big Society concept explicitly supports the turn to community as a complement to state retrenchment and unprecedented austerity measures (Ashbee, 2015; Clarke & Neuman, 2012;O’Hara, 2014; Taylor-Gooby, 2011;Wiggan,2012). But any mass hiring and training of community organizers has the potential to unleash grassroots democratic fervor in opposition to neoliberal politics and policies (Edwards, 2012).

The Big Society as neoliberal turn to community “ Invitation to Join the Government of Britain: A Conservative Manifesto,” the 2010 document that drove Cameron’s 2011 election campaign, intro- duced the Big Society. Blaming Labour’s “big government” for the prolifera- tion of social problems in Britain but building on New Labour’s “Third Way” initiatives, the Conservative Party promoted the shift to a decentralized, community-oriented alternative to the “Big State” (Conservative party, 2010, p. 38). Cameron and his party presented constituents with a broad, multifaceted plan of “progressive conservatism,” the most innovative feature of which was the educating of 5000 citizens in community organizing. The Conservative Manifesto proposed to “use Cabinet Office budgets to fund the training of independent community organizers to help people establish and run neighborhood groups and provide neighborhood grants to the UK’s poorest areas to ensure they play a leading role in the rebuilding of civic society” (Conservative Party, 2010, p. 38). The initial Big Society campaign was framed as a bottom-up approach to redistribute power to the people. But organizers from the most respected UK community efforts vigorously chal- lenged the communitarian-sounding but ultimately neoliberal motives behind the Big Society concept and the COP (Taylor, 2011; Taylor-Gooby & Stoecker, 2010). Prior to the formation of the Coalition government, Cameron argued the growth of the state resulted in the decline of civic engagement and social JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY PRACTICE 97 responsibility in the United Kingdom. He expressed the need for individual and community empowerment and redefined the role of the government as helping create the Big Society (Cameron, 2009). Using activist rhetoric, he argued for a strong role of the state in strengthening communities and expanding grassroots participation. He promised more efficient, less expen- sive public service provision and more autonomy and control for local charities and volunteer organizations. Promises aside, the Big Society initiative must be seen as part of the neoliberal turn to community that sees community-based programs as significantly less costly than welfare state programs (Ashbee, 2015). Driving home this connection, almost simulta- neously in 2010 Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announced a 5-year austerity plan that included the largest budget cuts in the United Kingdom since WWII, the elimination of more than a half-million public sector jobs, and a large reduction in welfare spending (O’Hara, 2014; BBC, 2012; HM Treasury, 2010). Unlike the conservative theory of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who thought that all social problems could be addressed best at the individual or family level, Cameron proposed creating state policies and government practices that encouraged the growth of civil society and community organizing to offset dependence on the State (Conservative Party, 2010). The Big Society would bridge neoliberal and communitarian goals (Ashbee, 2015). What it failed to address was the relatively small amount of funding for programs such as the COP in comparison to the size and impact of the draconian Osborne austerity cuts (O’Hara, 2014). Although the turn to community was first mentioned during Cameron’s 2009 campaign, conservative advisors and politicians had been working on this concept for years. Both Tony Blair’s “Third Way” and Gordon Brown’s civic renewal policies held comparable objectives to Cameron’s initiative (Civil Exchange, 2012). In fact, the aims included in the Big Society resemble the views of the previous New Labour initiatives so closely that many were shocked to see the Conservative Party adopting them (Secretary of State for Community and Local Government, 2008). As Lord Glasman, once an advisor to Citizens UK—an affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) in the United States—put it, “In a way I was seeing my entire life’s work being stolen by the Conservative Party” (Civil Exchange, 2012). Unlike Glasman, however, the Cameron initiatives see irresponsible individuals and the state as culprits, not the market and neoliberal policies (Ashbee, 2015; Taylor-Gooby & Stoecker, 2010). But the COP was different than New Labour’s fascination with community empowerment and third way tactical use of civil society. It actually hired and trained people to be community organizers (Shaw, 2008). 98 R. FISHER AND K. DIMBERG

Designing the COP Launched in February, 2011, by the Office for Civil Society, the COP promised to be something new (Cabinet Office, 2013a). As Nick Hurd, the Minister of Civil Society, put it, the COP

will allow local people to work together, take control of their lives and create the change they want to see. We’re giving power back to people and supporting them to make their communities better places to live. This is part of a much wider drive to help revive social action and build a bigger, stronger society. (Civil Society, 2011) To those ends, the COP would offer instruction in community organizing and salary to new organizers (Community Development Foundation, 2012; Community Organisers, 2011a). It would be funded at £20 million ($34 million), £15 million ($25 million) for 500 salaries and the rest for training and materials, including training 4,500 volunteers to work with the organizers. Initially, senior organizers were hired for a year and paid a salary of £15,000 with £5,000 more for expenses. Though community organizing is not a new concept in the United Kingdom, government promotion of this work is novel, certainly distinguish- ing it from US counterparts funded primarily by foundations (Wills, 2012). One critical early issue was deciding which organization would win the recruiting and training bid. The selection process did not halt the heated debate about the paradoxical goals and nature of the program, but it did clarify which CO model and theory of change the government preferred.

CO models and the COP bid Citizens UK and Locality were the two major contenders to deliver the COP. An Alinsky-modeled network of community organizing groups founded in 1989, Citizens UK focuses on developing local power in an effort to hold politicians and other decision-makers accountable. It defines community organizing as being about building power and participating in democracy. Citizens UK has an impressive community action track record. Members waged successful cam- paigns for a Living Wage, Our Homes, Our London, and City Safe, all of which improved communities at the local level while acknowledging larger institutional influences and systemic problems (Wills, 2012). With a sophisticated practice and growing network of chapters, many assumed the government contract would go to it, especially since David Cameron had already exuberantly declared to a large Citizens UK audience: “You are the Big Society” (N. Jameson, personal communication, 22 September 2014). However, Locality, the main opposition in the tender for this contract, won the bid. In a statement responding to the loss of the contract, Neil Jameson, Executive Director of Citizens UK, suggested that they were not given the contract due to their higher price (Citizens UK, 2011). Other factors JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY PRACTICE 99

impacting the government’s decision were Citizens UK’s preference for an endowment, its urban and organization-building model, as well as its theory of change. Citizens UK groups have been known to engage in highly political and confrontational actions, including large-scale demonstrations, occupa- tion of businesses such as HSBC during their Living Wage campaign, and negotiations with political and business leaders (Queen Mary, University of London, 2007). An IAF affiliate, their method of organizing is action- oriented as opposed to development-driven. The Third Sector, a publication focusing on the United Kingdom’s voluntary and non-for-profit sector explains Citizens UK’s bid well.

The[ir] idea is not to run services, or to get local people to take them over, but to challenge those in the corporate and public sectors that deliver the services. This Alinskyan version of community organizing does not mix well with Conservative Big Society aims, such as encouraging people to bid to run local parks or take over public services where the state is retreating or leaving gaps. (Third Sector, 2011)

Maurice Glasman suggested another dimension to the decision. “I think there was a lack of nerve.” The initial Conservative Manifesto emphasized “power relationships, action, and leadership. It was classic insurgency organizing language.” But then the Conservative government realized “what the hell [are we] doing funding and training people who are going to campaign on issues that defy the market” (Lord Glasman quoted in House of Commons, 2011, EV11). Marilyn Taylor, an expert on community organizing and civil society initiatives, wondered if connection with the Cameron administration was making Alinsky turn in his grave (Taylor, 2011). Although she agreed that the Locality bid was safer, Taylor was not con- vinced the Cameron administration had problems with citizens marching on local town halls to reform public services, especially in Labour Party strong- holds and as long as they were not targeting central government (Taylor, personal communication, 12 October 2014). Perhaps equally significant, Alinsky always warned against public funding of community organizing, and Citizens UK did not have much experience with government programs or preparing such grants (N. Jameson, personal communication, 22 September 2014). Locality, on the other hand, had a different origin and politics. Founded in 2011 after a merger between The British Association of Settlements and Social Action Centres (BASSAC) and the Development Trusts Association (DTA), Locality won the task of hiring and training community organizers (Locality, 2010a). Although Locality was new, both bassac and the DTA had been involved in community work for many years. Formed in 1920, bassac started off as the Federation of Residential Settlements and worked with settlement houses to provide services to the poor and fight for social justice. The DTA was formed in 1993 with a goal of promoting community asset 100 R. FISHER AND K. DIMBERG

ownership and community enterprises. For Steve Wyler, director of the DTA, Locality, despite its lack of experience in CO, would create a modern, indigenous English version of CO that could support community organizations nationally, as well as shape local and national policy (Social Enterprise Yorkshire & Humber, 2013). In their bid to partner with the government, Locality cited multiple theories of community change and methods of organizing. Locality promised to “weave Alinsky and Freire into a worldview which prioritizes praxis (action/reflection) that creates the conditions for ongoing collective action in the long term” (Locality, 2010b, p. 5). The cover on their initial brochure highlights quotes from Alinsky, Freire, and Obama on the power of community organizing and citizen engagement. Quoting Obama, Locality underscored that “community organizing taught me that ordinary people can do extraordinary things when they are given a chance and brought together” (Locality, 2010b, p. 1). Their theory of change, however, was much less Alinsky and much more assets-based. Jess Steele, who wrote the winning bid for Locality and played a leading role in the first years of the COP, made it clear that her background and approach were always strengths-based, focused on community assets not needs (Steele, 2011). Though she cited Alinsky throughout the bid, the resultant community organizing is far from the type of community action Alinsky engaged in or supported (Taylor, 2011). Citing Freire, the bid focused on listening to the people. But one of the key concepts of Freire is moving people from listening and dialogue to a broader critique and acting on it. That takes both time and an agreed- upon theory of change. The model Locality had implemented by its training partner, RE:generate, was much stronger on process and relation- ship building than organization building or social justice outcomes. The history of CO and community development in the United Kingdom, as well as the United States, abounds with different models, from community building to economic development, service delivery, and conflict (Craig, Mayo, Popple, Shaw & Taylor, 2011; Beck & Purcell, 2013;Fisher,1994; Macmillan & Townsend, 2006; Rothman et al., 1968;Shaw,2008). Certainly Locality, from its Board Chair to its staff, was not uncritical of the unprecedented austerity cuts (Locality, 2014). Steele admitted that it was a “little bizarre” and “nerve wracking” at first to have a conservative government funding community organizing (Steele, 2011). Nevertheless, its organizing model, despite its openness to diverse strategies, situates Locality in the moderate middle of the current CO universe, which emphasizes community building and assets-based approaches (DeFilippis et al., 2010; MacLeod & Emejulu, 2014). JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY PRACTICE 101

Just listen: Operationalizing CO Although Locality detailed in their bid and brochures an eclectic, if contra- dictory, model for training the organizers, their partnering with RE:generate (Action to Regenerate Community Trust), a community-oriented charity, to actually do the training resulted in an even more narrow approach. RE: generate has worked in the United Kingdom for over 22 years, offering support and training to individuals, charities, and communities in an effort to combat poverty and inequality at the root level. Founded by Stephen Kearney and Julia Olsen, entrepreneurs who trained with IAF organizers Ed Chambers and Ernie Cortes in the United States, RE:generate claimed Alinsky and Freire influenced their work. But in the training model they developed, called Root Solutions-Listening Matters, Alinsky played a minor role (RE:generate Charity Trust, 2011). Instead, RE:generate favored a process-oriented, assets-based method similar to models made popular in the United States as Assets-based Community Development by John McKnight and Jody Kretzman (Third Sector, 2011). According to RE:generate their Root Solution-Listening Matters training program encourages individuals to “find and develop collaborative solutions to deep seated problems. It supports people to make positive changes happen in their communities and their lives” (Neighbourhood Challenge Project, n.d.). The emphasis is on making certain the newly trained organizers listen to community people, rather than impose an agenda on the community group (N. Gardham, personal communication, 11 September 2014). Although it is true that Freire’s philosophy stopped short of detailing a specific process or tactics to be utilized, Freire did emphasize the importance of an undergirding social critique. RE:generate, on the other hand, offered a depoliticized approach that deemphasized how to take action and get power after the listening has taken place. Although RE:generate promoted some political awareness among community leaders and offered an advanced Transformation Training focused on power dynamics, their theory of change led them to engage in more amen- able-oriented negotiations (RE:generate, 2009). Unlike Alinsky organizing, training at RE:generate focused more on resolving, not creating, conflict and building relations with all stakeholders not challenging people in positions of power (RE:generate, 2009). This is a legitimate type of community practice, but it is more akin to currently popular community building and community development models in the United States than the community organizing and social movement models of Alinsky or Friere. Waters of Church Action Poverty concurred. For him, hiring and training 5,000 Alinsky organizers could have been “a potent political force in the country” (Third Sector, 2011). RE:generate defends its emphasis on listening as limited by the initial COP policy, which restricted funding and hiring organizers for a single year. Given 102 R. FISHER AND K. DIMBERG

that one-year constraint, they thought that focusing on listening and making sure new organizers “let the people decide” would result in the best outcomes in most communities.

Preliminary results Upon completion in September, 2015 the COP is on schedule to hire more than 500 full-time senior organizers who will have received the £20,000 ($34,000) one-year support (Bird, 2011; Community Organisers, 2012b). Although, at the outset, this bursary was only available during the initial training year, after which organizers were expected to find their own funding (Newcastle Council for Voluntary Service, 2011), since then a matching grant has been added for a second or even third year. For example, as early as 2013, 55% of the first-year organizers secured funding for at least a second year (Cabinet Office, 2013a). When completed, an additional 4,500 organizers-in- training will have volunteered on a part-time basis to support the senior organizers and serve as engaged community residents. The program is on schedule to more than meet the government’s modest goal—its only stated measurable goal—to hire and train 500 organizers and have each organize and train nine volunteers (4,500 total) as part of the community group. In some ways quite fitting for a neoliberal experiment focused on minimizing public expenditure, both the expected goals, as well as the overall supervision and evaluation, have been very modest. Perhaps predictable, the limited supervision and evaluation resulted in a broad range of community organizing. Most organizers focused their efforts on building community. Applying the listening matters approach, they brought people together, built relationships, restored a sense of community, and focused on existing resources—the assets-based approach. Other organizers utilized direct action to help communities meet their needs. Such initiatives included bringing together community members in Sheffield to petition and lobby local authorities to save a needed bus service, organizing narrow boat owners in London’s canals around issues of feminist safety, and developing an Alinsky/ACORN-style organization in Bristol (Cabinet Office, 2013b; S. Baker, personal communication, 29 August 2014; Community Organisers, 2011b; Community Organisers, 2012b). It turns out that the modest goals and limited supervision (not to mention the absence of expected bureaucratic burdens) allowed for organizer autonomy and latitude to pursue different approaches and issues. These social action projects resulted from both community and organizer ideological differences with the Cameron administration, as well as the “free spaces” the program permitted. Clearly, there are ambiguous goals and results thus far in the COP. Regarding goals, the Cameron administration has conservative and market- JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY PRACTICE 103 driven plans. They reflect the neoliberal “turn to community” common in the US, UK, and Canada (Ashbee, 2015; DeFilippis et al., 2010). The COP ends up serving as a complement, not an alternative, to the austerity cuts. It ends up being less a model of community organizing to develop powerful grassroots organizations and more a process of community building (Rathke, 2014). The entire Big Society concept received well-deserved harsh criticism and skepticism from the Left, especially when comparing the size of programs such as the COP to the Coalition’s unprecedented austerity measures (O’Hara, 2014). On the other hand, the COP is also a unique and bold strategy for the Conservative Party, especially a Coalition Party with a right Wing appalled to be supporting anything that has to do with what little they know of Alinsky, Obama, or community organizing. Locality and RE:generate, not to mention the organizers once they are in the field, find them- selves in contested terrain which has produced outcomes beyond those stated and planned, such as the ACORN branch in Bristol (Melvin, 2015). Most of the organizers we talked with had a sharp critique of the Cameron administration, on the one hand, and, on the other, could not believe how lucky they were. Unemployed at the time of their hire, now they were getting paid and trained (albeit modestly in both instances) to do social change work. It turns out organizing is nothing if not a dynamic, interactive process between organizer, residents, community institutions, funders, and the broader political-economic context (Shaw, 2013). It is still hard to tell what will result from the COP, but there is clearly a dialectical tension between neoliberal uses of community and what happens when 500 organizers, many of them with prior activist experience, are hired, trained, and put into the field.

Preliminary conclusions and selected implications for US theory and practice The time period has been too brief and the results too uncertain to evaluate the COP with any high degree of confidence. It was obviously put together and implemented with great haste by a regime hoping to buffer fallout from austerity cuts. From the start, crippling cuts to the public sector undermined the Big Society initiative and reinforced well-founded skepticism of the program (Youde, 2013). But the Big Society and the COP are not one and the same. For example, whereas the COP was directly linked to the austerity cuts at the outset, once the overall Big Society program stalled and essentially disappeared by the end of 2012, the direct connection was dropped (MacLeod & Emejulu, 2014). Although the Big Society concept collapsed, the COP continued. That said, the political-economic perspective of the funder poses serious constraints to the overall COP. Critics such as Mae Shaw (2011, p. 96) underscored how community organizing in the United Kingdom cannot be grounded in “structural economic conditions and 104 R. FISHER AND K. DIMBERG

interests which create and perpetuate injustice”. Jason Edwards (2012) argued that the truly progressive dimensions of community organizing and participatory democracy have been “appropriated in Cameron’s conservatism as a mask for decidedly neo-liberal craving to substitute the market for the state with scant regard for the social and economic consequences beyond the calculation of immediate political benefit.” And Wade Rathke (2014) criti- cized the model being used because it includes “no expectations that their work will in fact produce an organization as a vehicle for people’s action and potential victories”. Nevertheless, we think the COP in particular, and public funding for CO in general, have more potential and significance than most critics acknowl- edge. As previously stated, putting in play paid organizers is a highly dynamic situation. This has been true throughout the history of CO in the United States (Fisher, 1994). As Edwards (2012) ultimately advised, people on the Left would be wise not to dismiss the community-oriented theory and organizing program. As a recent report on the COP emphasizes, it may have broad implications for the future of community organizing as well as “community policy and practice more widely” (Imagine, 2015, p. 1). In terms of implications for community organizing theory and practice, especially in the United States, our research on the COP underscores major lessons from the past and present in CO (DeFilippis et al., 2010; Fisher, 1994). Among them, the following four stand out. First, CO cuts across the political spectrum. Efforts such as the COP that do not jibe with social work values of social justice, economic democracy and human rights should not simply be ignored or casually dismissed. Second, all CO, whether or not it sees itself as political, is heavily influenced by the dominant political-economy. The impact of the contemporary neoliberal politics and policies on CO is difficult to overestimate. Third, CO is not all of the same piece, and the models and theories that inform the different types are critical in determin- ing whether and how the effort sustains or challenges injustice and inequality. Although the CO universe in the United States benefits from its breadth and diversity, all organizing efforts are not equally transformative. Fourth, funding issues are critical in an austerity context, and the COP offers an example of public sector support for organizing that should at least encou- rage us in the US to consider diversifying funding sources. It is on this last point that we elaborate a little further. For years, most of the literature on CO has paid little attention to issues of funding. Since 2008, with the rise of interest in CO and the simultaneous devastation of the US economy, including the civil society sector, issues of funding have come to the fore (Beckett, O’Donnell, & Rudd, 2006; Boris, De Leon, Roeger, & Nikolova, 2010; Dodge, Hoffmann-Pinilla, Beard, and Murphy, 2013). Despite the neoliberal ideology and goals that undergird it, the COP also underscores the potential in hiring and training community organizers, JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY PRACTICE 105 especially a comparable initiative with different motives. Citizens UK and Locality both understood the potential of a public-funded program to recruit and train community organizers, which is why they were both so eager to win the COP bid, even though a central canon of Alinsky organizations has always been to never accept money from the government for CO. Similarly, although Locality leaders and staff members were critical of the Cameron administration’s austerity cuts and wary of the potential conflicts and burdens of public sector funding, they also understood the opportunity and potential of a community organizing program funded to £20 million, especially in hard times. We propose that this idea of state-supported community-based social change is worthy of attention and serious consideration on both sides of the Atlantic. Building communities and increasing civic engagement is pivotal in holding governments and corporations accountable. The ongoing economic crisis in the United States underscores the need for more people trained as community organizers and the need for more funding to hire them. The COP is an imperfect example that legitimizes both the growing interest in CO since 2008 and a related interest in the CO literature and practice to expand and diversify funding sources. Admittedly, most of the appeals for diversifying funding sources in the United States do not include the public sector. On the other hand, the COP example encourages us to look abroad. As nations across the Atlantic discover and experiment with versions of community organizing imported from the United States, why can’t people in the United States consider UK and European examples of public funding for social change? It is common not only in the COP in England, but also in Ireland, Germany, and elsewhere. Without sounding terribly naïve regarding the challenges that would face such an effort in the contemporary climate, CO in the United States remains largely untapped as a publicly supported means to democratic renewal and economic justice. In the United States, almost all funding for CO comes from philanthropic foundations and religious congregations, both with serious limits and contradictions of their own. The COP underscores the possibility and legitimacy of meeting the chronic need for skilled community organizers by including public funding in the mix. Our research into the COP instructs that public funding is certainly worth consideration by academics, activists, organizers, policy makers, and politicians, at the least as a complement to already existing funding sources. Thinking it is impossible, continuing to rely dispro- portionately on the civil society sector, fits too well with the neoliberal agenda of diminishing and delegitimizing the public sector and all efforts to democratize it.

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