Reshaping Power

Aurora Commons works in partnership with other changemakers towards a more liberated, more just, and more interconnected future. We accompany organizations, networks, philanthropists, and intermediaries as they build and reshape power to realize this future. With them, we continually learn, deepen, and evolve what liberatory power means and how to operationalize it in leaders, organizations, and movements.

protestor with megaphone

Reshaping power means both starting with the systems and structures that we have, which do not benefit us, to reform, repair, dismantle and transform them as well as starting from an envisioned future to prefigure and create new collective systems that weave liberation for all beings. 

word cloud of our values

Our partners build power to win policies, budget allocations, and changes to rules; to govern by becoming decision-makers, holding decision-makers accountable, and determining who becomes decision-makers; and to transform culture, ideologies, worldviews, our relationships, and our inner selves. They use all the tools at their disposal to build power: organizing, policy and law, arts and culture, service provision and mutual aid, narrative and communications, lobbying and political campaigns, prefigurative models, and more. They are committed to equitable democracies that center those who have historically been on the margins in self-determining the systems (i.e., cultures, structures, and policies) and creating the conditions needed to weave the liberation of all beings.

Power builders need access to infrastructure (i.e., data, resourcing, etc.) and capacities to be successful. Which capacities are needed may vary based on organization/network, location, and the political moment, and could include

  • Deepening equity 

  • Base building and organizing

  • Cultivating leadership and leaders

  • Strengthening multi-entity organizations (i.e., c3s, c4s, PACs, LLCs, etc.)

  • Nurturing and sustaining networks

  • Generating financial resources

  • Working emergently and strategically in complex contexts

  • Changing cultures and narratives

  • Carrying out research, advocacy, implementation of policy, regulation, and law

  • Providing services and mutual aid 

Our partners draw on new and ancient forms of wisdom grounded in communities of color and Indigenous communities to redefine capacities and align with our vision of Weaving Liberation for all Beings.

Our Offerings to Strengthen Capacity to Build Power Begins with Community

We are part of an ecosystem of changemakers—organizations, networks, philanthropists, and intermediaries—continually learning what it takes to programmatically and operationally build and reshape power. Below are a few examples of our offerings to strengthen the capacity to build power.

brainstorming board of inspirational leaders and change-agents

Navigating Change Initiative

Aurora Commons developed Navigating Change in partnership with Change Elemental and the Ford Foundation's Civic Engagement and Government program. We convened over 175 nonprofits to explore how to embody the equitable democratic organizations they are and want to be. Our goal was to spark peer interactions and mutual learning that supports transformation by  bridging generational conflict, expanding and transitioning leadership, and envisioning the future of work. Our approach was grounded in deep racial equity with both an intersectional lens that included gender, disability, sexual orientation, age, and other identities as well as an ecofeminist lens that integrated human, non-human kin, and the planet.

Through peer cohorts, presenter workshops, and creative activities, participants explored new ways of preparing for and addressing leadership transitions, particularly in ways that support new executives of color and nurture multiple leaders sharing power. They shared how they are redefining and operationalizing the future of work by adapting organizational structures, processes, and culture in the context of the pandemic and racial, political, and environmental change. This included ways to strengthen organizational culture and connection that supports well-being and trust, ways to ensure hybrid offices are safe in-person and secure remotely,  and ways to shift towards shared decision-making, equitable compensation, and other liberatory management practices. Finally, participants learned how to bridge intergenerational differences that could underlie conflicts and divisions about how we should work together equitably. Overall, our community of participants took away that there are many innovations and models for how organizations can and are shifting how they lead, operate, and build power in alignment with our vision for liberated futures.

Asian American union rally

Asian American Leaders Table

We facilitate a table of over 60 organizations addressing the root causes of anti-Asian violence with a transformative justice approach. The Table strengthens movement infrastructure in terms of relationships, communications, and resources to propel and influence narratives on anti-Asian violence toward transformative justice. We believe in and practice transformative solidarity by centering those most affected by systems of oppression while following the lead of local grassroots organizations. We draw inspiration and learnings from our movement ancestors. We advocate for long-term policies and solutions, hold uncomfortable dualities and engage in generative tension, commit to multi-racial solidarity, and hold community care and healing as central to this work. The Table meetings Aurora Commons helps facilitate are a place for co-local learning about proactive solutions, sharing information and resources for rapid response to anti-Asian violence, and spaces for joint learning and experimentation. Aurora Commons also facilitates the Advisory Council that guides the strategic direction of the Table and is currently planning a series of virtual co-local learning sessions that will culminate in an in-person convening next year. The Table is a program of the Asian Law Caucus.

Liberatory multi-entity leadership group

Liberatory Multi-entity Leadership

Increasingly power-building groups are utilizing other legal entities in addition to their 501(c)(3) so that multiple aligned organizations can engage in the full range of strategies and tactics to build power,win, govern, and transform society. Some multi-entity organizations are new within the last 10 years; others have been around for decades. Regardless of age, these groups see an increased need and opportunity to strengthen their governance (i.e., how boards, staff, and members make decisions together). Boards and EDs want to improve alignment in how they address generative tensions, strengthen how they stay on top of and navigate a complex and constantly changing regulatory environment. The goal is to stretch into how they govern in liberatory ways that diverge from traditional governance practices that overly focus on boards rooted in oppressive corporations steeped in white-dominant culture. 

Aurora Commons and New Left Accelerator are working together to develop a multi-entity praxis on liberatory leadership. We are using a grounded theory approach, which means we are working with four consultants with embodied, ecofeminist, and liberatory stances, along with eight power-building groups, to design and run governance experiments. We will use these experiments to develop a curriculum for what baseline knowledge is needed across all of us and to develop learnings, resources, and tools for what works to deepen liberatory multi-entity leadership. Ultimately, this project will not only strengthen the eight participating groups but also will develop equity and kinship-based models that support multi-entity organizations to move toward shared leadership. This project will expand the number of multi-entity and equity-competent consultants and intermediaries who can accompany and support organizations. Will further enable the ecosystem of multi-entity organizations to access more knowledge, tools, and resources that they can use on their own for liberatory multi-entity leadership.

Neighborhood Funders Group's Amplify Fund

Aurora Commons is teaming up with Slack Global Consulting to help usher in the next phase of The Amplify Fund, a pooled fund that supports historically marginalized people and communities (i.e., BIPOC who identify as women, LGBTQ+, under-resourced, and other intersectional identities) in NV, CA, TN, MO, PA, NC, SC, and Puerto Rico. Uniquely, the Fund delegated strategy development and decisions to the grantees. Slack Global and Aurora Commons facilitated the Organizing Committee of grantee representatives, which gathered input from all grantees and funders, to develop a 10 year strategy to maintain and build decision-making power towards generational wealth, land justice, holistic well-being, and human dignity. We also supported the Amplify Fund staff in implementing this strategy, including values definitions, staffing structure, grantee and funder structures, and fundraising. Moving forward, we are facilitating the start-up of the Co-Leadership Committee, a unique shared governance structure with grantees and funders, as well as a process to articulate and advance Liberatory Philanthropy, a concept developed by the Organizing Committee that is related to trust-based philanthropy and decolonizing wealth.

Resources

Shared Equitable Leadership for Networks, Staff, and Boards

Complex Systems Change & Emergent Strategies

Strengthening Capacity