President's Letter: How Do We Build a Super-Majority for Democracy? “Bigger We” Organizing Is a Key Strategy

Dear friends, 

How do we build a supermajority in this country for multi-racial democracy? What will it take for people who disagree vehemently with us on a variety of issues to defend democratic processes and fundamental rights, like the right to protest? We’ve been asked those questions a lot over the past year. 

The questions have grown increasingly pressing as the people and institutions many counted on to stand up for democracy and fundamental freedoms — including the Supreme Court, Congress, and many law firms, businesses, and universities — have conspicuously failed to do so.

Building a big tent at the level of civic elites is critical — but it may not be possible without also building a bigger we at the grassroots level, among the millions of everyday people who together have immense influence on major institutions like churches, schools, and businesses, and whose voices and perspectives can reshape the local and national conversation.    

In this context of growing urgency to rebuild a public consensus for multi-racial democracy, we are excited to share with you our first public report as the Freedom Together Foundation. Titled A Bigger We, it highlights a high-impact approach to organizing — one that fosters the belonging, bridging, and collective agency necessary to strengthen our democracy. The report draws on interviews with over 90 practitioners operating across 28 U.S. states and democracy philanthropists, field expert convenings, and cutting-edge research on effective organizing. 

Bigger We organizing is already in use by some of the most effective organizations working in the field today. These groups are the engines of collective human agency, providing opportunities for people to grow and wield power to remake the world around us. And they are teaching the fundamental skills that a healthy democracy demands, including how to join together across difference, share power, negotiate, compromise, and build community.

Take the group We Are Down Home, which for years has been building teams engaged around rural issues in North Carolina. We recently had a chance to visit with Down Home’s staff and grassroots leaders. We were deeply moved by the group’s insistence on creating a welcoming culture without letting purity tests get in the way of building community.

When federal budget cuts earlier this year led officials in Alamance County, N.C., to eliminate funding for emergency services, schools, and libraries, We Are Down Home teams sprung into action. In a matter of days, they brought together more than 300 of their neighbors to speak out as one —  firefighters, teachers, and students representing a broad swath of the ideological spectrum. These voices ultimately convinced the conservative county board to reverse the cuts and join a bipartisan lawsuit against the administration to restore the frozen federal funds that precipitated the crisis. 

This kind of collaboration — rising above party lines for the greater good — may seem unimaginable in today’s climate. Yet Bigger We groups are achieving it every day and winning concrete changes to policy. Their work is crucial to stopping rising authoritarianism and securing a democratic future. 

Our report details six, interlocking design elements that allow Bigger We groups to sustainably bring people together while creating change. The secret sauce: centering a culture of agency, establishing culturally relevant on-ramps, placing “belonging before belief” in everything they do, combining relationships into a honeycomb structure, committing to bridging across the commons, and growing shared influence through long-term power projects. 

This design is distinct from other popular approaches currently being used in the field. Take coalitions. Coalition builders aim to bring various constituencies together to amass greater power than the sum of their parts. But too often, those parts lack sufficient power, and even when aggregated, they struggle to achieve tangible change. In addition, some issue-based coalitions can tend to be narrowly focused on a single outcome. This can result in challenges building sustained engagement over the long term, regardless of who’s at the table. In contrast, Bigger We organizing not only aggregates existing power bases — the six-element design grows collective power over time. 

As toxic polarization has grown, civic dialogue is an oft-cited solution. It seeks to resolve conflict, build mutual understanding, and reduce bias. While this work can be useful for creating change, civic dialogue alone is also insufficient to meet the task because it often sidesteps power differentials, and often doesn’t lead to action. Our research demonstrates how the six elements of the Bigger We design close this gap. 

Bigger We organizing groups aim to do two things at the same time: address people’s deepening sense of disempowerment while reenvisioning our democracy. Hahrie Han, a political scientist and Freedom Together board member, notes that organizers often distinguish between “getting people to do a thing” — mobilizing — and “getting people to become the kind of people who do what needs to be done” — creating collective agency through organizing. Bigger We organizing is a holistic design that offers a path to do both. 

The good news is that the Bigger We design can be replicated — and it’s ready to be funded. Seasoned practitioners are assembling mass organizing efforts that will lay the foundation for a pro-democracy breakthrough and prepare the next generation of Bigger We organizations to forge the future we all deserve.

At the Freedom Together Foundation, we have increased our payout to address the democracy crisis, and part of that increased funding is going to support these efforts. We believe that bringing about a durable, pluralistic democracy depends on investing more deeply in Bigger We organizations. To help scale this work, we’re inviting our fellow funders to join us in making a generational investment in Bigger We efforts. That will mean providing funding for the overall, six-element design, rather than relying on a more traditional grantmaking approach that incentivizes only discrete, actionable goals.

We want to thank our partners in this work, including Democracy Fund, McKnight Foundation, the Open Society Foundations, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Rockefeller Family Fund, Rural Democracy Initiative, Pro-Democracy Center, and many more for the insights that contributed to this report, as well as for their commitment to funding Bigger We groups. Bigger We organizing can be a turnkey to stopping authoritarianism and securing a more equitable democratic future for all of us. The courageous work of people dedicated to building a Bigger We shows us that it’s possible. 

In solidarity, 

Deepak Bhargava, President, and Jason Garrett, Senior Vice President of Faith, Bridging, and Belonging