How Nonprofits Are Shaping Community Organizing

While public engagement remains a cornerstone of planning, residents who attend public meetings represent only a small percentage of all residents. Therefore, when a planning department neither prioritizes nor has the capacity for community organizing, it might pay a nonprofit organization to fulfill this foundational role.

Subcontracting engagement to a nonprofit can still perpetuate power inequities. Given the history of broken promises to racialized and low-income neighborhoods, even a well-intentioned short-term contract might deepen distrust. A trusted nonprofit may merely lend legitimacy to the city's agenda, such as attracting a developer.

In "Practitioner Perceptions of City-Subcontracted Community Organizing: An Exploratory Study in Oklahoma City" (Journal of the American Planning Association, Vol. 90, No. 4) C. Aujean Lee and John C. Harris assessed a nonprofit contracted to do neighborhood organizing in Oklahoma City.

Novel Arrangements

City-led neighborhood planning often struggles to promote democracy and community organizing. Based on 39 interviews with volunteers, leaders, employees from the city, a subcontracted nonprofit, and other regional nonprofits, Lee and Harris assessed the effectiveness of Oklahoma City's subcontracted community organizing.

The subcontracted nonprofit Neighborhood Alliance of Central Oklahoma holds a unique role, receiving Community Development Block Grants and city contracts to organize neighborhood associations, often without a request for proposal. For over 40 years, it has influenced planning processes by focusing its efforts on neighborhoods of color.

An outside nonprofit practitioner described the Neighborhood Alliance's role in a neighborhood of color:

"Residents know [NACOK] staff like their own neighbor. The staff helps them with everything, including renting information, debris cleanup, home repairs, and neighborhood watch. They're the ‘go-to' for just about everything and so that relationship is there."

Table 2: Services provided by Neighborhood Alliance of Central Oklahoma (Credit: Laws et al, 2021)

The authors aimed to understand the nonprofit's role by exploring the following questions:

1. What are the perceptions of community development practitioners about the effects of nonprofit subcontracting on expanding community organizing?
2. What issues do local practitioners raise about racial equity issues in subcontracted community organizing?

These questions stem from a broader theoretical question: If planners fail in public participation efforts, what occurs when they pay a nonprofit to organize residents who can influence the local planning agenda?

Figure 1: Neighborhood associations and non-white population by block group in Oklahoma City. (Credit: C. Aujean Lee and John C. Harris)

The Nonprofit Bridge

Interviewees noted that subcontracting the local nonprofit enhanced community organizing by bridging gaps between city officials and residents and fostering programs for resident leadership and neighborhood associations. Practitioners believed that residents became active agents of neighborhood change, contributing more than just input to planning processes.

A city staff member emphasized the nonprofit's community organizing work:

"We can't be effective unless people understand how to influence the city. Much of what NACOK does is help people learn to interact with the city"

A nonprofit practitioner noted a disconnect between Oklahoma City officials and community organizing:

"Our city staff are not trained as advocacy planners. You must be careful, especially when you're dealing with people and neighborhoods where broken promises have existed"

Another city employee explained how this approach helps them understand resident concerns:

"At the city, you need a chorus of people singing the same song, then the city is going to pay more attention. With a handful of persistent people, it makes our ears perk up"

Perceptions of Racial Equity

While subcontracted nonprofits can fulfill community organizing roles that the city cannot, practitioners were asked to consider how this approach may perpetuate power inequities and uneven representation of communities of color.

Additionally, having nonprofit employees reflect racial diversity alone is not sufficient to address systemic racism in community organizing.

Planners must recognize that organizing in communities of color - without prioritizing relationship-building - can perpetuate exclusionary power dynamics and undermine subcontracted efforts.

An employee of the subcontracted nonprofit expressed a concern about their experience:

"I worked [in a neighborhood of color for a city initiative] and people came out because they trusted me, I spoke like they spoke, I understood their challenges, they felt safe. After some time, I felt like relationships that I created were used as a Trojan horse for the city to enter neighborhoods and push me aside.... That's how I felt, like there was no one at the city to work with me to protect these communities from speculators, developers; it has just gone completely out of control."

The authors found that the nonprofit supported neighborhoods that were already involved in the public process but did not specifically have a working-class or racial equity focus or strategy for making a meaningful impact in disinvested neighborhoods.

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