Why Organizers need Mobilizers and Mobilizers need Organizers

In an “ecosystem” approach, different theories of change – like mobilizing and organizing – can reinforce and strengthen each other.

Citation:

Tattersall,  A., Hall, N. (2024) Why Organizers need Mobilizers and Mobilizers need Organizers. Stanford Social Innovation Review, March 18, https://doi.org/10.48558/7R77-NS62.

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Overview

Social change practitioners often pit “organizing” against “mobilizing,” as competing ways of creating change: While mobilizers believe that the bigger the crowd, the greater the power, organizers tend to focus on developing quality individual leaders and to measure success in terms of those leaders’ skills and commitment to the cause. These strategies can pull organizations in different directions. Choosing organizing means investing time and resources in developing new capacities in smaller groups of individuals, while those who mobilize focus on the tools and techniques that can reach large masses of people, seeking greater engagement from people that already support the goal. Because these approaches also come with cultural differences and operate along different time scales, it can be hard for organizations to mobilize and organize at the same time.

As long-time practitioners and scholars of both organizing and mobilizing, we see a need to reconsider the relationship between these two strategies. We argue that they do not need to be seen in direct conflict or competition, and instead of asking whether organizing or mobilizing is more effective, we want to ask a better question: How and when can these two strategies work effectively together?

The answer is an “ecosystem” approach that looks at how different theories of change can reinforce each other. As Brazilian movement scholar Rodrigo Nunes, argues in his recent book about movements like Occupy and the Arab Spring, there is not one universally correct answer to the question of how we make change. Instead, groups will always pose different strategies, like mobilizing and organizing. Rather than thinking that plurality is a problem to be overcome, Nunes argues that plurality is a good thing, after all, monocultural ecosystems are prone to collapse. The implication is that we need to approach social change not like we are seeking a silver bullet, but rather in search of collaborative principles that allow different people power strategies to coexist and stimulate productive change together. We have identified three such principles: central coordination, parallel play, and agreeing to disagree.