© W.M. Johnson

Inter-racial Congregation-Based Community Organizations (CBCOs) create public meetings to leverage social change, renew citizen engagement and democracy. CBCOs are rooted in the abundant relationships of local congregations. We then partner strategically with unions, civic groups and other CBCOs, via national networks.

There are now at least 160 local CBCO groups, with more than 4,000 member institutions. Combined membership is over 1 percent of the population. This is a figure rarely reached by social movements in American history.

To win hard issues leaders must now engage and orient more grassroots people to build larger, more influential meetings. Integrated meeting e-invitations, social network tools for leaders and on-line learning content can help.

People in CBCOs engage other citizens through 1-on-1 grassroots conversations. Significant things happen when people develop public relationships in this way. They share, dream, create, plan and get things done. They uncover shared strongly-felt interests to reflect on for action.

CBCO leaders then consult strategically, negotiate and organize public meetings with government and private leaders to leverage feasible, priority results. Leaders participate in strong training to orchestrate these nonpartisan gatherings with their citizen constituents.

Larger public meetings could leverage enough power to change wider, more unyielding issues.

Citizens respond best to invitations to attend these meetings from people they know personally. This invitation and engagement project integrates new social-web technologies with the CBCO movement and its public-service actions.

This is not an effort to substitute technology for crucial face-to-face relationship-building. Our purpose online is social facilitation. We want to encourage each other to perform better at relational tasks off line. We can do this by seeing, online, that we're working together accountably and efficiently to:

• Turn out our community members, to themselves invite new people to larger meetings, when we need to do so.
• Conduct 1-on-1 interviews, to identify meeting priorities, while automating some communications, survey, issue-briefing and database work.
• Network weave: connect citizens and leaders to each other, in new combinations based on uncovered shared-interests. This can cultivate new reflection, actions and build our CBCO.
• Accompany more citizens on our journeys to relational power and discerned action based on our own judgments.

Today there is a downward spiral of civic apathy. Our nation's stockpile of social capital -- our reserve of personal bonds and fellowship -- is seriously depleted. Sprawl increases this atrophy of the public sphere: Every 10 minutes of commuting time cuts all forms of civic engagement by 10 percent.

We need further local community-building strategies like this one to enable busy people to act together more effectively. Local community networks can complement offline social contact, strengthen community engagement and attachment.

Now too few CBCO leaders are trying to do too much. Some events are undersized. Core teams and grassroots members, having attended past events and trainings, now will personally invite and accompany other citizens. Selected meetings and fundraising events can expand more efficiently.

To build a people of power we have to follow community organizing's Iron Rule: everyone must do their part. Busy leaders and staff, with this infrastructure support, can engage a wider span of local citizens.

Invitations within personal relationships, to attend meetings, are most effective. As grassroots leaders we follow up these 1-on-1 conversations with convenient, formatted e-invitations to our upcoming event. These formatted e-mails provide new invitees with event details and issue briefings, while automating tasks and compiling updated lists.

E-invitations would be sent from a public event website. Our invitees follow links to learn more, RSVP, request e-reminders, invite others, view ads and directions. These public sites can include:

• Introductory videos to: CBCO organizing and pending actions (children's health insurance)
• Expanded advertising that underwrites CBCOs
• Campaign thermometers that reflect various cooperative results.

We link this public CBCO meeting-invitation site to many congregation and other web sites. We orient our members and coalition partners to use it.

Our culture-rich communities also have media assets, important to civically engage youth: inspiring stories, analysis, symbolic and musical content. With these we can explore e.g., video news releases.

A second private social-network website, for active leaders, would register e-invites sent by them, their constituents and campaign totals. This network facilitates accountability among leaders and staff to mobilize constituents. This local website could remix web tools like a (public) WhizSpark invitation site, integrated with an Open Plans or 8Apps suite (private network).

This private social-network collaboration site for leaders also could include:

• Digital learning for leaders to integrate community-building principles for action. For example, reflecting leaders identify and mobilize gifts of individuals, including connectors who know lots of people.
• E-survey and evaluation results, using newly updated lists.
• Coordinate grassroots media to orient newcomers and news outlets.
• Visual constituency mapping to build membership and event turnout. Leaders and staff can then evaluate social network analysis as an organizing tool.

Social-web integration can help CBCO leaders and staff develop more 1-on-1s, larger public meetings and a range of new social impacts. These leaders better can help their constituents with opportunites to help define and solve our shared problems.

CBCOs are based on developing leaders and our relationship-based constituencies. Our ability organize more consciously and strategically builds on our core strengths. These are what CBCOs really bring to the table: real people, as engaged stakeholders in local issues.

Communications-centered technology planning will guide development of time-saving social-web tools to streamline tasks and support our staff.

CBCO use of these proposed meeting-building tools could extend strategically to related constituency-education-for-action events:

• Region-wide adjudicatory, religious-order, ecumenical and university workshops
• Congregation-based JustFaith Introductory Workshops and fair-trade events.

“... Remember me as a drum major for social justice.” -- Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

"It is one thing to say with the prophet Amos, 'Let justice roll down like mighty waters,' and quite another to work out the irrigation system. Clearly there is more certainty in the recognition of wrongs than there is in the prescription for their cure."

-- William Sloane Coffin