Customer Reviews

Building Powerful Community Organizations: A Personal Guide to Creating Groups that Can Solve Problems and Change the World

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Author Michael Jacoby Brown has created a book with very detailed information on how to organize, create, and lead a community organization. In it he clearly explains all the steps necessary to create an effective organization that can resolve problems. The various areas discussed include the theory of how a group should work, the chemistry involved, the seven basic steps for building an organization, developing a mission statement, goals, and objectives, designing the organization to last, recruiting others, mobilizing, raising money and taking action. Throughout the book are case studies and exercises to help you not only understand how it all works but also to help you work through developing your organization correctly. If you want to change the world and know you need help to do it then you will appreciate this book. Building Powerful Community Organizations is easily the best book on the market today on this subject.

This book should be required reading for hospitals, foundations, public health agencies and people working on any form of community improvement. Michael has documented his learnings with stories and tools that can equip those willing to learn to build powerful community organization, as the title says. There are lots of various community organizing guides but this one mixes stories and tools in an easy to read, nicely laid out style. His wisdom comes from years of community organizing and translates here into practical, easy to access advice. This is the best handbook I have seen in a long time! The author makes himself available with info on how to reach him as well as a website with blog that makes him more than a distant author; he is approachable and willing to extend his teachings beyond the pages of his book. Not may authors do this.

Written by Michael Jacoby Brown, who has more than thirty years' experience in building community organizations, Building Powerful Community Organizations: A Personal Guide to Creating Groups that Can Solve Problems and Change the World is a handy step-by-step guide to creating, strengthening, and revitalizing grass-roots organizations for bringing about social change to solve problems in the community or workplace. From how to effectively recruit (learning to "listen not sell", when short or long visits are appropriate, and how to turn success into momentum) to how to mobilize resources and raise money to the steps for setting change into motion and more, Building Powerful Community Organizations walks the reader through the necessary skills and processes while warning against common obstacles and pitfalls. Enthusiastically recommended for anyone looking to harness communal effort and make a lasting difference.

I ususally don't read books a second time but Brown's book was well worth a second look. I would recomend his work to anyone involved in community organizing except maybe Republicans and conservatives. The method of community organizing is as old as Alynsky but Brown offers a fresh , humane take on hitting the doors, developing leaders and building organization. You get much more than your fair share from the investment in this valuable work.

With great insight and honesty Michael Jacoby Brown has drawn on his extensive experience to produce a practical and inspiring resource. This book is a must for anyone wishing to organize a group to work for social change or anyone who is part of a community organization which needs to rejuvenate or rediscover its purpose. It is beautiful in its simplicity, addressing its issues in a way everyone can understand, and broad in its scope, addressing every aspect involved in successful community organizing. "Building Powerful Community Organizations" demands engagement by the reader. It contains exercises and the reader gains best value from the book by engaging in the exercises at the point they are presented.

I've been organizing for several years but I still keep coming back to this book. I've found it useful for working with interns and collaborating with other organizations, copying parts of chapters to share as discussion and planning starters. It's the right mix of philosophy, world view, and how-to directions.

This is one of the best books available for people who are interested in the nitty-gritty work of building genuine communities. Author Michael Brown provides the reader with not just a theory of community organizations, but also lays out the steps to be followed in order to create the building blocks of what he calls "powerful community organizations." Lots of excellent case studies illustrate each of the steps. It is a good follow-up to the book Counterfeit Community: The Exploitation of Our Longings for Connectedness which warns us about the dangers of pseudo communities, so-called communities that lack the kinds of relationships that Brown is building. Highly recommended.

Great book! The exercises really force you to think and clarify the who, what, why and how of yourself and the group you are creating or trying to improve. I highly recomend this one.