Resource Mobilizers Collaborative

About us

In 2019, in response to the philanthropic sector’s growing disinvestment in capacity building for fundraising professionals, three infrastructure-building nonprofit organizations, Justice Funders, CompassPoint, and Wealth Reclamation Academy of Practitioners (WRAP), launched initiatives to transform fundraising training and practice.

These three efforts are led by people embedded within movement organizing, in various communities, throughout the country with a lifelong commitment to how people can be brought together. The leaders of the three initiatives are Mario Lugay (Justice Funders’ Movement Commons Lab), Steve Lew (CompassPoint) and Veronica Garcia (WRAP). Justice Funders is a partner and guide for philanthropy that reimagines practices in order to advance a thriving and just world. CompassPoint is a nonprofit leadership development practice that helps organizations, movements and leaders committed to social justice realize their full power. WRAP is a community of practice that seeks to transform the traditional spaces and practices of philanthropy so they better represent broader movement values of equity, justice, and reparation. 

our programs

Justice Funders - Movement Commons Culture and Collective Action Lab

Movement Commons engages development staff at organizations and in movement ecosystems across the country to shift from transactional to transformational fundraising practices. It promotes new models and provides direct technical assistance to movement-building organizations to move from transactional to transformative engagement with individual supporters, particularly small and mid-size donors. Movement Commons seeks to nurture a nationally connected network of development staff of movement building organizations across the country that are building a collaborative infrastructure to both collectively steward the commons and launch powerful cross-organizational interventions and campaigns.

CompassPoint Nonprofit Services - Fundraiser to Resource Mobilizer Workshops and Peer Network - CompassPoint Initiative

The Fundraiser to Resource Mobilizer workshops are a three-session training for fundraisers, leaders, organizers, and volunteers (new and seasoned alike) that help them to imagine their roles more expansively and embrace approaches to mobilizing resources that build and amplify community power through the understanding of key principles and terms, practice and reflection. CompassPoint also organizes peer learning cohorts for development staff and resource mobilizers, and building upon previous cohorts (Fundraising Academy for Communities of Color, Fundraising Bright Spots), launched a peer learning network for resource mobilizers in July 2023.

Wealth Reclamation Academy of Practitioners Initiative - Resource Mobilizers Online Laboratory

The Resource Mobilizer Online Laboratory is a practice space for community and nonprofit leaders with an interest in applying relational-based, resource mobilization skills to support community building work.  As part of this unique, online learning experience leaders learn  tactics, skills, and strategies to resource movements through Just Transition values, plan and prepare to execute resourcing campaigns, and build and nurture a network of support by and for Resource Mobilizers.

Network Mapping Project

The Resource Mobilizers Collaborative is creating a Network Mapping tool which will be used by organizations, groups and networks to strengthen strategies for base building, mentoring  and making connections in the ecosystems of resource mobilization and capacity building. The dynamic tool will be an interactive and ever-expanding directory, providing participants with a 30,000 foot view of the trainers, leaders and organizations practicing resource mobilization and using the Just Transition Framework across the country. It will be a resource for finding support, collaborative partners and discovering new possibilities. It will be a way to ease transition, transformation, understanding for staff new to the approach.

A Resource Mobilizers Community of Learning and Practice

The term “Community of Practice” (or CoP) was first introduced by Etienne Wenger, an education practitioner and scholar who described CoPs as “groups of people who share a passion for something that they know how to do and who interact regularly to learn how to do it better.”

The Resource Mobilizers Collective Community of Practice is centered around the question: “What becomes possible when we stop ‘asking’ for money, as ‘fundraisers,’ and start organizing relational wealth as Resource Mobilizers for a Just Transition?” It convenes change agents across our sector to connect, share ideas and results, and learn from each other. Participants in the CoP share learning from both successful and unsuccessful experiences to deepen collective knowledge. The CoP offers participants a wide range of leadership roles and skill-building opportunities. The Resource Mobilizers CoP facilitates fast-cycle learning, evaluates results to understand what is working and for whom, and brings together key stakeholders to achieve the kind of systems-level change we know is possible. Our current Community of Learning and Practice members are the Donor Organizer Hub, Securing the Roots, and Dragonfly Partners.

our shared principles

• “Fundraising is a form of organizing and power-building, and it must be grounded in race, equity, and social justice”: As fundraisers in a time of online hyperconnectivity, we are called to: engage in courageous, respectful, and honest conversations with supporters about boundaries, privilege and inequity; inviting them into the work with an ongoing commitment to learning, accountability, humility and healing; and guiding them along their civic journeys.

• “Resource Mobilizing includes mobilizing all types of resources”: Fundraiser does not appropriately describe the role of individuals at organizations and in movements whose job it is to mobilize contributions of money and other resources. A Fundraiser is a person involved in collecting money for a particular purpose or employed to raise funds for an institution or political cause.  Resource mobilization is a relational act that includes the engagement of tangible resources, such as money, intangible resources, such as identity networks that facilitate the pooling of resources and renewable resources such as mutual support and cultural practices. A Resource Mobilizer is a person involved in facilitating the flow of both financial and non-financial resources, building enduring community assets and leveraging relationships and networks.

• “Resource mobilizers are insightful leaders and powerful change agents”: Resource mobilizers are often an organization’s first storytellers, shaping narratives about their communities and about the beauty and power of social justice efforts to a broader audience. With support and investment, they have the power to influence the culture of an organization and of the broader movements of which they are a part. By training up others and building systems, resource leaders distribute the power and rewards of fundraising beyond the ED and board, reaching the full staff, volunteers, members, and the community.

• “Successful movements create authentic, transformative relationships with individuals”: A “traditional fundraising mindset” is based on practices that reduce donors to monetary transactions.  It creates an artificial barrier to long-term power-building and funding possibilities. As stated in Bright Spots, “donor” is only one aspect of the many relationships that committed supporters may forge with an organization or within a social movement. What brings life and power to social movements has been and always will be the vibrant, determined, and collective participation of individuals in civic and political life.

Together, we have the power to change what fundraisers see and do from a purely transactional, unsustainable activity into a transformational, renewable approach grounded in what we collectively call resource mobilization.

For more information about the Resource Mobilizers Collaborative, email Jose Dominguez at jdom9119@gmail.com