IAF: FAQ
Industrial Areas Foundation
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is the IAF?
The IAF is the Industrial Areas Foundation, the country’s oldest and largest community organizing network. The IAF was founded in the 1940s by Saul Alinsky, who organized the country’s first neighborhood association, “The Back of the Yards Council,” in Chicago’s South side. Today, the IAF has affiliates in more than sixty cities. Each affiliates has its own name, sets its own agenda and hires its own lead organizer. The various affiliates come together for training and for regional leadership development. For more information on the IAF, visit www.industrialareasfoundation.org.
Q: What is broad based organizing?
A: "Broad-based" organizing is organizing that brings together a broad base of institutions for power, understood by IAF leaders as the ability to act. These institutions are schools, congregations, labor unions, business associations, neighborhood associations, civic and non-profits organizations. IAF organizations teach the "Iron Rule" of organizing, which is: "Never do for somebody what they can do for themselves." IAF organizers do not "do" democracy for the institutions of the network, but rather teach the skills and practices necessary for public life so that leaders within those institutions act together and develop and mentor new leaders. IAF, therefore, does not bring an agenda of issues to new institutions, but rather invites those institutions to participate in a process of determining their own agenda of issues.
Q. What is the mission of an IAF Organization?
A. IAF helps build broad-based, non-partisan organizations of dues-paying member congregations, schools, unions, business associations, and non-profits committed to building power for sustainable social and economic change. This is done through institution-based leadership development; the building of relationships within and between institutions; the identification of and research on issues of mutual self-interest; and disciplined, organized action. Through this organizing strategy, IAF develops a constituency of leaders to become citizens in the fullest sense: participants in democratic decision-making and agents of the creation of a more just society through the exercise of relational power.
Q. What is the Membership of an IAF Organization?
A. The members of IAF organizations are institutions: congregations, schools (both private and public), labor unions, business associations, non-profits and neighborhood and civic organizations that share a concern for families/communities and are rooted in traditions of faith and democracy.
Institutions that join IAF organizations do so for three central reasons:
- To build the capacity to act on the root causes of inequality and injustice;
- To develop leadership and strengthen community within and between their institutions; and
- To build bridges across the divides of difference that isolate many communities from each other.
The responsibilities of membership are threefold:
- To build a core team of leaders responsible for organizing within the member institutions;
- To send leaders to IAF trainings to learn and how to apply the universals of organizing;
- To participate in a cluster of institutions to initiate local action;
- To participate in organizational actions to address city-wide, regional, and state-wide issues; and
- To pay membership dues (based on a standard set by the IAF organization’s leadership).
Q. How Does IAF Organize?
A. Issues, action and leaders in IAF organizations emerge out of a cycle of organizing. This process begins at the local institutional level, as a "core team" of leaders conduct relational meetings and house meetings. Relational meetings, or one-on-one conversations, provide an opportunity for two people to share their stories and interests in order to build a public relationship. House meetings provide a similar opportunity for small groups. Through these conversations, leaders begin to understand, value and effectively tell their own stories and learn how to elicit stories from others.
As issues emerge from these conversations, leaders are trained in research actions, meetings where potential issues are researched and leaders learn about the people who can effectively address those issues. Eventually, leaders engage in public actions - meetings with officials where leaders raise major issues and hold officials accountable for action to address those issues.
Reflection and evaluation are primary tools throughout the organizing process. After every relational meeting, house meeting, research action and public action, leaders reflect on what they have learned and evaluate their work thus far.
Q: Who sets the Agenda for the organization?
A: The organization's agenda is set by the institutions that make up the organization. There are three kinds of issue actions in IAF organizations: institutional actions, regional actions and organizational actions. Institutional actions are actions determined by one institution that decides to act on its own behalf, regional actions occur when institutions in a certain area gather in order to address an issue relevant to that area and organizational action takes place when the organization as a whole addresses a certain issue. Organizational issues often emerge when addressing institutional or regional actions requires the support of the whole organization or are necessitated by a particular historical moment (e.g. Neighborhoods First Campaign to secure $1 billion to revitalize neighborhoods in Washington, DC). These three kinds of issue actions (institutional, regional and organizational) occur simultaneously in IAF work.
Q: What kinds of issues do IAF organizations work on?
A: IAF organizations work on the issues that emerge out of conversations within member institutions. The organization's agenda arises from the concerns and interests of member institutions. IAF organizations have worked on health care, education, housing, immigration, work, traffic issues, safety concerns, the environment, and other issues of fundamental importance.
Q: Where do IAF organizations get their money? Where does the money go?
A: IAF organizations are funded by dues from member institutions and do not accept any government funds. The vast majority of an IAF organization’s budget goes to pay the salaries of organizers, with a small portion allocated for one support staff member and the organization's office space.
Q: What do organizers do?
A: The primary responsibility of organizers is to identify institutional leaders who have an appetite for public action and teach them the skills and practices required for effective, results-oriented public work. Organizers spend their days in one-on-one meetings, sitting down over the course of each month with more than 100 members of various institutions in order to find people who are interested in acting together to improve the lives of the communities they care about. Organizers develop the talent within leaders, agitating them to see their potential and the possibilities that can be accomplished through organized action. Organizers attempt to abide by and teach the "Iron Rule" of IAF organizing: "Never do for others what they can do for themselves." In living out this tradition, organizers are primarily teachers of public life rather than staffers who do the work of organizing for member institutions.
A: The "IAF" is the Industrial Areas Foundation, the country's oldest and largest organizing network. The IAF was founded in the 1940s by Saul Alinsky, who organized the country's first neighborhood association, "The Back of the Yards Council," in Chicago's South Side. Alinsky went on to organize other successful community projects including FIGHT in Rochester New York and the Woodlawn Organization in Chicago's African American communities. Today, the IAF has affiliates in more than sixty cities. Each affiliates has its own name, sets its own agenda and hires its own lead organizer. The various affiliates come together for training and for regional leadership development. For more information on the IAF, visit www.industrialareasfoundation.org.
