InAdvance

Sponsored ProjectsInAdvance has served as the fiscal sponsor of Saba Grocers Initiative and My Eden Voicewe had a hand in forming and nurturing both of these projects. We plan to spin them off in 2024. We will continue to provide this service to MEV. One board action is to approve a recommendation to assume fiscal sponsorship of PLAN (People Living with Aphasia Network) retroactive to December 1, 2023.

The Sugar Freedom Projectwe expanded the work of the Sugar Freedom Project. We shifted resources from END to SFP to strengthen our internal infrastructure for base-building. Though results have been mixed (key resident leaders have emerged, but the base theyre swimming in is still shallow). Two of the leaders went through Spadework and are transitioning into organizer roles. The key goal for 2024 is to consolidate a membership base and invest in leadership development.

SpadeworkWe graduated 23 people from 14 organizations in California, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The most important take-away from this year is that weve finally figured out the key content pieces of the curriculum with a heavy focus on base-building, with user-friendly tools that folks seem to like. The simple question of Who is your base? has been pretty cathartic to many. It is especially poignant to electoral-focused organizations where theres a chasm between who we fight for and those who we spend most of our time with (i.e. folks who vote). Insights from our practice the past few years predict that the road is long in resuscitating the heart of organizing and has forced us to develop a strategy for long-term institutionalization that will be the focus of our conversation at the Board meeting.