Community Change was founded in 1968 by leaders of the civil rights, labor, and anti-poverty movements. We were born into the chaos and heartbreak that followed the deaths of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, as a living legacy to the senator. Our founders’ vision and their charge—to build power through grassroots leadership, to challenge the government to be a force for good, to focus on poor people, especially poor people of color—are just as relevant today as at the time of our birth.

Throughout the past five decades, Community Change has focused our work on strengthening the field of community organizing. We have incubated hundreds of grassroots community groups and trained thousands of grassroots leaders. We have pioneered new methods to bring grassroots leaders into civic life by nurturing emerging social movements, bringing community organizing into large-scale voter turnout programs, and launching national issue campaigns led by the grassroots.

We have won significant anti-poverty victories including:

• Major new investments in affordable housing;

• Expansions of refundable child tax credits and the food stamps program;

• Policy changes that drove billions of dollars of private investment to communities of color;

• Good jobs at scale delivered by new models of organizing and campaigns.

• Helped mobilize millions of people to win Obamacare and defend the social safety net from radical attacks.