Building Power From The Ground Up

“There are three critical ingredients to democratic renewal and progressive change in America: good public policy, grassroots organizing, and electoral politics. Good public policy provides direction and an agenda for action; grassroots organizing builds a constituency for change; and electoral politics is the main way we contest for power and hold decision makers accountable.”

_{– Paul Wellstone}

Power is built from the ground up when people make decisions for themselves. This principle underpins all our democracy work.

At its inception, Grassroots Solutions focused on (you might guess) grassroots organizing and electoral politics. We organized thousands of staff and volunteers in service of individual candidates, door knocking and working directly with people to cast ballots.

Today, our focus is on grassroots at scale: the building and wielding of community power—claiming a seat at the table for people who often aren’t there—demands a systemic approach.

Our clients are concerned with the many, varied moving parts of democracy: voting rights, electoral participation, voter protection and election administration. Local and state power building. Civic infrastructure. Philanthropic and investment strategies. All the components that fuel and activate the civic engagement ecosystem, expanding the circle of democratic participation. 

Strengthening our democracy requires a focus on both expanding individual participation and systemic change. Knowing civic engagement as we do—the landscape, players, funders and levers of power—means our clients can act with precision and confidence within the larger system to progress change.

Over the past 20 years, Grassroots Solutions has worked in partnership with civic engagement efforts, electoral campaigns, candidates, advocacy efforts, individual donors and institutional philanthropy to help our clients reach their goals from expanding voting rights, to reaching and engaging new voters to winning campaigns.