Last year, when Empower’s staff and board began discussions on how we wanted to mark our quasquicentennial (isn’t that a fun word?!) this year, there was one thing that I knew for sure– I wanted our celebrations to be deeply steeped in Empower’s history. One of the true joys of working at Empower is consistently uncovering gems from our many decades of work here in Missouri. For example, while preparing the speech that I gave at Empower’s Day of Action this year, I learned that the state’s very first public defender was an Empower Missouri employee funded by a Ford Foundation grant in the 1950s. Wild!
Empower is lucky to have had board members and employees in its history who understood the gravity of the work that they were doing, and so thousands and thousands of Empower Missouri documents and artifacts were carefully preserved and then donated to the State Historical Society of Missouri. I’ve spent many hours in our archive there over the last six months, steeping myself in Empower’s storied history. It has been a blessing to be able to reflect on lessons the organization learned from the past as we envision the future decades of our work.
For nearly 100 years, one of the cornerstones of Empower Missouri’s model was regional councils. Historically, Empower Missouri was a membership organization, composed of 8-15 regional chapters across the state (fluctuating over the decades) with the following primary responsibilities:
- Investigating local issues stemming from state or federal policies
- Hosting events to educate community members about key policy issues
- Forming local working groups to brainstorm potential policy solutions with local leaders
- Recognizing local leaders for their work on key issues, highlighting the capacity for change, and the importance of local leadership
The regional councils had a symbiotic relationship with the statewide Empower Missouri board – regional councils gathered and shared local information with the state board, and the state board shared state-level policy research and campaign information with the regional councils. The councils were incredibly successful, each boasting rosters of 100-250 members. They were integral in a number of major statewide policy campaigns, including the establishment of Missouri’s first public defender’s office and the establishment of the Missouri Housing Trust Fund. When urban and rural policymakers are hearing coordinating messaging from their constituents on policy issues facing the entire state, we can speed changes that strengthen all of our communities and help families to meet their basic needs.
Unfortunately, across the early 2000s, the regional council model was phased out through natural attrition in favor of spending more time and energy on policy advocacy in the Capitol. We do not know all of the reasons why this happened, but it was likely impacted by several factors, including a large infusion of new nonprofit organizations across the state (offering more opportunities for engagement) as well as the rapid expansion of the internet (allowing folks to do more connecting online, stifling the need for in person gathering spaces). We have trust and faith that our predecessors made the right choices for the organization at the time.
However, today’s staff and board leadership at Empower Missouri believe that our mission cannot be fully achieved without the deeper community-level engagement and coordinated advocacy – particularly in rural areas – that can be created and sustained by a local council model. While targeted, tactical policy engagement in the Capitol has continued to lead to policy victories, our team believes that relaunching our community engagement model via local councils is the best way to accelerate our work to ensure that every Missouri family has the opportunity to thrive. Empower Missouri has been in a period of significant growth over the last five years, growing our staff from four to sixteen and our board from five to sixteen. With that growth, we are ready to move into the next phase of our expansion and rebuild these local councils. The councils will allow for crucial community-level awareness-raising, mobilization, and groundswell of advocacy, beginning with two core issues that are critical to every family’s ability to thrive – affordable housing and food security.
The voices of rural Missourians are needed at the table for policy discussions and decisions, as they best know their needs, contexts, and what solutions will work for them. Their direct engagement in policy-making spaces is also more influential. While service providers and organizations may effectively represent them, targets of such advocacy are often saturated by special interest groups, whereas direct testimony by constituents garners greater attention and incentive to meaningfully respond to or take forward requests and recommendations. This is especially true for rural advocates in Missouri, because rural Missourians are far more likely to be represented by members of Missouri’s supermajority party who have the real power to shepherd policy changes through the legislative process. Community-level mobilization is also essential for sustainable, lasting policy change, as the local capacity built by advocacy initiatives lives on to closely monitor policy implementation, hold elected officials accountable, and form a movement base likely committed to engaging and addressing other social welfare issues.
And so, in honor of our 125th Anniversary, we are announcing a commitment to repilot at least three local councils in Southern Missouri this year. We will be building steering committees of local leaders who want to partner with us to launch these groups, supporting recruitment to build an initial base for the council, and partnering with local leaders to provide six months of training and facilitation support to lay a foundation for these groups to build from. We have a few communities in mind where we already have eager partners, but if you’re in Southern Missouri and want to partner with us to start a local council in your community, reach out to our Advocacy Director, Sarah Owsley ([email protected]) to learn more! We can’t wait to work with you.
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Love this idea! Best wishes!