Ensuring Collective Action Builds Better Public Policy

Abstract

This chapter spotlights an organization development project in a gender-based violence organization “The Consortium,” specifically focusing on development in its public policy work. This chapter examines how knowledge management was used as a tool to reimagine the process on how grassroots advocates were engaged. The chapter uses the organization development project as an example on how organizations can center their boots-on-the-ground workers to root their knowledge base in lived experience, and has an in-depth discussion on how organizations in similar public policy roles can engage people beyond the gender binary, who are usually un(der)represented or misrepresented in public policy. The results of the project highlight four main findings that describe the barriers (time, nonprofit status concerns, “not our work,” and disinterest) and how those barriers brought forth three action steps that were implemented (office hours, a prompt, and an information database). Throughout the case study, lessons for similarly structured organizations are explained.