Before embarking on the journey to implement our new five-year strategic plan, we wanted to take some time to celebrate 2021! The Sankofa bird teaches us to go back to the past and bring forward that which is useful. So, before we look forward to 2022 and beyond, let’s take the time to celebrate all the ways the Alliance showed up and showed out in 2021 to fight for our communities, our futures, and our values.
Annual Report Highlights
Municipal Elections Matter
When it comes to elections and civic engagement, we know there’s no such thing as an “off-year.” In 2021, many of the Alliance Network organizations were some of the only organizations engaging their communities ahead of important municipal elections. For example, Forward Montana worked in coalition to pass legislation that would extend the Missing Indigenous Persons Task Force beyond its termination date, while organizers at Leaders Igniting Transformation (LIT) fought for an end to the policing and criminalization of BIPOC students on Wisconsin’s public university and college campuses.
Leadership Development in our Communities
Every organization in the network hosts powerful training programs to help build the bench of the next generation’s leaders.Throughout the year, Alliance orgs fostered the leadership development and civic education of young people in their communities through internships, fellowships, and other organizing programs. Our network graduated over 200 young people through local programs in 2021!
Leadership Development in the Network
Our Executive Director Bootcamp supported leadership transitions for five women of color in the network this year with a space dedicated to digging in with our national team on operations, fundraising, management, compliance, and more.
Community and Collaboration Through Cohorts
Our cohort spaces were created to serve as a space for communications, program, operations, data, and development peers to meet regularly and work through challenges together and learn from each other. Last year, we built upon our cohort offerings, expanded the program to include staff from Youth Organizing Partners, and launched an advocacy cohort!
Alliance Growth
In addition to bringing on Dakota Hall as our new ED, to better support the ever evolving needs of our network, the Alliance grew in size and in expertise. We added positions to the Communications, Data, Development, and Operations teams and promoted five staff members!
Strategic Planning
We created a strategic plan that directs us to strengthen the network by doing what we do best — centering capacity building for youth-led and focused organizations, raising and distributing funds to the network as a funding intermediary, and expanding the network, with young Black, Indigenous, people of color organizers leading the way.
Thank you for being a part of building youth power, organizations, and leaders in the Alliance Network. Looking back on our successes in 2021 only makes us more excited for what’s to come.