By Daniel Mackintosh, Lead Organiser for West London Citizens (in appreciation of critique from colleagues Fiona Meldrum and Sebastien Chapleau)

There is no substitute for the deep work of organising and building the base of leaders who drive our organising. That base building, which is the core of the organiser’s work,  includes spotting talented leaders, mass training, doing deep leadership development, co-creating strategy with top leaders and agitating leaders to take effective, collective action. Therefore, the heart of our energy and focus has got to remain our diverse membership, which is the base of our power.

However, we can miss a trick and forget that there are lots of other groups we could work with that could also care about the issues we are trying to change. By creating respectful partnerships of varying degrees of depth, commitment and alignment, we can massively boost our power around specific issues. This is even more important given the limits that broad based alliances have in the power we amass and the wins we can achieve – especially that our primary interests are our members and that people beyond the membership cannot participate directly in our work.  Any big campaign should encourage leaders and organisers to consider three questions around power partnerships: a) who else could you reach out to that could be allies in your organising? b) what kind of partnership would be best suited for the goals of the campaign? c) how to explore what that partnership could look like?

Below are a few methods and possible approaches that Citizens UK alliances are using to build partnerships for power, drawn from ‘Organising for Power and Empowerment, 2nd Edition’ by Mondros and Mineiri:

1. Alliances – more formal, strategic partnerships that are comprised of a variety of organisations that seek long term power. The strength of these partnerships is that they enable collective action and deep relationships on a variety of issues over a long period of time, including holding decision makers to account. But the weakness is that they can be slow into action and only work with members. Like Citizens UK. 
2. Coalitions – these are organisations of organisations that ultimately vote to support positions and actions that the coalition will take around specific demands in a particular campaign. The Renters Reform Coalition (RRC) is a good example. Citizens UK, because we had a history of working to encourage councils to implement selective landlord licensing schemes, worked with the RRC to remove the obstacles to councils implementing licensing schemes across their boroughs in 2024.
3. Networks – these are looser formations generally built on a vague statement of purpose that allow organisations to sign on but do not require a high level of participation. Sometimes these partnerships exist for knowledge sharing and relationship building, but don’t necessarily take action together. 
4. Co-ordinated campaigns – where organisations have similar goals but pursue them separately. Organisations may share intelligence and different strategies and reflect on how they can be complementary, but do not design them together. After a listening campaign in which members shared their anger at being charged higher water bills while huge amounts of sewerage is pumped into the river Thames, Westminster Citizens built a co-ordinated campaign with River Action, Surfers Against Sewerage, Compass and 38 Degrees, to call on the government to put Thames Water into the Special Administration Regime while it is reconstructed to work for its 12 million customers, not its shareholders. See here for more.
5. Sign-on campaigns – this is where one organisation takes the lead and other organisations support by signing statements or writing letters. This enables the organisation driving the campaign to have a wider set of organisations backing their campaign, but the relationships can be thin and it may lack a long term commitment to public action by those who sign on. A current example of this is the campaign by Cambridge and Peterborough Citizens (CPC)  calling on the Mayor of the Combined Authority to extend a £1 bus fare for young people under 25 across the region to enable them to access education and work opportunities. CPC members are leading the charge and encouraging a range of other organisations to sign on.

Who to partner with?

Coordination emerges when clear strategies intersect.

The key is explore this relationally so that interests can be shared and reflected on. Leaders can first do an overall power analysis of those working in a particular area that might be partners, and then go about meeting them, having frank conversations about the goals of the campaigns and how they could work together. Sometimes, an organisation that looks good on paper is filled with people who don’t want to work with or feel threatened by others. Exploring interests in 1on1s could enable us to build longer term, reciprocal partnerships, rather than short term transactional ones. Leaders seeking partners may reflect on some of the wisdom of Rodrigo Nunes., He suggests that coalitions do not need to have a unified structure, but what matters is that each participating organisation has a coherent strategy and plan of action. WHen each organisation knows what they are doing and why, it becomes easier to identify when: strategic goals align with others; whether to co-ordinate temporarily or partially and/or whether to join larger organising efforts that do not sacrifice their autonomy. 

But, not every possibility of partnership should be taken. There is the danger of ‘death by coalition’ where organisations commit to participating in a coalition that they don’t have the capacity to do. That simply wastes resources and generates frustration. 

That is why it is important that organisers and key leaders take the time to reflect – what is the strategy – that particular combination of the issues, the power analysis, the members and the possible moments for action. And then, given this strategy, what is a good ‘partnership for power’, and with whom should it be pursued?