The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Building a 21st Century Leadership Conference Education Fund

Karen McGill Lawson
Commentary

I have had the pleasure of working for The Leadership Conference Education Fund for nearly 30 years. During that time I’ve seen the United States make great strides toward equality and greater equity for all—and I’ve been proud of the work that The Education Fund has done to help move that process along.

One of the great joys of working for an institution like The Education Fund for as long as I have is that I have the great privilege—and the tremendous challenge—of helping to figure out how to ensure that the organization continues to be relevant to the civil and human rights movement. The Education Fund was founded in 1969 to be the education and research arm of the coalition and while it has continued to play that role over the years, we’ve expanded our work to include more coordination of grassroots efforts in states around the country and more focused work around strategic communications to participate in (and sometimes change) the debate where we can on civil and human issues.
For most of their history, The Education Fund and The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the nation’s premier civil and human rights coalition founded to coordinate the legislative strategy on behalf of the civil and human rights community, were small operations based in Washington, D.C., which in turn ran sophisticated operations within the Beltway to effect policy change on issues of importance to the civil and human rights community.

But the past 30 years have been tremendously difficult ones for the civil and human rights community. We engaged in bruising battles through the 80s against the Reagan administration’s rollback on civil rights; confronted welfare reform and the rise of the prison industrial complex in the 90s; and fought back against a sustained campaign to gut affirmative action and equal opportunity that continues today.

Coming out of those battles, we realized that we needed to take a step back and assess the structure of The Education Fund and The Leadership Conference. We wanted to be sure that we could continue to provide the support to the coalition and to the movement that would ensure our success and viability into the new millennium. So in 2000, we embarked on the first of a series of strategic planning processes designed to help us do just that.

The strategic planning processes enabled us to go from a small operation to a 40-plus person staff with expertise in key policy areas, field organizing and strategic online and offline communications, as well as increased capacity to run sophisticated public education campaigns around the country, such as the Digital Television Transition campaign and our 2010 census campaign. We also built a strong development department and brought on staff finance, IT and human resource professionals.

In addition, we’ve been able to expand our ability to support local and state organizations that are on the ground doing the daily work of educating Americans about the importance of civil and human rights—and connect these groups, many of which are small local community-based organizations, to The Leadership Conference coalition and our affiliated networks. We have found that our field work, buttressed by our communications outreach,  increases our ability to affect policy on the local, state and national levels and ensures that activists on the ground feel a deeper, more direct connection to the work that happens in Washington, which has been essential to our success at the national level.

The sudden loss in 2012 of civil and human rights giant John Payton of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund was a stark, painful reminder that we must figure out how to plan for leadership transitions that will ensure that the work of The Education Fund and The Leadership Conference continues as seamlessly as possible—no matter who is at the helm.

So what is next? We’ve undertaken another round of strategic reflection and planning, this time focused on organizational strengthening, sustainability, board structuring, and emergency succession planning.

For we are at a crossroads as a nation. America is going through profound demographic changes. The Latino and Asian populations are growing at a rapid pace. We are only now beginning to recover from the worst recession in nearly a century. And we have to rebuild our infrastructure, schools, and economy to ensure that we are competitive in a global information-based economy that is increasingly reliant on highly skilled workers.

These are 21st century challenges that need 21st century solutions. I, along with Wade Henderson, president and CEO, and Nancy Zirkin, executive vice president and director of policy, are committed to working to ensure that The Education Fund and The Leadership Conference are the 21st century organizations that are fully capable of meeting these challenges.

Karen McGill Lawson is the executive vice president and chief operating officer of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and The Leadership Conference Education Fund.

Previous: The Challenges and Opportunities of a Second Obama Administration | Civil Rights Monitor March 2013 | Next: The Struggle Continues: Voting Rights Victories and Ongoing Challenges