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The tools in this Chapter are intended for use:
By - Advocates, coalition leaders, community organizers
To - Embed collective care into their coalitions and organizations
“Liberated relationships are one of the ways we actually create abundant justice, the understanding that there is enough attention, care, resource, and connection for all of us to access belonging, to be in our dignity, and to be safe in community.”
“Las relaciones liberadas son una de las maneras en que realmente creamos una justicia abundante: la comprensión de que hay suficiente atención, cuidado, recursos y conexión para que todes podamos acceder al sentido de pertenencia, vivir con dignidad y estar segures en comunidad.”
— adrienne maree brown
Collective care lays a powerful foundation for any advocacy initiative, as it involves attending to and nurturing the physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, and relational aspects of both individual and collective wellbeing.
Through collective care, advocates and organizers embed safety, mutual support, and sustainability into their organizations and movements. Thus, they might think of collective care as a power-building infrastructure, with these outcomes acting as the power supplies for their organization or coalition throughout the life of a campaign or advocacy initiative.
Key to its efficacy is meeting the preferences and true needs of individual members and those of the broader coalition or organization. A collective care needs assessment (Needs Assessment: Collective Care) can guide organizers in evaluating the shared wellbeing, resources, boundaries, and support gaps within their organization or coalition to proactively address burnout, trauma, and systemic needs.
Collective care helps build the conditions people need to stay engaged in advocacy work over time and strengthen a group’s ability to sustain participation, deepen trust, respond to challenges, and move through conflict, stress, and change with more intention and support.
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❗Why This Matters for Building Power❗
Collective care reshapes the deep, and often invisible, ideological powers of oppression and extreme individualism into a discernible culture of care and connection. It strengthens Power With others, emphasizing the collective’s Power To effect change.
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Building power is essential for managing the complex labor of advocacy and organizing. The issues around which this work centers and the process of navigating harmful power dynamics, whereby those with Power Over decision-making to address the issues oppress the people impacted by them, can be deeply traumatizing.
Trauma can be thought of as any experience or circumstance that subjects an individual or group of individuals to harm, injustice, or control by others and provokes a feeling within those individuals of being powerless. Trauma can be experienced as direct, inherited, vicarious, or shared. It can manifest as visible or invisible and has enduring consequences. Mitigating trauma is, therefore, critical to sustaining power.
As a relational system for wellbeing, collective care promotes a cycle of reciprocity and reinforcement that generates and sustains shared power through health and safety, healing and resilience, respect and accountability, and solidarity and trust.
Figure 4.1 Collective Care Cycle
Collective care is at-once a process and a set of practices, built upon the synthesis of temporary, long-term, formal, and informal strategies and grounded in ongoing learning, reflection, and adaptation.
Table 4.1 Collective Care Strategies
| Strategy | Description/Example | How It Sustains Power |
|---|---|---|
| Shared & Rotating Leadership | Distributing leadership and rotating roles to prevent concentration of power | |
| Ex: A rotating schedule of meeting roles like agenda-setting, facilitation, notetaking, and follow up. | Prevents burnout, builds new leaders, and resists hierarchy | |
| Mutual Aid & Material Support | Meeting immediate needs alongside organizing work | |
| Ex: Emergency funds, food distribution, rides to action, childcare pools | Recognizes that survival and organizing are interconnected | |
| Relationship- | ||
| based Organizing | Prioritizing trust, care, and long-term relationships | |
| Ex: 1:1 check-ins, relational meetings, community meals | Builds solidarity and sustains power | |
| Accessible Participation | Removing barriers to engagement | |
| Ex: Language interpretation, participation stipends, virtual meeting options, disability access | Ensures those most impacted can lead and participate | |
| Political Education & Skill Sharing | Learning together as a form of collective care | |
| Ex: Know-your-rights trainings, facilitation skill-shares, policy briefings | Builds confidence, agency, and collective analysis | |
| Care-Centered Conflict Practices | Addressing tension without punishment or avoidance | |
| Ex: Restorative conversations, community accountability agreements | Keeps movements intact and principled | |
| (Guide: Addressing Harm and Transforming Conflict) | ||
| Clear Communication & Transparency | Maintaining open, consistent communication about decisions and strategy | |
| Ex: Shared documents, regular updates, clear decision-making processes | Builds trust and reduces confusion and harm | |
| Collective Reflection & Adaptation | Pausing to learn from and adjust to wins and challenges | |
| Ex: Post-action debriefs, reflection circles, feedback surveys | Supports growth and strategic resilience | |
| Rest, Joy, & Celebration | Valuing joy and rest as essential, not optional | |
| Ex: Dedicated time off (i.e., sabbatical or shorter term break for rest or personal growth), incorporating the arts into meetings and activities | Sustains energy and counters burnout culture |
Sustaining power through collective care requires systematizing strategies like those shown in Table 4.1 and creating supportive structures that work to stabilize care practices and advance the longevity of grassroots campaigns.
Just as advocates and organizers are subject to experiencing vicarious trauma, they may also experience and foster vicarious resilience.(Worksheet: Understanding Resilience).
Collective care is inspirational and can evoke a shared sense of Power Within others!
As defined by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)