Cultivating Leadership Through Social Change Initiatives

How does leadership get cultivated within a broad social change initiative? This brief describes the variety of ways in which leadership was developed and strengthened within a ten-year Community Clinics Initiative (CCI) in California. While CCI’s experience focuses specifically on the community clinics field, the lessons about leadership are applicable to other large-scale efforts to catalyze social change. This brief is designed to inform grantmakers’ and nonprofit practitioners’ thinking and decision making about how to support and advance leadership among individuals, organizations, networks and the nonprofit sector more broadly.