Strengthening Social Justice Movements

PeiYao Chen, Vice President, Impact & Effectiveness at Global Fund for Women, has over 15 years of experience in research and evaluation in the non-profit sector, with a strong focus on social change and grassroots activism. Recognizing that movements led by grassroots people are ultimately the most successful, in her current role she initiated and successfully created the Movement Capacity Assessment Tool, an innovative tool designed to help social justice movements globally to assess and strengthen their capacity for positive social change.

Previously,  PeiYao was Associate Director of Evaluation at TCC Group, a management consulting firm providing strategic planning, evaluation and capacity-building services to foundations and nonprofit organizations. She serves on the board of the Support Center for Nonprofit Management and is a member of the Wellesley Centers for Women Council of Advisors. PeiYao received her Ph.D. in Psychology from the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

Social movements have tremendous power to create sustainable change. While movements are made up of diverse individuals, organizations, and coalitions, the most successful movements can cohesively build capacity to mobilize the resources needed to achieve their ultimate goal. Recognizing that grassroots movements are typically under-resourced, PeiYao was determined to figure out how to provide the right tools to social movements to strengthen their capacity. She led a team at Global Fund for Women to design the Movement Capacity Assessment Tool (MCAT), a free online survey to engage movement actors to collectively assess their strengths and challenges and, more importantly, to define what improvements to make. What if Black Lives Matter had such a tool in 2013? What if the Women’s Rights Movements were stronger? MCAT gives the much-needed social movements of our time access to a practical tool with a roadmap to achieve their vision for a more just society.

To strengthen a movement’s collective capacity, members of the movement must have a shared understanding of their strengths, challenges and priorities. Grassroots social movements—including the women’s movements in Georgia and Ukraine, migrant women’s movement in Spain and the LGBTIQ movement in Kenya—are made up of many individuals, organizations, coalitions, and/or networks. While their diverse members come with rich perspectives, strengths, and motivations, the most successful movements can collectively and cohesively build capacity to mobilize the resources and support they need for the social change they envision. 

Unfortunately, a notable gap exists between today’s academic knowledge on social movements and its practical application as a tool for current movements. Rather, research focuses on successful, well-known historical movements and primarily seeks to characterize their attributes, structure, and influence. Few applicable models exist to guide those currently advocating for change, often with limited resources. 

Through conversations with women-led groups throughout the world, PeiYao recognized a need for an evidence-based practical tool that allows movement members to learn from prior successful movements and apply that knowledge to collectively assess their movement’s capacity and implement the steps needed for action. Because such a tool did not exist, PeiYao took this opportunity to create one.

The MCAT is a free online tool that engages members of a social movement to collectively assess their movement’s strengths and challenges and develop plans to tackle their priorities. A lead organization within a movement identifies and invites movement members to participate in an online survey (roughly 40 questions) that quantitatively captures respondents’ perceptions about their movement along seven dimensions: (1) grassroots base, (2) leadership pipeline, (3) collaboration, (4) collective political agenda, (5) use of multiple strategies, (6) support infrastructure, and (7) collective capacity to ensure safety and security of human rights defenders. To improve accessibility, MCAT is available in five languages. 

Once the response rate meets designated targets, such as number and diversity of respondents, the lead organization brings participants together to discuss the results and develop plans to address the movement’s priorities. PeiYao oversees her team to support the lead organization, which may include developing a sample plan, tailoring the questions for their contexts, monitoring and providing technical support during data collection, and analyzing data and producing a comprehensive report. In addition to documenting insights from individual movements, her team analyzes data across movements to further refine the MCAT and generate lessons learned to share with broader audiences.

MCAT supports movement actors to make data-informed decisions to strengthen their movement’s ability to achieve their goals. In 2017, PeiYao launched pilot studies with six movements, including the women’s movement in Ukraine, in partnership with the Ukranian Women’s Fund (UWF). In this case, members believed that the lack of collaboration among disparate women’s rights organizations representing various regions and generations was preventing the women’s movement from truly gaining traction and influence. UWF used MCAT as a way to uncover these challenges in a participatory way and promote discussion between key movement actors. Ultimately, 115 responses were collected, representing 77 organizations and 38 individual activists nationwide. PeiYao led her team’s analysis, which revealed previously unknown commonalities between mainstream groups and younger feminists as well as a clear need for advocacy support infrastructure. Via four regional meetings, UWF used the data to launch difficult but critical discussions with key actors and developed action plans to address the movement’s needs. PeiYao updated MCAT based on lessons learned and participant feedback from the pilot and since 2018 has supported partners in six countries to use MCAT, from the LGBTIQ Movement in Kenya to the Movement to Ensure Gender Equity in Dornod Province, Mongolia.

Social movements expose some of the most complex challenges of our time and are the driving force behind sustainable, positive social change. By building grassroots people power, social movements challenge and transform political, economic and cultural systems that perpetuate gross inequalities and injustice. The MCAT provides movement actors with a practical, evidence-based tool to develop a shared understanding of their movement’s strengths and challenges, and is an important reference as they take concrete steps to make their movement more effective in creating the positive change they want to see in the world.

In 2014 Global Fund for Women developed a new strategic plan which focused on strengthening women’s rights movements. PeiYao’s team was charged with answering these key questions: What do strong social movements look like? How do funders support social movements? And how do we know movements are becoming stronger? As PeiYao explained:

“We learned a few key things from reviewing social movement literature. While strong social movements share several key characteristics, movements at different lifecycle stages look very different and have different capacity needs. We were looking for a tool that could help us deepen our understanding of a movement’s capacities. What we found was that there are several great tools designed to assess the strength of coalitions and networks, but none specifically at the movement level. Movements are quite different from coalition and networks, for example, they do not have formal memberships or structures. Through a series of conversations with our partners who play different roles in their respective movements, we saw the need for a tool that allows movement actors to use data to make informed decisions to determine their own capacity needs and priorities.”

When asked why the issue of building grassroots social movements’ capacity was so important to her, PeiYao responded:

“I strongly believe that having the right tools can transform how we live, think, and work. I am passionate about creating and using tools that help people gain new insights and make informed decisions. Data is critical to assess a movement’s strengths and challenges; however, analyzing and providing insights to movements is a privilege only available to those with financial resources. MCAT levels the playing field by enabling members from any movement to collect data and generate new insights from which they can make informed decisions to strengthen their collective capacity to achieve change they want to see. MCAT was designed so that it would be available for the public good.”

PeiYao is driven by the fact that social justice movements build grassroots people power and are proven to make long-term sustainable change. With 15 years of research and evaluation experience, combined with her vast knowledge and involvement in supporting grassroots activism and social movements, PeiYaois is uniquely qualified to translate academic knowledge into practical application. She is the architect and driving force behind the thoughtful and purpose-driven development of MCAT—a tool that puts the power to collect data and generate useful insights for social movements directly in the hands of movement actors. 

Upon joining Global Fund for Women in 2013, she built an internal learning and evaluation framework to measure the organization’s grantmaking outcomes and designed and implemented two capacity strengthening projects with grantee partners that taught her the value of engaging target users in product development, a lesson she applied to the MCAT. In overseeing the MCAT’s creation and ongoing development, she brings to fruition her experience and track record in leading teams to develop new products or services, or improving existing ones, to meet unmet needs. 

She is exceptionally skilled at analyzing and synthesizing complex information and turning them into relevant and useful solutions and in her current role has translated her passion for social movement research into a concrete tool that advances social justice. PeiYao is now at the point in her career where support from the Elevate Prize would give her the tools to take MCAT to the next level.

In 2014—a time at which social movements were not yet a buzzword—PeiYao’s proposal for a movement capacity assessment tool initially faced skepticism inside the organization: Why are you doing this? We are a grantmaker, this is not what we do. Who is going to use it? How do you know it’s going to work? How will we fund it? PeiYao set out to prove that such a tool would contribute to Global Fund for Women’s strategy to support movement building and would have broad appeal with an outsized impact on society. 

From her interactions with social movement actors, it was clear to PeiYao that there was a significant need to strengthen social justice movements and she encouraged her team to work on developing it as a side project without formal resources. Through her persistence and the evidence she tenaciously brought forward, institutional support gradually followed, albeit without financial support. However, the project truly got its boost three years later in 2017, when PeiYao put forward and received a grant to conduct pilot studies. Once she was able to show concrete results and examples in the field, interests and broad enthusiasm quickly followed internally and externally.

PeiYao Chen, who was born in a small city on the coast of Taiwan, has lived by the phrase, “ideas are everywhere, execution is everything.” From an early age, PeiYao showed leadership, boldness and a tenacious desire to learn. At age 13, she convinced her parents to allow her to take the high school entrance exam in the Capital City, Taipei, realizing that a quality education was the only way to further her potential and truly impact the world. Not only did she enter the highest-ranked school, she went on to earn her Ph.D. in New York City.

She then launched her career as a leader in the nonprofit sector believing that while new ideas are a critical part of innovation, translating those ideas into reality is equally important. At Girls, Inc., she responded to calls to engage participants in program design and decision making by creating the organization’s first program to use a participatory model to involve girls ages 12-18 as evaluators.

In addition to bringing MCAT to fruition at Global Fund for Women, PeiYao led teams that, among other things, developed an integrated database package to support other organizations strengthen their grantmaking, monitoring & evaluation, and fundraising capacities.

MCAT and the project team are part of Global Fund for Women, a public foundation that funds and strengthens bold and ambitious gender justice movements to create lasting meaningful change. 

MCAT grew out of Global Fund for Women’s strategy to support movement building. The project is housed within the Impact & Effectiveness Team, in which PeiYao oversees the organization’s learning & evaluation, information management, and grants operations functions.

While new technologies—including the internet and social media—have helped contemporary social movements gain traction faster than movements decades ago, such as bringing out thousands of people nationally to support a movement's cause in a matter of weeks, one-time mobilization is not sufficient. Movements need to build their capacity to last over the long haul. 

PeiYao recognized a need for a practical tool that is based on solid research and allows movement members to collectively assess their movement’s capacity and address the priorities for strengthening. Because no such tool existed specifically for social movements, which have their own needs and challenges that are unique from more formal networks, PeiYao seized this opportunity and guided her team to create one from scratch. 

Available in five languages, MCAT is free, easy to use and appropriate for the different contexts even among movements themselves. The tool development process, which is ongoing, involves rounds of testing, learning, and adaptation to ensure that it best meets the needs of those leading grassroots social movements. PeiYao and her team launched version 2.0 in 2018 and are developing version 3.0, which is expected to launch in August 2020 and may include additional language options. As a result, headlining global social movements, from #MeToo to Black Lives Matter, as well as those that are not yet as widely known by the international mainstream press, can freely access a strategic resource to help them determine what it is they need to advance their vision for social justice.   

Research on social movements highlights the critical role  and power of social movements in transforming political, economic, and cultural systems that perpetuate injustice, including the Civil Rights Movement, feminist movements, the LGBTIQ movements, the Anti-Apartheid movement. However, there is still a need to understand the current state of a movement and practical guidance for movement actors to navigate through this reflective process. PeiYao’s extensive literature review and lessons learned from the pilot are reflected in MCAT’s Theory of Change:

Long-term outcome: Successful movements--which often consist of many individuals, organizations, coalitions, and/or networks that represent diverse perspectives--build collective capacity  to mobilize the resources and support they need for the change they want to see in advancing social justice. 

Shorter to medium-term outcome: As a result of using MCAT, movement actors are better equipped to develop a shared understanding about their movement’s strengths and challenges, from which to make informed decisions to address their capacity needs.

Outputs: Leaders of social movements utilize MCAT to collect data on their movement’s capacity from key stakeholders.

Activities: 1) Provide technical and/or financial support to partners who are well-positioned in using MCAT to support their movement but have limited capacity and resources and 2) Allow knowledge and learning to be widely shared and more easily adapted or built upon by ensuing the most current version (MCAT 2.0) is free and available to download in five languages (English, French, Spanish, Arabic, and Russian). While our partners have translated the tool into Mongolian, Ukranian and Georgian, these options are not yet publicly available. 

Currently: 8 partners; 700 people

In 1 year: 4 partners; 600 people

In 5 years: 32 partners; 4,800 people

PeiYao’s efforts to build and disseminate MCAT will elevate humanity by supporting movement leaders to more effectively guide their grassroots social movements, not only among Global Fund for Women’s partners who seek gender justice but also those who are driven to create a more just and equitable world. She has established the following one and five-year goals under the project:

One-Year Goals: (1) release MCAT 3.0; and (2) support a cohort of four to six women-led partners to use MCAT to assess and strengthen their movements’ capacity; (3) develop and test a movement mapping tool as a supplemental tool that precedes MCAT.

Five-Year Goals: (1) develop an online platform that allows users to receive automatically generated reports once participants have submitted responses; (2) tapping into Global Fund for Women’s current networks, provide training to local researchers and activists who are interested in supporting movements in their country to use MCAT, thereby expanding the user base beyond those that fit within and can be funded under Global Fund for Women’s mission.

• Financial (1-5 years)

• The assessment is only the beginning of a long-term process to advance movements’ agendas. The movements will require additional coaching and financial resources to implement their action plans that address their unique capacity needs. 

• While the tool itself is free and accessible to all online, after the assessment has been administered Global Fund for Women only has the resources to work with partners and their movements that fit within its feminist mandate. This limits the number of groups that Global Fund for Women can support post-assessment.  

• Technical (within 5 years) 

1. Language, internet access, and remote geographic locations are barriers for participation.

2. The existing technology platform requires significant staff power to appropriately analyze the MCAT data.   

• Marketing (within 1 year)

1. One key finding from the pilot program is that MCAT must be initiated, led and “owned” by members of the movement, rather than donors. If PeiYao were to “push” MCAT on grassroots groups and/or partners it can exacerbate unequal power dynamics between Global north funders and local movements. Even if the data were complete, if there is a lack of local ownership the MCAT results will never be translated into action. As such, beyond making the tool free and available on Global Fund for Women’s website, PeiYao does not promote or push MCAT on grassroots organizations; however, if MCAT were marketed in such a way that helps intended users understand the purpose and value of the tool, then there would be higher demand due to increased visibility.

PeiYao has outlined the following steps to overcome the above barriers:

• Financial 

1. Global Fund for Women is seeking to work with other funders who are interested in supporting social movements to provide support based on movements’ needs so that they can support movement actors to use MCAT to determine how to best strengthen their movement’s capacity.

2. In order to ensure movements outside of Global Fund for Women’s feminist parameters have the necessary support and resources following the assessment, PeiYao will lead her team to train trainers in local countries to help movements move from assessment to action. This would involve partnering with other funders to create an MCAT fellowship program that provides training and support to local researchers and/or activists. 

• Technical

1. Further streamline the MCAT to improve usability such as making it mobile friendly and modifying the tool so it can be implemented in different settings including off-line or in-person meetings.

2. Improve back-end technology so that reports are automatically generated, which will eliminate the human power required in the  assessment phase and allow staff to focus their time and expertise on the human-centered aspects during implementation.

• Marketing

1. Rather than have Global Fund for Women directly promote the tool among movement actors, PeiYao is looking to ask existing partners to share their experience and lessons learned to spread the word of the MCAT’s effectiveness.

PeiYao’s currently oversees her team to provides technical and/or financial support to the following feminist organizations that used MCAT to assess and strengthen their movements:

1. Taso Foundation and Women’s Fund in Georgia led the assessment of the Feminist/Women’s Rights Movement.

2. Fondo Semillas led the assessment of the Movement of Dissidence and Sexual Diversity and Gender Identity in Mexico.

3. Mongolian Women’s Fund led the assessment of the Movement to Ensure Gender Equity in Dornod Province, Mongolia.

4. UHAI EASHRI led the assessment of the LGBTIQ Movement in Kenya.

5. Coalition on Violence Against Women (COVAW) led the assessment of the Movement to End Female Genital Mutilation in Kenya.

6. Calala Women’s Fund led the assessment of the Migrant and Racialized Women’s Movement in Spain

7. Ukrainian Women’s Fund led the assessment of the Women’s Movement in Ukraine.

She and her team plan to support a new cohort of feminist partners within the next year. However, selection is driven by need and fit and so at this point it is unclear which organizations (and their associated movements) will be chosen.

MCAT is a project supported by Global Fund for Women, a public foundation that envisions a world in which power and privilege for the few has been transformed into equity and equality for all. Since 1987, Global Fund for Women has invested in nearly 5,000 grass-roots organizations in 175 countries, helping to win rights for millions of women and girls. The organization supports solutions to gender-based injustice that are led by those most directly impacted around the globe by finding, funding and advocating for women-led social movements to champion the human rights of women and girls. Recognizing the interconnected and increasingly targeted assaults on women’s rights, Global Fund for Women focuses on making an impact in thematic issues that include Freedom from Violence, Economic and Climate Justice, and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Reproductive Rights. 

MCAT does not specifically have a business model. However, if selected, PeiYao would seek the Elevate Prize’s support to better articulate this.

In order to ensure that social movements, which are often lacking funds and resources, have the opportunity to collect detailed, quantifiable data from which they can assess their capacity, MCAT must remain free to all users. Funding will therefore be raised from sustained donations and grants from Global Fund for Women’s dedicated donor base, which consists of individual and institutional donors. The organization has made fundraising a priority and is on track to raise $25million annually to support increased grantmaking, advocacy and resource mobilization for women’s rights and MCAT is just one piece of the puzzle to propel the sustainable, high-impact movements that will secure lasting gains for women’s rights.  

Additionally, Global Fund for Women hopes that by reaching out to existing networks of peer funders, other social justice organizations will put their own resources towards supporting social movements that wish to utilize the tool and transform the assessment into actionable plans. Global Fund for Women also hopes to invest in technology in order to remove the highly involved human element from assessments and therefore reduce operating costs while making the tool more accessible to the public. One possible funding source is to charge a fee based on affordability (on a sliding scale) for any additional technical support requested from Global Fund for Women to help people customize and use the tool in their context.

The following restricted grant funds have been raised to support MCAT: 

• Fidelity Charitable Trustees Philanthropy Fund ($89,600 Grant) November 2016 – April 2018

• Anonymous donor ($250,000 Grant) July 2019 – July 2021

Over the next three years, the MCAT budget is approximately $515,000/year.  The budget is currently funded through restricted and unrestricted grant support, raised each year by Global Fund for Women.

MCAT’s budget in FY20-21 (which runs July 1, 2020 - June 30, 2021)

-Support cohorts of feminist funds to use MCAT to strengthen their movements (assessment/post-assessent support, host cohort convening, mapping/data analysis, facilitate networking among feminist funds): $386,000

-Develop and test complimentary tools (mapping/movement stages, resources and social capital): $12,000

-Create knowledge products to share with broader audiences: $6,000

-Staff time/benefits: $112,500

Total FY20-21: $516,500

The Elevate Prize will substantially advance MCAT in a variety of ways. For example, Global Fund for Women will utilize the prize funds to support MCAT activities over the next two years. Specifically, PeiYao will lead her team to update back-end technology to reduce the amount of time required to conduct the analysis and calculations. Rather, any organization will be able to initiate and invite movement actors to take the assessment then “submit” and generate a report without additional human analysis. Prize funds will also be used to train local trainers in other countries to support movement actors to plan and conduct the assessment and implement clear action plans, which has been deemed a vital component to the tool’s impact.

The Elevate Prize will also provide much needed visibility, since Global Fund for Women is unable to directly promote the tool among its networks of social movements out of concern that movement actors may feel “forced” to use the tool. MCAT has much greater success when movement actors themselves seek it out and own the assessment process. Through a media campaign, other grantmakers may also be inspired to allocate resources to help social movement actors address their capacity needs identified through their self-assessment. This would exponentially elevate the impact of MCAT, easing the workload for Global Fund for Women staff while ensuring that as many social movements as possible are fully supported to take the assessment, collectively use the information and make meaningful shifts in strategy to achieve real change.

Funding and Revenue Model -  There is a need to understand how to bring in revenue and at the same time ensure that the tool continues to be accessible to those who historically lack access to data and resources. One option could be to charge a fee based on a sliding scale (free for those without resources) but PeiYao is eager to learn from other funding models what is possible. 

Marketing, Media, and Exposure - MCAT is most successful when it is initiated and led by members of the movement. PeiYao is eager to learn how to increase MCAT’s visibility among intended users to drive demand without making them feel like they are being pressured to use a tool that was created by one of their sources of funding.

Rather than name specific organizations, PeiYao has identified certain attributes that would make partnerships most attractive:

-Training institutes for social movement activists (to explore if they want to offer MCAT as a tool for activists as part of their training).

-Academic research centers that focus on social movement research and application (to provide an opportunity for movement actors to leverage academic resources to support their movement building effort).