Center for Popular Democracy

Mission The Center for Popular Democracy works to create equity, opportunity and a dynamic democracy in partnership with high-impact base-building organizations, organizing alliances, and progressive unions. CPD strengthens our collective capacity to envision and win an innovative pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial and economic justice agenda. How We Work CPD is a high-impact national organization that builds organizing power to transform the local and state policy landscape through deep, long-term partnerships with leading community-based organizing groups nationwide. Collectively, our staff brings decades of experience to bear, merging technical and legal expertise with deep organizing experience to support our partners in winning, sustaining, expanding and replicating victories across the country. CPD not only helps partners win organizing campaigns and further innovative policy agendas, but we also support them to build strong organizational infrastructure and political muscle. CPD generates momentum from the local level up to ensure that the values of equity, opportunity and a dynamic democracy become national priorities. Our work is not simply about making policy change. It is about working with communities to understand the root causes of the challenges we confront, building consensus around transformative solutions, and working in sustained partnership to accomplish shared goals. We aim to do our work in a way that builds trust, enhances collective capacity, and ultimately broadens and strengthens the progressive movement. History Established in 2012, the Center for Popular Democracy merged with the Leadership Center for the Common Good on January 1, 2014 to create a newly powerful, Center for Popular Democracy. The organizations' sister 501c4 organizations, Action for the Common Good and Center for Popular Democracy Action Fund also merged to create a new stronger Action for the Common Good. The merged organization has 45 excellent staff people, offices in New York City, Washington, DC, and Oakland, CA, and staff in Minnesota, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and Chicago. Importantly, the expanded Center for Popular Democracy has a remarkably strong cohort of 11 national partners and 40 state partner organizations in 28 states. CPD’s model for change draws from the successful base-building and policy advocacy of partner organizations such as Make the Road New York (MRNY), CASA de Maryland, and PCUN in Oregon, as well as New York Communities for Change (NYCC), Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) and Action Now in Illinois, among many others. Around the country, base-building organizations are demonstrating that it is possible to grow to scale, with strong institutional infrastructure and innovative organizing models, and leverage that strength to win cutting-edge policy victories at the federal, state and local levels. CPD grows out of this experience, to bring a range of additional capacities to the field to help base-building organizations scale up even further, to deepen and grow the progressive movement infrastructure, and to advance a pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial and economic justice policy agenda nationwide.