Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), a network of faith organizations from a variety of religious denominations in primarily low-income communities across the United States, Canada, and Europe. Its mission is to help ordinary citizens participate in the public arena in order to improve conditions in their neighbourhoods and cities. Since its founding in 1940, the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) has focused on educating members of its constituent organizations in politics, organizing, and communication skills. IAF groups have had notable successes in advocating for affordable housing, better educational opportunities and job training, and living wages, among other issues.
The IAF network grew out of the work of the American social activist Saul Alinsky, who organized industrial workers and their families in working-class neighbourhoods of Chicago in the late 1930s. He founded the IAF as a national organization dedicated to the social and economic empowerment of poor and working-class people, and he led it from 1940 until his death in 1972. Under Alinsky’s successor, Ed Chambers, the IAF expanded its reach by including women in national leadership training, providing better wages to organizers, and recruiting neighbourhood institutions, mainly churches and synagogues, to become members. Religious institutions later became the primary focus of the IAF’s approach, since they provided a network of preexisting relationships, based on shared values, that facilitated mass mobilizations.
Key principles of the IAF’s organizing approach include (1) the Iron Rule, (2) the concept of relational power, and (3) a focus on leadership development. The Iron Rule encapsulates a central IAF belief that one should never do for others what they can do for themselves. According to that belief, members of politically marginalized communities have the self-interest and latent capacity to take action to win improvements in their neighbourhoods and communities. Grassroots leaders therefore have a prominent role in organizational decision making and are the public face of local IAF affiliates.
The IAF developed the concept of relational power—in contrast to unilateral coercive power—to signify how power can be accrued and mobilized through the development of strategic relationships that are reciprocal in nature. The concept of relational power shapes the way in which IAF leaders interact with each other and the way they engage authority figures or institutions to make changes. Those relationships are characterized by a willingness to listen, understand, and challenge others while being open to challenges from others.
The IAF’s organizing approach also emphasizes the role of formal leadership training. The IAF holds a variety of national training sessions, including sessions run by the national IAF network in which leaders learn how to identify issues and develop an agenda for action through a democratic decision-making process. Participants learn about power and the political system; they also receive training on public speaking, motivating and leading others, negotiation, and research.
IAF affiliates are staffed by professional organizers who are recruited, trained, and supervised by national and regional IAF network staff. Those organizers provide ongoing training for leaders and act as mentors and coaches. They are also responsible for conducting meetings to expand the IAF’s relationships with local religious, political, and corporate leaders as well as with neighbourhood leaders and residents who have an interest in community improvement.