ABOUT

Shape Your State enhances your internal staff goals around mission, purpose, and outcomes. Our approach provides insight into performance management rooted in community values that build, support, and strengthen local people and local issues. Externally, we will work with progressive organizations to build effective strategies to organize communities to take action on local and state issues.

Ground up organizing is the process of building deep relationships for the purpose of engaging in public life. It’s not chit chat, it’s not gossip, it’s not even friendship (although if you make a friend or two, that’d be nice). This type of organizing is based upon two people exchanging ideas, finding solutions to problems, building a coalition that demands changes at the local, state and potentially national level.

It is our belief that with a deep, intentional focus on each local community, we will effect a positive change on relationships, community and the power of the people. We live in a society that is divided by race, class, gender, access and a host of many things that prevent one human connecting with another human. If you invest in the resources, conversation that Shape Your State is aiming to leveraging, we believe that we will ignite a fire that starts to re-shape power locally and ultimately affect state and national policies. We do not dictate a universal solution for all but rather allow communities to decide for themselves the best way to move to a more progressive future. 

OUR FOUNDER

Chanda

Chanda Causer, our Executive Director, is a highly skilled strategist with 25 years of collective experience in coaching, management, team building, and community organizing. She brings a wealth of expertise in streamlining financial systems and guiding staff through the intricate intersections of performance, people, and culture management. With a career dedicated to advocacy within local, regional, and national organizations, Chanda excels in fostering consensus among member-driven institutions, including faith-based organizations. Her unwavering commitment lies in cultivating transparent environments rooted in equity, where clear agreements and outcomes are paramount. At Main Street Alliance, Chanda leads an exceptional team of passionate members and staff, united in their unwavering support for true small businesses and their unwavering fight against the concentration of corporate power.