Our Mission

DataCenter unlocks the power of knowledge for social change.

We support grassroots organizing for justice and sustainability through strategic research, training and collaborations.

We use research to help move the knowledge and solutions of communities of color and the poor from the margins to the center
of decision-making.

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Our Vision

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Valuing Shared Leadership

• Have you faced challenges with leadership and sustainability in your organization?
• Ever wondered how to honor a founder who is transitioning out of the organization in a way that surfaces and transfers knowledge, history, and relationships they hold?
• Do you struggle with isolation in your role in your organization, or feel limited by the ways that hierarchy impacts your work?
• Feel like there are ways that your social justice values are not reflected in your organization practices?

So did we. These and other questions led us to the same research methods we use in partnership with other organizations. But this time we brought those tools into our organization, using storytelling to surface the knowledge within our organization, identify problems and generate solutions.

In particular, we’ve been engaged in defining, implementing and sustaining concrete practices to dismantle systems of oppression and increase our accountability to communities on the ground. In order to tackle challenges and dysfunction endemic to social justice-minded nonprofits, we have been developing long-term sustainable leadership–particularly by people of color and working class people–by sharing it across the organization.

Over the past several years, we’ve hosted events and spoken with groups about the power and potential of Share Leadership models, creating spaces to share stories, lessons and reflections about these questions and more.

By building on transformative work in the movement, knowledge from people of color communities, and on our own thirty-year organizational history of participatory decision-making, organizational culture work and anti-oppression work, we’ve successfully piloted and are launching the Shared Leadership Organizational Structure. Shared leadership is based on these core beliefs:

We believe there can be a healthy balance between organizational and individual well-being and social change work.

We believe that leadership of the organization does not belong exclusively to an executive director or the board. Leadership is the work of every person.

We believe Shared Leadership works!

We believe anyone can apply our research approach to solving organizational problems in a sustainable way that increases capacity. It’s not just about identifying the problems and analyzing them. It’s about expanding the knowledge base, increasing capacity within ourselves to imagine and surface solutions, and building power.

Frequently Asked Questions about the Shared Leadership Model (pdf)

The Latest Updates on Shared Leadership

>>Reflections On Shared Leadership for NonProfit Day 2010 08.19.2010
When it comes to the topic of shared leadership, DataCenter had typically responded to small- to mid-size non-profit organizations eager to learn about our experiences in trying to promote a sustainable organizational culture of collaboration over competition, dialog over debate, and “power-with,” over “power-over.” In most cases, callers had observed a fair amount of unhealthy, challenging power dynamics play out in the organization, and felt the urgency to ‘really do something about it this time.’

>>GEO 2010 National Conference: Insights on Collective Leadership 04.26.2010
As grantmakers continue to explore ways of increasing the effectiveness and impact of nonprofits, we need to think differently about leadership and investments in individuals. There is a growing recognition that to achieve large scale change, we need to unleash collective leadership . …

>>Leadership Learning Community’s Case Study about the DataCenter 02.26.2010
In October 2009, at a Leadership Learning Community (LLC) Bay Area Circle, Miho Kim and Celia Davis of the DataCenter shared their learning about the “Shared Leadership” model adopted by the Center in 2006. .. .