ABOUT US
Who We Are
MSCAF was born out of a recognition that to achieve a Just Transition, we need to employ all tools in our toolbox. This includes express advocacy, lobbying for the policies that will improve our lives, and supporting people that share our experiences to run and win elected office. Some may call this an “inside-outside strategy”, we call it a whole world strategy. We built out this new formation to increase the capacity and impact of our partners’ efforts, because we know that change happens, and ultimately the Just Transition will occur, when the right people are equipped with the right tools and support.
Our Mission
The Movement Strategy Center (MSC) Action Fund is a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization that advocates for racial, economic, environmental, and social justice in all sectors of society. We are unique in that we do not operate as a singular organization but a collective ecosystem that fosters collaboration, reallocates resources, builds capacity, and provides infrastructure to increase the impact of our partners’ advocacy efforts.
Our Vision
Is of a Just Transition from a world of domination, extraction, and violence — where the few live at the expense of the many — to a world of interdependence, liberation, and resilience — where the many govern for the benefit of all. We understand that a Just Transition is only possible when oppressed people, particularly working people, are advocating for themselves and have decision-making authority in this transition.
Our History
MSCAF has evolved to create structures and services to better serve communities and movement building partners while expanding on MSC’s history of building coalitions in specific sectors like education equity or climate justice. One of the early efforts, after launching our fiscal sponsorship program, was to launch a sister organization — the MSC Action Fund, a 501(c)(4) organization. This work was inspired by our core partners’ efforts to build civic engagement activities that allowed groups working across different issues the opportunity to collaborate on increasing the civic capacity and engagement of community members across all issues and on unified agendas.
This type of civic engagement work absolutely requires intersectional and cross-sectional collaboration.
In its earliest iteration, the MSC Action Fund provided support to Oakland Rising, Bay Rising, and a number of other community focused partners in the Bay Area. Later, MSCAF became a vehicle for MSC’s fiscally sponsored projects, especially those with civic engagement goals, including Positive Women’s Network – USA. Then, as now, MSC has been a leader in supporting the electoral justice sector as an infrastructure vehicle.