Industrial Areas Foundation

Alinsky's first organizing project was organizing the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council, founded in 1939 as the Packinghouse Workers, the union of Chicago's meatpacking industry.[9] Based on his work with Back of the Yards, Alinsky laid out his vision for "People's Organizations" in his book Reveille for Radicals, in 1946. After World War II, Alinsky met Fred Ross in California, and in 1949 he agreed to back his plan to organize the Community Service Organization in Mexican-American communities.

Ross introduced house meetings as an organizing technique and built a network of 30 CSOs in California with energetic young organizers Cesar Chávez and Dolores Huerta.[10]

In Chicago, Alinsky developed a team of organizers including journalist Nicholas von Hoffman, ex-seminarian Edward T. Chambers, and Tom Gaudette, who developed such groups as the Organization for the Southwest Community (1959–1972), The Woodlawn Organization (1961–present), and the Northwest Community Organization (1962–present).[11]

The Woodlawn Organization (TWO) received national attention through Charles Silberman's best-selling Crisis in Black and White in 1964, which traced the roots of oppression and violence in northern inner-city areas. In his concluding chapter, "The Revolt Against Welfare Colonialism," Silberman portrayed TWO as an example of poor blacks reclaiming their dignity through self-organization and creating their own jobs, instead of blaming whites for all their problems.[12]

Alinsky's experience in Rochester, New York from 1965 to 1969 with the organization FIGHT and its battle with Eastman Kodak was more controversial and less successful.[13]

In 1969, Alinsky was able to establish a formal IAF organizer training program, run by Chambers and Dick Harmon, with a grant from Gordon Sherman of Midas Muffler.[14] Alinsky published a successful book, Rules for Radicals, in 1971, updating his earlier vision.

Alinsky died unexpectedly of a heart attack in June 1972.[15]

After Alinsky's death, his long-time associate and designated successor Ed Chambers, became executive director. Chambers began to place systematic training of organizers and local leaders at the center of IAF's work. He also began to shift the organizing model of "the modern IAF"[16] toward the congregation-based community organization developed in San Antonio, Texas by Ernesto Cortes Jr., called Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS).[17] Cortes recruited lay leaders, including many women, from the Catholic parishes that were members of COPS. Relational meetings or "one-on-ones" became an important technique of exploring values, motivation, and self-interest of potential leaders. Chambers and Cortes emphasized a long-term relationship between IAF and such groups as COPS, in contrast to the "three years and out" that Alinsky had once imagined.[18] As IAF began to expand to other cities in Texas, it moved to develop multi-racial, broad-based organizations spanning metropolitan areas, and including African American, Latino, and Anglo churches. Eventually its network of local groups in Texas linked together as Texas Interfaith to influence state government.[19][20] In 1979 Chambers moved the IAF headquarters to New York after the Archdiocese of Chicago cut its support for IAF.[21] In 1996 IAF moved its national headquarters back to Chicago to develop a new affiliate in that metropolitan area and expand its work in the South, Southwest and Midwest.[22]

IAF developed successful projects along the East Coast with East Brooklyn Congregations, which pioneered the affordable housing project called Nehemiah Homes, and BUILD in Baltimore which also developed Nehemiah housing for low-income people.[23]

The "modern IAF" has been an influential model for other networks of broad-based community organizations, including PICO National Network, Gamaliel Foundation, and Direct Action and Research Training Center (DART).

IAF claims responsibility for the success of the first living wage law in Baltimore in 1994, followed by New York City in 1996, Tucson in 1998, the Rio Grande Valley in the late 1990s and early 2000s[24] and, most recently, in Austin, Texas.