about us
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What is Future 5000?
Future 5000 is a tool to support the growth of a powerful and connected progressive youth movement. It’s a dynamic directory of youth organizations working for justice across all 50 states. Each of the 600+ organizations listed on Future5000.com has its own profile that describes their work in campus, community, civic engagement, and cultural organizing (For more info click here). This searchable directory and networking site will help us visualize and organize our movement, people, activities, and resources across and within diverse kinds of youth organizing.
Built from the ground up by dedicated youth organizers, Future 5000 will evolve to meet the needs of organizers, not just as an online directory, but truly as an instrumental vehicle engineered to maximize resource and information sharing between youth organizations. Future 5000’s potential is limitless. Just as the movement is sustained by its people, this site is sustained by you, your organization, your work, and a shared passion for connection and change. While it can serve as a directory, organizers will also be able to share strategies, tools, stories, and even visuals in one central place. You can search for groups with similar missions (across the street or across the country) and begin/continue to forge powerful relationships. You’ll also be able to post campaigns, create coalitions, show organizational relationships, and share resources needed and available with other organizations. In it’s simplest form, Future 5000 is powerful—because you are.
Why is Future 5000 vital?
The need for a resource like Future 5000 has resounded through the youth movement as we know it - the gnawing sound of questions and seemingly endless frustrations surrounding how we, as organizers, can better pool resources, communicate, and mobilize across the divides within youth organizing. In our research for this directory, we talked with hundreds of youth organizers around the country, and heard over and over again about how folks want to connect up their work to be able to make a bigger impact. We saw firsthand how youth are facing the same issues all over the country - education, jobs, prison/military industrial complex, environmental justice, police brutality, gentrification, etc – and how few of us have the time to reach out to learn from each other about successful strategies, tactics, and even allies in the work. We’ve designed Future 5000 to be a one-stop shop for youth organizers and our allies to have easy access to basic information about our collective national work for justice.
How do I use Future 5000?
Who are we?
The Future 5000 team is passionately committed to creating an accurate, respectful, responsible, efficient, intentional, easily understood, and well-run organizing tool that is not only reflective of the communities we represent, but ultimately belongs to the community. Each individual of the team comes from a background of working for social, racial, economic and environmental justice. We are proud to be part of collaborative work and committed to long-term alliance building. We recognize that history will forget our names, but this tool could change the way our children’s children experience peace, freedom and justice in this world.
Our History
In 2002 a group of young organizers from around the country published a book called Future 500, highlighting some of the hottest youth organizations in the country. Now, five years later, an alliance of 10 youth organizations is dedicating staff and resources to creating the interactive, online upgrade to the original book. Members of the Generational Alliance, particularly the League of Young Voters, Movement Strategy Center, and Young People For, are collaborating to bring together youth organizations among four distinct sectors of organizing: campus, community, civic engagement, and cultural. The youth field has been fractured among these fields, and the formation of the Generational Alliance around Future 5000 was a first step towards building a cohesive network and leadership development pipeline.
Getting started is easy…
Each organization is assigned a password and log-in to their profile, from there your organization will be able to start connecting with other organizations, through file-sharing of photo, video, and audio to editing your organization’s profile and keeping others informed. Click here to start.