The Missouri Organizing Incubator cultivates the depth, breadth, and strength of organizing it takes for everyday Missourians — parents, neighbors, workers — to win and govern in the state we share.
Missouri's grassroots have organized phenomenal victories for regular people over the last decade largely through ballot initiatives — raising the minimum wage, passing paid sick leave, expanding Medicaid, enshrining abortion rights in the constitution, and passing sweeping ethics and redistricting reform.
And yet, after years of disinvestment, attacks on unions, and the hollowing-out of the institutions that gave people somewhere to belong, our organizing capacity does not match our political ambition. And our opposition has become adept at stripping and hollowing out our victories.
Growing organizing capacity to the scale and depth necessary to build a new Missouri governing majority will require ongoing powerful organizing among anchor institutions AND that the ecosystem develops the muscle and developmental capacities to organize more people who have not been organized.
The Incubator exists to close that gap — to seed, scale, and resource the new base-building that helps to turn the will of Missourians into governing power.
We're nimble by design. Five core functions, each oriented to one question: what does Missouri's organizing ecosystem need next, and how do we get it in good hands fast?
A living read of organizing potential — institutional and individual — and the interventions that can unleash it across the state.
Always-onDeepen and scale the organizing skills of the people already doing the work — and build the cohorts that connect them.
Cohort-basedPut skilled organizers on contract to test new bases — student unions, tenant unions, worker bases in St. Joseph — fast.
In the fieldBuild the bench of high-level leaders and future staff organizers — beginning with the inaugural Parent Organizing Fellowship.
Spring 2026Engage and pipeline catalytic resources to emerging leader-led organizing projects so that lead organizers can focus on what they do best: build people power.
CatalyticWhere we're putting capacity, coaching, and infrastructure right now — to seize the openings the political moment is creating.
Replicating the inaugural cohort with Parents for KC Kids — a volunteer leadership base of over 1,000 parents, teachers, and students that won the first KC Public Schools GO bond since 1967.
A new database for tracking organizing people and power — built for organizers, not institutional clients. We're piloting the early stages in partnership with Civic Power Lab at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Tens of thousands of Missourians want a way in but haven't been invited. We're building an online-to-offline program that turns activism into real-life leadership in KC and St. Louis.
The legislature is advancing attacks on public education, bodily autonomy, the income tax, and the citizen initiative process itself. Our ecosystem is anchoring a coordinated defense — and using it to build the bases that win in 2027 and beyond.
"Cultivating the depth, breadth, and strength of organizing necessary to build enough power to win and govern in Missouri will require new things — including imagination and experimentation beyond the confines of archetype nonprofit 501c structures."— Launch memo · April 2026
Stay in touch. Occasional updates on what the cohort is building, what we're learning, and how to plug in.