Our collective skills as GROWW members determine our ability to win across our campaigns and our state. 

Only five years ago, just seven neighbors sat around a farm table and chose to shape a different future for western Wisconsin with the power in their own hands. By 2025, that small circle has become hundreds of active leaders, thousands of engaged community members, and a living network that continues to deepen and expand.

This growth is not accidental. We invest in building our relationships and building our capacity: as renters, farmers, small business owners, and parents we are the ones who will act when the stakes are real. Through one-on-one conversations, research and house meetings, narrative work, and team-based training, we help each other understand power, recognize the pressures shaping local decision-makers, and practice the skills needed to act with clarity and purpose. Mobilizing crowds may create a moment, but organizing people and developing leadership creates capacity that endures.

Over the past year, more than 1,500 residents joined house meetings, public hearings, and community conversations across western Wisconsin. More than 160 leaders moved through GROWW’s training pipeline, including Grassroots School, daylong organizer sessions, one-to-one and research-meeting workshops, public narrative training, and house meeting host preparation. Eleven leaders attended the Weeklong organizer intensive in Minnesota. Our trainings are a way to develop judgment, test courage and teach one another how to navigate conflict, read power, and take principled action. Leaders learn by stepping into real responsibility on small teams, making decisions, reflecting with peers, and understanding themselves as actors capable of shaping public life.

This fusion of leadership development and organizing is transforming what is possible in western Wisconsin. GROWW’s leaders are demonstrating that power built through relationships can move from porches to public hearings, from street actions to city hall, from community forums to governance itself. As leader Tina Lee shared, “Our campaign to improve housing in Menomonie started when members of our core team attended Grassroots School. Since then, we have brought in new team members and collectively supported each other in becoming strong leaders. As we all step up and take on roles that scare or challenge us, our capacity grows. We are strengthening our local democracy in ways that will have a positive impact on everyday people.”

Our approach reflects a broader tradition of what the Freedom Together Foundation has recently named Bigger We Organizing:  building a diverse cross-section of people who exercise collective agency toward a shared future. Their research affirms what we see on the ground. Strong organizations cultivate a culture of agency, create culturally relevant on-ramps, put belonging before ideology, grow through a honeycomb structure of small teams, build bridges across the commons, and commit to long-term power projects rooted in real communities. Our work in western Wisconsin carries this spirit forward. By investing in people, strengthening relationships, and expanding the circle of those who lead, we are constructing a Bigger We that can meet this moment and shape the future our communities deserve.