Challenges to Grassroots Leadership: Autonomy, Power, and Vulnerability

This article examines the structural and relational challenges confronting grassroots leadership in non-profit and community development contexts. It highlights how external pressures—such as donor dependency, NGO asymmetries, and political co-optation—interact with internal community divisions and social hierarchies to undermine autonomy and sustainability. The analysis exposes how accountability frameworks often privilege measurable outputs over relational processes, marginalizing community agency. Additional threats include security risks, repression, and the tokenization of grassroots participation. Drawing on examples of land defenders, women’s activists, and Indigenous leaders, the article argues that grassroots leadership is neither inherently democratic nor secure but continually negotiated within systems of power and vulnerability. It concludes that sustaining authentic grassroots leadership requires strategies of protection, financial independence, inclusivity, and solidarity to preserve autonomy while engaging with institutional systems.